spmenu is an X11 menu application which takes standard input, parses it, and lets the user choose an option and sends the selected option to standard output.
In addition to this, it also serves as a run launcher through the
included shell script spmenu_run, which handles both $PATH
listing, .desktop entries and file listing. See spmenu_run(1) for more
information related to using spmenu as a run launcher.
While spmenu is based on dmenu, and is also fully compatible with dmenu, spmenu introduces many new features which can be useful in shell scripting.
On runtime, spmenu reads from standard input (stdin). spmenu items
are separated by a newline (\n). When (by default) Enter is
pressed, the selected item will be piped to stdout.
This allows things like
printf "Apple\nOrange\nPear\n" | spmenu. This command will
spawn an spmenu window with three items, ‘Apple’, ‘Orange’ and ‘Pear’.
This can be used in shell scripts to create interactive menus.
spmenu doesn’t strictly read standard input, it can read from files
too using the -lf or --list-file argument.
On top of this, you can specify arguments to change the behavior of spmenu. See a list below for a list.
You may use long, descriptive arguments or the shorter arguments.
-mh, --line-height height-mw, --min-width width-g, --columns grid-gc, --generate-cache-ngc, --no-generate-cache-mc, --max-cache size-cd, --cache-dir dir-rw, --relative-width-nrw, --no-relative-width-ix, --print-index-nix, --no-print-index-f, --fast-r, --incremental-nr, --no-incremental-rm, --require-match-nrm, --no-require-match-F, --fuzzy-NF, --no-fuzzy-P, --password-nP, --no-password-p, --prompt text-It, --input text-ip, --indent-nip, --no-indent-ci, --color-items-nci, --no-color-items-sgr, --sgr-nsgr, --no-sgr-a, --alpha-na, --no-alpha-tp, --allow-typing-nt, --no-allow-typing-x, --x-position x offset-y, --y-position y offset-n, --preselect line-z, --width width-nmt, --normal-mode-text text-imt, --insert-mode-text text-clon, --caps-lock-on-text text-clof, --caps-lock-off-text text-bw, --border-width width-so, --sort-nso, --no-sort-pri, --priority pri1,pri2,pri3-s, --case-sensitive-ns, --case-insensitive-nm, --normal-im, --insert-t, --top-b, --bottom-c, --center-hm, --hide-mode-hit, --hide-item-hmc, --hide-match-count-hla, --hide-left-arrow-hra, --hide-right-arrow-hpr, --hide-prompt-hip, --hide-input-hpl, --hide-powerline-hc, --hide-caret, --hide-cursor-hhl, --hide-highlighting-hi, --hide-image-hcl, --hide-caps-sm, --show-mode-sit, --show-item-smc, --show-match-count-sla, --show-left-arrow-sra, --show-right-arrow-spr, --show-prompt-sin, --show-input-spl, --show-powerline-sc, --show-caret, --show-cursor-shl, --show-highlighting-si, --show-image-scl, --show-caps-xrdb, --xrdb-nxrdb, --no-xrdb-gbc, --global-colors-ngbc, --no-global-colors-m, --monitor monitor-w, --embed window id-H, --hist-file hist file-lf, --list-file list file-ig, --image-gaps gaps-txp, --text-padding padding-vem, --vertical-margin margin-hom, --horizontal-margin margin-lp, --vertical-padding padding-hp, --horizontal-padding padding-la, --left-arrow-symbol symbol-ra, --right-arrow-symbol symbol-is, --image-size size-it, --image-top-ib, --image-bottom-ic, --image-center-itc, --image-topcenter-wm, --managed, --x11-client-nwm, --unmanaged-cf, --config-file file-lcfg, --load-config-ncfg, --no-load-config-tm, --theme theme-ltm, --load-theme-nltm, --no-load-theme-v, --version-fn, --font font-nif, --normal-item-foreground color-nib, --normal-item-background color-nnif, --normal-next-item-foreground color-nnib, --normal-next-item-background color-sif, --selected-item-foreground color-sib, --selected-item-background color-npf, --normal-item-priority-foreground color-npb, --normal-item-priority-background color-spf, --selected-item-priority-foreground color-spb, --selected-item-priority-background color-pfg, --prompt-foreground color-pbg, --prompt-background color-ifg, --input-foreground color-ibg, --input-background color-mnbg, --menu-background color-nhf, --normal-highlight-foreground color-nhb, --normal-highlight-background color-shf, --selected-highlight-foreground color-shb, --selected-highlight-background color-nfg, --number-foreground color-nbg, --number-background color-mfg, --mode-foreground color-mbg, --mode-background color-laf, --left-arrow-foreground color-raf, --right-arrow-foreground color-lab, --left-arrow-background color-rab, --right-arrow-background color-cfc, --caret-foreground color-cbc, --caret-background color-bc, --border-background color-sgr0, --sgr0 color-sgr1, --sgr1 color-sgr2, --sgr2 color-sgr3, --sgr3 color-sgr4, --sgr4 color-sgr5, --sgr5 color-sgr6, --sgr6 color-sgr7, --sgr7 color-sgr8, --sgr8 color-sgr9, --sgr9 color-sgr10, --sgr10 color-sgr11, --sgr11 color-sgr12, --sgr12 color-sgr13, --sgr13 color-sgr14, --sgr14 color-sgr15, --sgr15 colordmenu compatibility can be achieved using these arguments:
-S-i-nb color-nf color-sb color-sf colorYou can set keybinds through the config file. A default config file is available after installing spmenu. This configuration file has identical keybindings to the default hardcoded keybinds.
By default, the configuration file will ignore all hardcoded
keybindings to prevent keybind conflicts, but if you do not like this
behaviour you can simply set ignoreglobalkeys = 1.
One of the features that separate spmenu from dmenu is spmenu’s different modes. As of version 0.2, there are two modes. Normal mode and Insert mode. These modes are of course similar to Vim.
Normal mode is the mode spmenu starts in unless a mode argument is specified. In normal mode, all keys perform some action, but you cannot type any actual text to filter items. This mode is used for navigation, as well as quickly selecting an item.
Insert mode is entered through (by default) pressing i
in normal mode. In this mode, most keybinds do nothing. When you are in
insert mode, you filter items by typing text into the field. Once you’re
done with insert mode, you can press Escape to enter normal mode
again.
spmenu has a -p option, which stands for prompt. It allows you to specify text to display next to the item list. It is displayed on the left side of the spmenu window. It should be noted that the prompt is purely visual though.
spmenu supports drawing images. This image is placed on the left side
of the menu window. To use an image, pipe
img:///path/to/image to spmenu. If you want you can specify
arguments like usual. Note that you should add a Tab (\t)
character after the path to the image file. Otherwise the text after
will be interpreted as part of the filename and the image will not be
drawn.
Any text after the Tab character will be interpreted as a regular item. In practice, drawing an image might look like this:
printf "img:///path/to/image\tLook at that image, isn't it awesome?\n" | spmenu
There are also a few image related arguments, such as:
-is, -ig, -it,
-ib, -ic, -itc and
-gc.
Vector images (such as .svg) can be displayed too in the same way.
This is all done using imlib2 so as long as imlib2 support
it, it can be used.
NOTE: Also note that older spmenu scripts may use the
IMG: prefix rather than the newer img://
prefix. It is recommended that you use the img:// prefix,
but IMG: may be preferred if you need compatibility with
older spmenu versions.
spmenu supports colored text through SGR sequences. This is the same colors that you might already be using in your shell scripts. This means you can pipe practically any colored shell script straight into spmenu, no need to filter the output or anything.
Not only does it support colored text, but it also supports colored
backgrounds. This allows something similar to the emoji highlight patch,
except even more useful. Example:
printf "\033[0;44m😀\033[0m Emoji highlighting\n" | spmenu --columns 1
See ‘SGR sequences’ for more information.
A basic supported SGR sequence looks like this:
\033[X;YZm
Here, X specifies if you want normal or bright colors. Y specifies if you want background or foreground. Z specifies the color number.
Foreground colors: 30 through 37 Background
colors: 40 through 47 Reset:
0
NOTE: ; is a separator, and in this example it separates
the color number and normal/bright. \033 may also be written as
^] or simply ESC. The separator may be omitted
for some sequences, such as \033[0m which resets the
colorscheme.
spmenu supports most color sequences, although not true color by default (unless -sgr arguments are used).
There are a few arguments, you can override SGR colors on-the-fly
using the -sgrX arguments. See ‘Arguments’ for more
information.
Just as a tip, you can pipe your colored spmenu output to
sed -e 's/\x1b\[[0-9;]*m//g'. This will clear the SGR
sequences from the output. This is useful when you want to check what
the output actually is.
256 color sequences are also supported, but due to the complexity involved they will not be covered in this man page.
If spmenu was compiled with Pango enabled (default), you should be able to utilize Pango markup in every part of spmenu. That is, the mode indicator, items, input, prompt, etc.
Pango markup allows you to style text similar to an HTML document. It
also provides the <span> tag, which can be used to do
surprisingly complex things.
There are many convenient tags as well which can be used to avoid
using a <span> tag, such as:
<b><b>Bold</b>)
<i><i>Italic</i>)
<s><s>Strikethrough</s>)
<u><u>Underline</u>)
<sub><sub>Subscript</sub>)
<sup><sup>Supscript</sup>)
<tt><tt>Monospaced font is used here</tt>)
<small><small>text is so small here</small>)
<big><big>text is so big here</big>)
Note that Pango markup is NOT escaped, and is piped to stdout.
Therefore you need to parse it manually. Doing so with sed
is very easy. For example:
... | spmenu ... | sed 's/<big>//g; s/</big>//g'
See this page for more information.
Unlike dmenu, spmenu has a configuration file which can be edited by
hand. It is located in ~/.config/spmenu/spmenu.conf, but you can
override this by exporting $XDG_CONFIG_HOME.
When spmenu is installed, it copies a sample configuration to
/usr/share/spmenu/spmenu.conf. You can copy this to your
.config/spmenu directory. This configuration file is loaded
on startup.
You can also include other configuration files in the configuration
file using @include "path/to/config".
spmenu also has .Xresources (xrdb) support built in. It reads the xrdb (.Xresources database) on runtime. You may disable it by passing -nxrdb, or enable it by padding -xrdb. You can also set this in the config file.
You can also use wildcards (such as *) to achieve a
global colorscheme. Programs like pywal do this to apply
universal colorschemes.
You could just @include themes from the aforementioned
spmenu.conf, but it’s kind of inconvenient. For this
reason, spmenu reads .theme.conf and
.config/spmenu/theme.conf on startup as well. To apply a
basic theme, you simply replace theme.conf with the theme you want to
use.
themes/ in the Git repository contains a
bunch of themes written for spmenu, and you can use them as a template
when making your own themes.
Do however note that the theme file is not the same as the config file. There are quite a lot of differences, and many options are not available. This is by design, as these options should be set by the user, not the theme.
This is not very convenient if you have many themes because you constantly have to replace your theme file, so theme managers exist to make this a bit easier. spmenuify is the official theme manager, but you could use another one or write your own.
spmenu includes a powerful Bash script called spmenu_run. It lists executable programs in $PATH and displays them to the user in a list. Not only that but it optionally shows recently run programs first in the list.
The selected option is piped to /bin/sh (by default). Unlike dmenu_run, spmenu_run has some cool features. For example:
# will spawn it in a terminal instead of
just a shell.? will run the command in a function, most
of the time used to display the man page.magnet will open a magnet link in
$TORRENTwww will open a page in $BROWSERMost of the time you don’t need to prepend www though,
for example typing in https://gnu.org will open gnu.org in
$BROWSER even without the prefix. Same goes for magnet links.
You can also configure the run launcher through editing
~/.config/spmenu/run/config which is configured in shell
syntax.
In addition to the $PATH listing, spmenu_run also allows listing out and displaying .desktop entries. It does this in style, too by displaying the program icon.
It can be configured through editing
~/.config/spmenu/run/config. The configuration file can
also be moved by setting ${XDG_CONFIG_HOME}.
spmenu has a few special commands. These work similar to the images.
For example to list the version, in addition to the
--version argument you can also simply run
printf 'spmenu:version' | spmenu. There are a few of
these.
spmenu:versionspmenu:licensespmenu is licensed under the MIT license because that’s the original suckless license. See the included LICENSE file for more information.
Please report issues on the Codeberg repository or alternatively email me.