Launcher App indexing

[Yogibliz]

Hey, where does the launcher index apps that are searchable, and is it possible to add extra drives so it finds games, utilities etc installed on separate disks.

[Markus328]

It uses desktop entries from XDG Standard. See this

You can create and add any app to /usr/share/applications and there are apps that helps this

[Yogibliz]

Perfect, just ended up making a script that gets all my steam games from the other drive and add desktop entries for them to:

~/.local/share/applications 

Newly installed steam games get added here so I just made sure to keep them all in the same place.

Python script:

#!/usr/bin/env python3
import os
import re
from pathlib import Path

route = "/route/to/steamapps/folder"
if route == "/route/to/steamapps/folder":
    print("Please change the route from '/route/to/steamapps/folder', to where you keep your steamapps folder.")
    exit()
LIBRARY = Path(route)
DESKTOP_DIR = Path.home() / ".local/share/applications"

# Games/Apps we don't want to make .desktop files for
SKIP_KEYWORDS = [
    "Steam Linux Runtime",
    "Proton",
]

def parse_acf(acf_path: str):
    txt = acf_path.read_text(encoding="utf-8", errors="ignore")
    appid = 0
    name = ""
    block = re.search(r'"AppState"\s*\{(.*?)\}', txt, flags=re.DOTALL)
    block = block.group(1) if block else txt
    m_id = re.search(r'"appid"\s*"(\d+)"', block)
    m_name = re.search(r'"name"\s*"([^"]+)"', block)
    if m_id: appid = m_id.group(1)
    if m_name: name = m_name.group(1)
    return appid, name

def make_desktop(appid, name):
    safe_name = name.replace("\n", " ").strip()
    return f"""
        [Desktop Entry]
        Name={safe_name}
        Exec=steam steam://rungameid/{appid}
        Icon=steam_icon_{appid}
        Type=Application
        Categories=Game;
        Terminal=false
    """

DESKTOP_DIR.mkdir(parents=True, exist_ok=True)

BOLD = '\033[1m'
END = '\033[0m'

for acf in sorted(LIBRARY.glob("appmanifest_*.acf")):
    appid, name = parse_acf(acf)
    if not appid or not name:
        continue

    # Skip unwanted entries
    if any(keyword.lower() in name.lower() for keyword in SKIP_KEYWORDS):
        print(f"{"Skipped:":<5} {BOLD}'{name}'{END}")
        continue

    temp = re.sub(r"[^\w\s-]", "", name).strip()
    desktop_name = temp.replace(" ", "_")
    dest = DESKTOP_DIR / f"{desktop_name}.desktop"
    content = make_desktop(appid, name)
    dest.write_text(content, encoding="utf-8")
    os.chmod(dest, 0o644) # Set dest folder permissions to: '-rw-r--r--'
    print(f"{"Wrote:":<8} {BOLD}'{name}'{END}")
print(f"\nWrote to: {BOLD}'{DESKTOP_DIR}'{END}")

Many thanks @Markus328 ❤️

[Markus328]

Hey, where does the launcher index apps that are searchable, and is it possible to add extra drives so it finds games, utilities etc installed on separate disks.

About the drives do find games, use categories or keywords in the creation of desktop entries, and use the new launcher's feature special search to find them easily

[neronguyenvn]

Related to launcher, why is not updated when I install new apps. I couldn't search for new one there.

[soramanew]

You need to restart the shell for new apps to show up. You can restart it via qs -c caelestia kill; caelestia shell -d

[neronguyenvn]

fair enough for me, thanks much!

[Yogibliz]

I've not looked into it much, but couldn't a file watcher like the one from QT (https://doc.qt.io/qt-6/qfilesystemwatcher.html) work to make it auto update on changes to the .desktop folders?

Might be Quickshell issue though, not sure where that responsibility lies in this case.

EDIT:
Looked into it and saw it's a Quickshell issue, and that it's being worked on: (quickshell-mirror/quickshell#114)

[neronguyenvn]

thanks, looking forward to upcoming updates. still my best ever daily driver