Run Flatpak apps by search filter or through fuzzy finder menu - flatapp

I wrote a simple script in order to help someone in a recent reply from me, to make running Flatpak applications from terminal easier. After that I worked a little bit on it further and now ended up with 2 completely different approaches.

  1. flatrun: Run an app by a matching search filter. If multiple matches, then print all matching app ids instead.
  2. flatapp: Show list of installed apps in an interactive menu. Plus show a description of the app in a preview window. Run the selected application. Requires fzf.
  3. flatsearch: Show search results from repository in an interactive menu. A selected entry will be installed or uninstalled if it exists already (with confirmation from flatpak). Requires fzf.
# Show all matching apps
$ flatrun F
com.github.tchx84.Flatseal
io.freetubeapp.FreeTube

# Run io.freetubeapp.FreeTube
$ flatrun freetube

# Show help for com.obsproject.Studio
$ flatrun obs --help

or flatapp: (requires fzf)

and new flatsearch youtube (requires fzf)

  • barbara
    4·
    2 months ago

    those commands are gold! Thank you for sharing! Saved them. They work flawlessly so far.

    If flatpak search would work with fzf, it would be easier to use and faster than GNOME software

    edit:

    I added echo "${app}" to flatapp in order to print the app in terminal to have a visual response which app will run. (some apps take some seconds to open on my slow machine)

    • thingsiplay@beehaw.orgOP
      2·
      2 months ago

      Hey, I just created a search with fzf menu for install or uninstall app. It’s not pretty, because its a bit unorganized looking and I could not find a good and easy way to solve this. But it seems to be working so far.

      flatsearch

      • barbara
        2·
        2 months ago

        That is awesome as well. Incredible what you can do with just a few lines of code.

    • thingsiplay@beehaw.orgOP
      2·
      2 months ago

      I thought about additional echo for confirmation too! I will add it too (give me 2 minutes), but it will output to stderr, so it’s not part of regular output.

      Edit: So I added

      echo "flatpak run" "${app}" "${@}" >&2

      , which as said will output to stderr instead. And I also decided to add flatpak run and the arguments too, but that’s just an “aesthetic” choice.