rofi-snippets

A Rofi plugin to select snippets and simulate keyboard input of snippet content. It supports both Wayland and X11.

Installation

Nix

This package is available as an NUR package nur.repos.dcsunset.rofi-snippets. It is also available from the flake output of the NUR repo, where a NixOS overlay is provided as well.

To use it with NixOS:

environment.systemPackages = [
  (pkgs.rofi.override (old: {
    plugins = old.plugins ++ [nur.repos.dcsunset.rofi-snippets];
  }))
];

Or you can also use it with home-manager:

programs.rofi = {
  enable = true;
  plugins = [nur.repos.dcsunset.rofi-snippets];
}

The NUR repo also provides a home-manager module via flake:

{
  imports = [ inputs.nur-dcsunset.homeManagerModules.rofi-snippets ];

  # rofi should be enabled as well
  programs.rofi.enable = true;

  programs.rofi-snippets = {
    enable = true;
    settings = {
      entries = [
        {
          key = "date";
          snippet = {
            type = "command";
            value = [ "date" "--iso-8601" ];
            trim = true;
          };
        }
      ];
    };
  };
}

Pre-built Binaries

Pre-built binaries can be downloaded from GitHub release. Put the downloaded .so file in Rofi lib dir depending on your Rofi installation (e.g. /lib/rofi) or add the plugin's dir to ROFI_PLUGIN_PATH environment variable.

Note that runtime dependencies (including glib, cairo, pango) must be installed before using the pre-built binaries. If the pre-built binaries don't work for your system, try other installation methods.

Manually

1. Clone this repo
2. Install dependencies based on your environment
   • Common: rust, pkg-config, glib, cairo, pango, libxkbcommon
   • X11: xdotool
3. Build the plugin
   • Wayland only: cargo build --release --features=wayland --no-default-features
   • X11 only: cargo build --release --features=x11 --no-default-features
   • Both: cargo build --release
4. Move the built plugin (target/release/librofi_snippets.so) to Rofi lib dir or add the plugin's dir to ROFI_PLUGIN_PATH environment variable

Usage

To start Rofi with rofi-snippets mode: rofi -show rofi-snippets -modes rofi-snippets

Configuration

Rofi-snippets will look for the configuration file in the following order (with environment variables):

• $ROFI_SNIPPETS_CONFIG
• $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/rofi-snippets/config.json
• $HOME/.config/rofi-snippets/config.json

The config file is in JSON format and follows the following structure (shown in Rust):

// Type for the whole config file
struct Config {
  // shell command to use for shell snippet (default: sh)
  shell: Option<String>,
  // snippet entries
  entries: Vec<Entry>,
  // Delay time before sending input event to ensure rofi window closes (in ms)
  delay: Option<u64>,
}

struct Entry {
  // string to match in Rofi
  key: String,
  // Snippet will be used for simulating keyboard input
  snippet: Snippet,
  // (optionaL) extra description for this entry
  description: Option<String>,
}

// Snippet is a tagged union
#[serde(tag = "type", rename_all = "camelCase")]
enum Snippet {
  // Use the text as is
  Text { value: String },
  // Run a command and use the output
  // (the first elem is the command and the rest are arguments)
  Command { value: Vec<String>, trim: Option<bool> },
  // Run a shell command and use the output
  Shell { value: String, trim: Option<bool> },
  // Evaluate a sequence of snippets and concatenate the outputs
  Sequence { value: Vec<Snippet> },
}

// Use the text as is
type Text = {
  type: "text",
  value: string,
}

// Run a command and use the output
// (the first elem is the command and the rest are arguments)
type Command = {
  type: "command",
  value: string[],
  trim?: boolean,  // Trim whitespaces at the beginning and the end
}

// Run a shell command and use the output
type Shell = {
  type: "shell",
  value: string,
  trim?: boolean,  // Trim whitespaces at the beginning and the end
}

// Evaluate a sequence of snippets and concatenate the outputs
type Sequence = {
  type: "sequence",
  value: Snippet[],
}

Example:

{
  "shell": "bash",
  "delay": 100,
  "entries": [
    {
      "key": "hello",
      "description": "Hello Test",
      "snippet": {
        "type": "text",
        "value": "Hello world ❤️"
      }
    },
    {
      "key": "date",
      "snippet": {
        "type": "command",
        "value": ["date", "--iso-8601"],
        "trim": true
      }
    },
    {
      "key": "datetime",
      "snippet": {
        "type": "sequence",
        "value": [
          { "type": "shell", "value": "date +%F", "trim": true },
          { "type": "text", "value": " " },
          { "type": "shell", "value": "date +%T", "trim": true }
        ]
      }
    }
  ]
}

Licence

AGPL-3.0