dmenu
More info
- Creator
- Anselm R. Garbe
- Released
- 2006
- Type
- Menu program
- License
- MIT/X
- Website
- tools.suckless.org
A dynamic menu that reads lines from standard input, lets the user narrow them down from the keyboard and prints the choice.
dmenu grew out of the wmii project and became a program of its own in the suckless family in 2006, alongside dwm. It draws a single line at the top of the screen, filters as you type, and that's it. What goes into the list and what happens to the answer is not dmenu's business.
Which is exactly why it ended up in countless scripts. dmenu_run lists the executables on $PATH and launches the pick, but the same mechanism gets used for choosing Wi-Fi networks, passwords and emoji. The idea was borrowed freely: rofi, and Wayland's wofi and bemenu, are essentially dmenu with more settings.