• XDG_CONFIG_HOME/fuzzel/fuzzel.ini (defaulting to ~/.config/fuzzel/fuzzel.ini if unset)
• XDG_CONFIG_DIRS/fuzzel/fuzzel.ini (defaulting to /etc/xdg/fuzzel/fuzzel.ini if unset)

Absolute path to configuration file to import.

The import file has its own section scope. I.e. the including configuration is still in the default section after the include, regardless of which section the included file ends in.

Default: not set.

Namespace for the spawned layer shell surface. Useful for blocking fuzzel out from screencasts in your compositor if it shows sensitive information, such as passwords.

Default: launcher

Output (monitor) to display on. You can list the available outputs with wlr-randr or with Sway using swaymsg -t get_outputs.

Example: DP-1

Default: Not set-- let the compositor choose output.

Comma separated list of fonts to use, in fontconfig format. That is, a font name followed by a list of colon-separated options. Most noteworthy is :size=n, which is used to set the font size. Note that the font size is also affected by the dpi-aware option. See FONT CONFIG below for details.

Examples:

Default: monospace.

Boolean. When set, fuzzel may use bold fonts. For example, for the currently selected item. Default: no

auto, yes, or no.

When set to yes, fonts are sized using the monitor's DPI, making a font of a given size have the same physical size, regardless of monitor.

In this mode, the monitor's scaling factor is ignored; doubling the scaling factor will not double the font size.

When set to no, the monitor's DPI is ignored. The font is instead sized using the monitor's scaling factor; doubling the scaling factor does double the font size.

Finally, if set to auto, fonts will be sized using the monitor's DPI if all monitors have a scaling factor of 1. If at least one monitor as a scaling factor larger than 1 (regardless of whether the fuzzel window is mapped on that monitor or not), fonts will be scaled using the scaling factor.

Note that this option typically does not work with bitmap fonts, which only contains a pre-defined set of sizes, and cannot be dynamically scaled. Whichever size (of the available ones) that best matches the DPI or scaling factor, will be used.

Also note that if the font size has been specified in pixels (:pixelsize=N, instead of :size=N), DPI scaling (dpi-aware=yes) will have no effect (the specified pixel size will be used as is). But, if the monitor's scaling factor is used to size the font (dpi-aware=no), the font's pixel size will be multiplied with the scaling factor.

Default: auto.

Boolean. When enabled, fuzzel will do gamma-correct blending in linear color space. This is how font glyphs are supposed to be rendered, but since nearly no applications or toolkits are doing it on Linux, the result may not look like you are used to.

Compared to the default (disabled), bright glyphs on a dark background will appear thicker, and dark glyphs on a light background will appear thinner.

FreeType can limit the effect of the latter, with a technique called stem darkening. It is only available for CFF fonts (OpenType, .otf) and disabled by default (in FreeType). You can enable it by setting the environment variable FREETYPE_PROPERTIES="cff:no-stem-darkening=0" before starting fuzzel.

Also be aware that many fonts have been developed on systems that do not do gamma-correct blending, and may therefore look thicker than intended when rendered with gamma-correct blending, since the font designer set the font weight based on incorrect rendering.

In order to represent colors faithfully, higher precision image buffers are required. For this reason, fuzzel uses 16-bit image buffers (instead of 8-bit) when gamma-correct blending is enabled.

It is not possible to enable gamma-correct blending in cairo enabled builds of fuzzel, since cairo does not support 16-bit image buffers.

Text to display as placeholder in the input box. Default: empty.

String to use as input prompt. Note that trailing spaces are trimmed, unless the string is quoted. Default: "> ".

Icon theme. Note that the name is case sensitive. Default: default.

Boolean. When enabled, application icons (from the selected icon-theme) will be rendered. Default: yes.

Boolean. When enabled, application list will be hidden until the first letter is typed. When the prompt is cleared again, the list will appear. Default: no.

Comma separated list of XDG Desktop entry fields to match against.

Even though fuzzel only displays the application names, matching can (and by default is) be done against other fields as well. Supported fields are:

• filename
• name
• generic
• exec
• categories
• keywords
• comment

"filename" is the ".desktop" file name.

Default: filename,name,generic.

Default character to use with the command line option --password. Note that this can be overridden on the command line, by explicitly specifying the character with --password=X. Default: *.

One of exact, fzf and fuzzy.

exact: what you type is matched exactly against each field in the fields list.

fzf: fzf-style matching, where substrings from what you have typed are matched against each field in the fields list.

fuzzy: levenshtein-based fuzzy matching of what you have typed against each field in the fields list.

Default: fzf

Boolean. Whether to sort the result or not. Disabling sorting means no comparisons will be made between match results. I.e. launch count, match length, etc will be ignored. This effectively disables the cache (though, the cache is still updated on exit).

Disabling this can improve search latency when searching very large data sets.

Default: yes

Boolean. When enabled, the match count and total count is displayed on the right-hand side of the input prompt. Disabling the counter also improves performance when loading a very large number of dmenu entries from STDIN.

Default: no.

Boolean. Filter desktop files based on the value of XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP. Default: no.

Boolean. Some desktop files define "actions", in addition to the application itself. Examples are "new window", "preferences", etc. When this option is enabled, those actions will be listed by fuzzel. Default: no.

terminal command to use when launching 'terminal' programs.

The command may contain the placeholder {cmd} which will be replaced with the actual command to be run. When {cmd} is present, the command is only substituted in those locations and is not appended at the end.

Examples:

• foot -a '{cmd}' -T '{cmd}' {cmd} sets app-id and title to the command name, then executes it
• xterm -e {cmd} executes the command in xterm
• xterm -e (no {cmd}) uses old behavior: appends command after terminal args

Default: $TERMINAL -e.

Boolean. When enabled, the list will include executables from the PATH environment variable. Default: no.

Prefix to add before argv of executed program. If set, fuzzel will pass the Desktop File ID of the chosen application (see the Desktop Entry specification) in the FUZZEL_DESKTOP_FILE_ID environment variables. Default: not set.

Set window anchor, i.e. where on screen the window will be displayed. You can choose one from:

• top-left
• top
• top-right
• left
• center
• right
• bottom-left
• bottom
• bottom-right

Default: center

Horizontal margin away from the anchor point in pixels. Default: 0.

Note: this option has no effect when anchor=center, top or bottom.

Vertical margin away from the anchor point in pixels. Default: 0.

Note: this option has no effect when anchor=center, left or right.

Number of matches to show. Default: 15.

Boolean. When set, hides the prompt line, making the window smaller. Input is still accepted though the prompt line is not displayed. Cannot be used with prompt-only. Default: no.

Boolean. Adjust the number of lines to display to the minimum of lines and the number of input lines. Only effective in dmenu mode. This allows fuzzel to size itself to the actual number of input lines rather than always showing the full lines rows. Default: no.

Window width, in characters. Margins and borders not included. For variable width fonts this is an estimate, as the exact number of characters that will fit depends on which characters are being displayed. Default: 30.

Number of spaces a tab is expanded to. Default: 8.

Horizontal padding, in pixels, between border and content. Default: 40.

Vertical padding, in pixels, between border and content. Default: 8.

Vertical padding between prompt and match list, in pixels. Default: 0.

The ratio of the large image displayed when there are only a "few" matches, compared to the full window size. Set to 1 to disable the the large images. Default: 0.5.

Override line height from font metrics. Default: use font metrics.

Additional letter spacing. Negative values are allowed. Default: 0.

Which layer to render the fuzzel window on. Valid values are top and overlay.

top renders above normal windows, but typically below fullscreen windows and lock screens.

overlay renders on top of both normal windows and fullscreen windows. Note that the order is undefined if several windows use the same layer. Since e.g. lock screens typically use overlay, that means fuzzel may or may not appear on top of a lock screen.

Default: overlay

Keyboard focusing mode, valid modes are exclusive and on-demand.

exclusive locks keyboard focus to fuzzel, receiving all keyboard input until closed.

on-demand makes fuzzel focus like a regular window, allowing other windows to take keyboard focus by e.g. clicking on them. By default switching keyboard focus will immediately close fuzzel, using exit-on-keyboard-focus-loss=no allows interacting with other windows while fuzzel is open.

Default: exclusive

Boolean. If true, exit when the fuzzel window loses keyboard focus.

Setting this to false can be useful on compositors where enabling "focus-follows-mouse" causes fuzzel to exit as soon as the mouse is moved over another window. Sway (<= 1.7) exhibits this behavior, for example.

Default: yes

Number of threads to use for rendering. Set to 0 to disable multithreading. Default: the number of available logical CPUs (including SMT). Note that this is not always the best value. In some cases, the number of physical cores is better.

In case you have a ridiculous amount of cores and/or threads, consider limiting the number of render-workers, since fuzzel cannot parallelize more than the number of displayed entries.

Number of threads to use for matching. Set to 0 to disable multithreading. Default: the number of available logical CPUs (including SMT). Note that this is not always the best value. In some cases, the number of physical cores is better.

In case you have a ridiculous amount of cores and/or threads, consider limiting the number of match-workers, since fuzzel cannot parallelize more than the number of available entries.

Time, in milliseconds, to delay refiltering when there are more matches than delayed-filter-limit. Default: 300.

When there are more matches than this, switch from immediate refiltering to delayed refiltering (see delayed-filter-ms). Default: 20000.

Scaling filter to use when down scaling PNGs. One of none, nearest, bilinear, box, linear, cubic, lanczos2, lanczos3 and lanczos3-stretched.

none, nearest and bilinear are the fastest options, but also have the worst looking results.

cubic, lanczos2, lanczos3 and lanczos3-stretched are the slowest options, with the best looking results.

box, and to some degree, linear, are in the middle, performance wise, while in most cases still being just as, or close to, as good as cubic and the lanczos filters.

Default: box

Specify the default cache location. If unset, $XDG_CACHE_HOME/fuzzel will be used. Set to /dev/null to disable caching. Default: not set.

Boolean. When one entry is left, automatically select it. Default: no.

Boolean. Enable mouse input. Default: yes.

Background color. Default: fdf6e3ff.

Text (foreground) color of unselected entries. Default: 657b83ff.

Text (foreground) color of prompt character(s). Default: 586e75ff.

Text (foreground) color of the placeholder string. Default: 93a1a1ff.

Text (foreground) color of input string. Default: 657b83ff.

Text (foreground) color of the matched substring. Default: cb4b16ff.

Background color of the selected entry. Default: eee8d5ff.

Text (foreground) color of the selected entry. Default: 586e75ff.

Text (foreground) color of the matched substring of the selected entry. Default: cb4b16ff.

The color of the match count stats printed at the right-hand side of the input prompt. See COLORS. Default: 93a1a1ff.

Border color. Default: 002b36ff.

Width of the border, in pixels. Default: 1.

Amount of corner "roundness". Default: 10.

Amount of corner "roundness" for the selected entry. Default: 0.

One of text or index. Determines what fuzzel prints on stdout when an entry is selected: text prints the entry itself, index prints the index of the selected entry. Index values start at zero for the first entry. Default: text.

Boolean. If enabled, fuzzel will not run at all (i.e. it will not open a window, and will not print anything on stdout) if there's nothing on stdin. Default: no.

Quit fuzzel without executing anything. Default: Control+g Control+c Control+bracketleft Escape.

Execute the currently selected entry. Or, in dmenu mode, print the selected entry on stdout. Default: Return KP_Enter Control+y.

If there is a single match, execute it. Or, in dmenu mode, print the selected entry on stdout. If there are more than one match, select the next entry. Wraps around when the last entry has been reached. Default: Tab.

Execute the raw input as is, regardless of whether it matches anything in the list or not. In dmenu mode, prints the selected entry on stdout instead. Default: Shift+Return Shift+KP_Enter.

Moves the cursor one character to the left. Default: Left Control+b.

Moves the cursor one word to the left. Default: Control+Left Mod1+b.

Moves the cursor one character to the right. Default: Right Control+f.

Moves the cursor one word to the right. Default: Control+Right Mod1+f.

Moves the cursor to the beginning of the input. Default: Home Control+a.

Moves the cursor to the end of the input. Default: End Control+e.

There is no standalone binding to clear the input. Use cursor-home (Control+a) to go into the beginning of the input, followed the delete-line-forward binding (Control+k). Alternatively, if you are at the end of the input, use delete-line-backward (Control+u). These are alternatives to using "select all" to highlight text (not supported by fuzzel) and then delete it.

Deletes everything before the cursor. Default: Control+u.

Deletes everything after the cursor. Default: Control+k.

Deletes the character before the cursor. Default: BackSpace Control+h.

Deletes the word before the cursor. Default: Mod1+BackSpace Control+BackSpace Control+w.

Deletes the character after the cursor. Default: Delete.

Deletes the word after the cursor. Default: Mod1+d Control+Delete.

Deletes everything after the cursor. Default: Control+k.

Deletes the entire input. Default: Control+Shift+BackSpace.

Copies the selected entry to the prompt, replacing the current prompt. In application mode, the Exec line is inserted, and in dmenu mode the entry itself is used. Default: Control+Tab.

Removes the currently selected entry from the cache (of most commonly launched applications). Default: Shift+Delete.

Pastes from the clipbard. Default: Control+v XF86Paste.

Pastes from the primary selection. This action is also bound to the middle mouse button (this is currently not configurable). Default: Shift+Insert Shift+KP_Insert.

Select the previous entry. Does not wrap around when the first entry has been reached. Default: Up Control+p.

Select the previous entry. Wraps around when the first entry has been reached. Default: ISO_Left_Tap. (Shift+Tab)

Switch to the previous page. Default: PageUp KP_PageUp.

Select the next entry. Does not wrap around when the last entry has been reached. Default: Down Control+n.

Select the next entry. Wraps around when the last entry has been reached. Default: unbound.

Switch to the next page. Default: Page_Down KP_Page_Down.

Select the first entry, on the first page. Default: Control+Home.

Select the last entry, on the last page. Default: Control+End.

Execute the currently selected entry, then exit with a non-zero exit code. custom-1 exits with exit code 10, custom-2 with 11, custom-3 with 12, and so on.

Default:

"Family Name:style=Style:weight=Weight:size=Size"

"My Custom Font, DejaVu Sans:weight=bold, sans-serif"