UWSM-APP(1) General Commands Manual UWSM-APP(1)

uwsm-app - Application-to-unit launcher using UWSM's app daemon.

uwsm-app [-h] [-s {a,b,s,custom.slice}] [-t {scope,service}] [-a app_name] [-u unit_name] [-d unit_description] [-S ] [-T] -- application [args ...]

Application-to-unit launcher with Desktop Entry support. Analogous to uwsm app command and uses the same arguments, since argument parsing is done on the app daemon's side with the same parser.

-s {a,b,s,custom.slice} Slice selector (default: a):
a - app-graphical.slice
b - background-graphical.slice
s - session-graphical.slice
any slice by full name
-t {scope,service} Type of unit to launch (default: scope, can be preset by UWSM_APP_UNIT_TYPE env var).
-a app_name Override app name (a substring in unit name).
-u unit_name Override the whole autogenerated unit name.
-d unit_description Unit Description.
-S {out,err,both} Silence stdout, stderr, or both.
-T Launch app in a terminal. Allows command to be empty to just launch a terminal.

Application can be provided as a command with optional arguments, or a Desktop Entry ID, optionally suffixed with ":"-delimited Action ID. If Desktop Entry is being launched, arguments should be compatible with it.

Always use "--" to disambiguate dashed arguments intended for application itself.

Special arguments that are passed through to app daemon:

  • ping check app daemon, it should return "pong"n
  • stop stop app daemonn

uwsm-app client sends arguments to uwsm's app daemon via a pipe. Upon receiving arguments, app daemon returns shell code to uwsm-app which it natively executes. Single commands are prepended with exec, iterated commands are assembled with trailing & each, followed by wait.

The purpose of all this is to skip all the expensive Python startup and import routines that slow things down every time "uwsm app" is called. Instead the daemon does it once and then listens for requests, while a simple shell script may dump arguments to one pipe and run the code received from another via eval, which is much faster.

uwsm(1), systemd-run(1)

2025-06-01