tui-launcher

Small Brick-based terminal launcher for shell commands. It reads a TOML config, shows a keyboard-driven tile menu, and replaces itself with the selected command.

Screenshots

Both dark and light terminal styles are shown in square and vertical layouts.

Installation

Install from Hackage:

cabal install tui-launcher

Or download the latest release binary from GitHub Releases and put it on your PATH:

curl -Lo tui-launcher \
  https://github.com/TharkunAB/tui-launcher/releases/latest/download/tui-launcher-linux-x86_64
chmod +x tui-launcher
install -Dm755 tui-launcher ~/.local/bin/tui-launcher

Then run:

tui-launcher

On first launch, tui-launcher creates ~/.config/tui-launcher/config.toml if it does not already exist.

Features

• Arrow keys and hjkl move the selection
• Enter launches the selected entry
• Mouse click launches an entry and mouse wheel scrolls
• Dedicated Exit button at the bottom of the launcher
• Optional per-entry color for tile text
• Per-entry working-dir, shell-program, and shell-login
• Auto-created default config at ~/.config/tui-launcher/config.toml
• Uses your terminal's default colors

Configuration

Use the default config path:

tui-launcher

Or point at an explicit file:

tui-launcher --config /path/to/config.toml

Example config:

[layout]
tile-width = 20
tile-height = 5
tile-spacing = 1

# [shell]
# program = "/bin/bash"
# login = false

[[entries]]
name = "Shell"
command = "exec \"${SHELL:-/bin/sh}\""
color = "bright-blue"

[[entries]]
name = "nvim"
command = "nvim"
color = "blue"
working-dir = "~/Code"

[[entries]]
name = "Codex"
command = "codex"
color = "bright-magenta"

[[entries]]
name = "Claude"
command = "claude"
color = "orange"

[[entries]]
name = "Tmux"
command = "tmux"
color = "cyan"
working-dir = "~/Code/project"
shell-program = "/bin/zsh"
shell-login = true

Layout settings:

• tile-width: positive integer, default 20
• tile-height: positive integer, default 5
• tile-spacing: non-negative integer, default 1

Shell resolution order:

• entries.shell-program
• [shell].program
• $SHELL
• /bin/sh

Relative working-dir resolution:

• default config: relative to $HOME
• --config /path/to/config.toml: relative to that config file's directory

Supported entry colors:

• black
• red
• orange
• green
• yellow
• blue
• magenta
• cyan
• white
• bright-black
• bright-red
• bright-green
• bright-yellow
• bright-blue
• bright-magenta
• bright-cyan
• bright-white

Development

Use the provided Nix shell for the project toolchain:

nix-shell

Common commands:

make build
make test
make lint
nix-shell --command "make snapshots"