TOFU

An ultra-minimalist application launcher for Wayland, inspired by rofi and dmenu.

Features

• Tiny: ~1000 lines of Rust, ~1.1MB binary
• Fast: Native Wayland layer-shell, no X11 overhead
• Fuzzy matching: Skim's algorithm for fast filtering
• Frecency: Learns your usage patterns (frequency + recency)
• Beautiful: Fade-out results, rounded corners, customizable accent colors
• Flexible: dmenu mode or .desktop app launcher

Installation

just install

Requires ~/.local/bin in your PATH.

Usage

Basic Modes

dmenu mode (read from stdin):

echo -e "firefox\nterminal\nnvim"| tofu
ls /usr/bin | tofu | xargs swaymsg exec --

App launcher mode (read .desktop files):

tofu --drun

Command Line Options

Option	Description	Example
--drun	Launch app mode (read .desktop files)	tofu --drun
--color="#RRGGBB"	Set accent color (cursor + selection)	tofu --drun --color="#b42400"
--font="PATTERN"	Set font (fc-match pattern or path)	tofu --drun --font="Geist Mono"
--invert	Inverted selection style (accent text, black bg)	tofu --drun --invert
--glass	Translucent panel with background blur (frosted glass)	tofu --drun --glass
--reset	Reset frecency/priority data	tofu --reset

Examples

# Default blue theme
tofu --drun
# Orange/red theme with Geist Mono font
tofu --drun --color="#b42400" --font="Geist Mono"# Green theme with custom font file
tofu --drun --color="#009B67" --font="/usr/share/fonts/TTF/Hack-Regular.ttf"# Inverted mode (accent text color, black background for selected)
tofu --drun --color="#b42400" --invert
# Frosted glass: translucent panel that blurs the desktop behind it
tofu --drun --glass
# In Sway configset$menu tofu --drun --color="#4488ff" --font="Geist Mono"
bindsym $mod+space exec$menu# In Niri config
binds {
Mod+Space { spawn "tofu""--drun""--color=#009B67"; }
}

Key Bindings

Key	Action
Type	Filter apps
↑ / Down	Navigate selection
Enter	Launch selected app
Esc	Cancel/exit
Backspace	Delete character

Visual Design

• Centered: Appears on the output with keyboard focus

• Rounded corners: 12px radius on main container

• Fade effect: Lower results fade to black (minimum 20% opacity)

• Block cursor: Solid block instead of line

• Clipped: Results stay within rounded container

• Two selection styles:

  • Normal: Accent color background, white text
  • Inverted (--invert): Black background, accent color text

• Glass mode (--glass): Renders the panel with a translucent tint and requests background blur scoped to the rounded panel via the ext-background-effect Wayland protocol. The compositor blurs whatever is behind the panel.

  Requires a compositor that implements ext-background-effect (e.g. niri 26.04+). No compositor config is needed — the app requests the blur itself, and scopes it to the panel. (A niri layer-rule with background-effect { blur true } is not a substitute: layer rules blur the entire full-width layer surface, transparent areas included, so the protocol is what keeps the blur confined to the panel.) On compositors without the protocol, the panel stays translucent and the blur is skipped.

  For reference, the niri-specific layer-rule equivalent (blurs the whole layer surface, not just the panel) looks like:

  layer-rule {
   matchnamespace="tofu" background-effect {
   blurtrue xrayfalse
  }
  }

Building from Source

# Build release binary
cargo build --release
# Build and install to ~/.local/bin
just install
# Run testsecho -e "a\nb\nc"| cargo run

Dependencies

• Rust 1.70+
• Wayland compositor with wlr-layer-shell support (Sway, Niri, Hyprland, etc.)
• fontconfig (for --font matching)

License

MIT