wlgrid

A fast grid-based launcher for Wayland, inspired by Windows 10's Start menu. Built in Rust.

Features

<100ms time-to-interactive (FS caching adds randomness)
designed with tablet/phone use in mind

Mouse

• Click and drag to rearrange tiles
• Right-click to remove a tile
• Click empty tile to open app picker

Keyboard

• Arrow keys to navigate tiles
• Enter to launch focused app
• Type to search:
  • Matches zoxide directories first
  • Falls back to search engines (you don't have to press the search button, "enter" will automatically execute the first search option in config)
  • Paths with / or ~ get tab completion and open directly

Bottom bar

• Customizable quick-action buttons (logout, reboot, etc.)

Config

~/.config/wlgrid/config.toml

width = 7
height = 6
opacity = 1.0

search_engines = """
Brave = https://search.brave.com/search?q={}
Claude = https://claude.ai/new?q={}
DuckDuckGo = https://duckduckgo.com/?q={}
"""

[bottom_bar]
font = 30
options = """
󰍃 = hyprshutdown
󰑓 = systemctl reboot
󰐥 = systemctl poweroff
󰒲 = systemctl hibernate
󰤄 = systemctl suspend
"""

Installation

Debian/Ubuntu

sudo apt install build-essential cargo libwayland-dev libxkbcommon-dev

Arch Linux

sudo pacman -S rust wayland libxkbcommon

Debian/Ubuntu/Arch, most normal distros

git clone https://github.com/whymusticode/wlgrid
cd wlgrid
cargo build --release
sudo cp target/release/wlgrid /usr/local/bin/

Nix

# Run directly
nix run github:whymusticode/wlgrid

# Or install in a shell
nix shell github:whymusticode/wlgrid

# Or add to your flake inputs
{
  inputs.wlgrid.url = "github:whymusticode/wlgrid";
}

Dependencies

• Wayland compositor
• zoxide (optional, for directory matching)