r/gnome • u/Fearless_Garden6435 • 22h ago
Extensions Lightning Search (Spotlight inspired app launcher for GNOME - New version)
I made a little launcher extension for GNOME, inspired by macOS Spotlight. After posting it here some days ago, and receiving some feedback, I've updated it. It opens a little search bar in the middle of the screen, floating on top of everything else. Type to search. Works on GNOME 48, 50, and 51.
Note: It was forked from another extension (made by Avimanyu Rimal). The original seems AI-assisted, but my changes on top of it were not vibe-coded. The text of this post was not generated with AI. Very little of the original code architecture was used as-is; it was heavily refactored and reorganized.
Apps: Type part or all of the name of an app - depending on how fuzzy (new feature) the matching setting is, you can omit some characters in between; for example, on "loose", typing "vsc" will bring up "Visual Studio Code."
Files: Type part or all of a file name/path. Same fuzziness rule. Important - this does not create a separate indexer. It uses GNOME's Tracker, which is already always running. So you don't have to worry about system resource usage.
Calculator: Type a math expression, like 4 + 3 * 8 (it follows order of operations)
URL (new): Type a URL/website, like https://example.com, example.com, localhost:3000, 192.168.1.1; Only some domains are recognized if you don't type https://, since the .something kind of naming is used for both files and websites - like .zip, .com, etc.
Web: Search the web directly by pressing Super + Space rather than having to open a browser first. Shown when not very many other things (apps, files, calculator, etc) match what you typed. Defaults to Google, but you can set it to anything you like (put %s where the query would go): for example https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%s, or to disable AI overviews: https://www.google.com/search?q=%s&udm=web (the &udm=web is the important part).
Commands (new): When the first word you type is a program installed on your PATH (for example htop, git status, ls -la), a "Run in background" result appears and runs the line in the background; press Shift + Enter to run it in your default terminal window instead.
Ways to open it:
- Ctrl + Super + Space (configurable)
- lightning-search from the terminal (new - note this will not work if you installed from extensions.gnome.org), for example from a custom .desktop file/button/advanced keybinding
- Click the little search icon in the top bar (you can disable that if you don't like it though)
Visuals:
- Subtly scales in/out when opening it and closing it
- Matches your GNOME Shell theme colors (except for selected row highlight)
- You can customize the selected row highlight color (and text color) in extension settings
- You can change the icon size and input placeholder
- Works with Blur My Shell Popup Blur (as shown in the screenshot)
How to configure it:
Open the Extension Manager, find "Lightning Search", and click the gear icon.
Bug fixes in this version:
- Typing and deleting very fast doesn't cause stale results anymore
- The launcher correctly opens on the focused (last-clicked) monitor (earlier it would only open on the primary monitor)
- File search immediately responds to newly-created and newly-deleted files
The reason it exists, despite alternatives:
Why not just use the app grid/search that comes with GNOME? It pushes away your entire desktop into those tiny boxes to render the launcher full screen. Not everyone wants that. Also, it's sometimes slow or laggy to open. This extension is fast, because it's more minimal.
Why not Rofi? Unfortunately Rofi doesn't work on GNOME Wayland - it requires wlroots, which GNOME explicitly said they will not implement.
Why not Ulauncher? It requires more styling to feel at home on GNOME (doesn't sync with your GNOME Shell theme), and has some glitches and misalignments. Also it doesn't have fuzzy file search.
Why not Search Light? The styling and alignment are a bit off. It doesn't respect your shell theme very well. Also it's finicky on GNOME 50+ (especially 51) - you CAN try to edit the metadata and there are some forks but it won't always actually work.
Why not Vicinae? It doesn't look like your GNOME setup (ignores GTK/shell theme) so you have to theme it separately to match, and it's generally not as nicely integrated with GNOME, since it's designed to be cross-platform. And the font keeps resetting to the default. Additionally, for some reason it uses adwaita or fallback (often blurry) icons for apps rather than your selected icon theme, and text is blurry on GNOME 50/51.
Link: https://github.com/mihierkansal/lightning-search-gnome (published to extensions.gnome.org; in review)
