Vicinae: the everything launcher I've been waiting for

I’ve been obsessed with application launchers for as long as I can remember. Back in the day I was using Synapse on Ubuntu, which at the time felt like magic: press a shortcut, type a few letters, hit enter, done. No mouse, no hunting through menus. That stuck with me.

Over the years I went through pretty much every launcher available on Linux: Synapse, Kupfer, Albert, Rofi, Ulauncher. When I was on Windows I used Keypirinha for years and got so deep into it that I built several plugins and even created a theme builder for it. Launchers are my thing.

Some were fast but had no extension system. Others were extensible but clunky. Rofi is powerful but configuring it feels like writing a dissertation. Albert had potential but development stalled. Ulauncher was decent but always felt limited.

Then I found Vicinae.

What is Vicinae

Vicinae is an application launcher for Linux that calls itself “the everything launcher”, and after using it for a while I can say the name is accurate. It’s not just an app launcher. It’s a launcher, clipboard manager, calculator, emoji picker, window switcher, file searcher, and more, all behind a single shortcut.

It works on X11, Hyprland, GNOME, KDE, and Niri (which is what I use). It’s native, fast, and keyboard-first. You press the shortcut, start typing, and everything just works.

First impressions

The first thing that struck me is how fast it is. There’s no perceptible delay between pressing the shortcut and the window appearing. Coming from Ulauncher where there was always a slight pause, this felt immediate. The search is also instant: results update as you type with no lag.

Themes are built in, and you can customize colors without editing CSS files by hand.

Built-in modules

Out of the box you get:

• App launcher: searches installed applications, as expected
• File search: finds files across your system
• Clipboard history: keeps track of everything you’ve copied
• Calculator: quick math without opening a terminal
• Emoji picker: search and paste emojis
• Window management: switch between open windows
• Browser tabs: search and jump to open browser tabs
• Fonts: browse system fonts
• Power management: shutdown, reboot, suspend from the launcher

No plugins to install, no configuration needed. It just works on first launch.

Script commands

One feature I particularly like is script commands. You can write simple shell scripts with a few metadata directives and Vicinae will index them and show them in search results. I wrote about this in my NixOS setup article, but here’s a quick example:

#!/usr/bin/env bash
# @vicinae.schemaVersion 1
# @vicinae.title Open NixOS config
# @vicinae.mode silent
 
subl ~/nixos

Drop the script in your scripts directory, reload, and it shows up as a searchable command. Simple and effective. No need to learn a plugin API just to run a shell command.

Extensibility

Beyond script commands, Vicinae has a TypeScript SDK for building extensions with React. You can create full-blown UI extensions without needing a browser runtime. It also has a dmenu compatibility mode, so existing dmenu scripts work with it.

What really caught my attention is the Raycast compatibility layer. Many existing Raycast extensions work with Vicinae, which means the ecosystem isn’t starting from zero. Coming from the Keypirinha world where I had to build everything myself, having access to an existing catalog of extensions is a huge quality of life improvement.

NixOS integration

Since I’m on NixOS, installing Vicinae is done through a flake:

vicinae.url = "github:vicinaehq/vicinae";

And enabling it with Home Manager:

home-manager.sharedModules = [
  vicinae.homeManagerModules.default
];

There’s also a Cachix binary cache available so you don’t have to compile it from source:

nix.settings = {
  substituters = [
    "https://vicinae.cachix.org"
  ];
  trusted-public-keys = [
    "vicinae.cachix.org-1:1kDrfienkGHPYbkpNj1mWTr7Fm1+zcenzgTizIcI3oc="
  ];
};

How it compares to what I’ve used before

Launcher	What was good	What was missing
Synapse	Fast, simple	Dead project, no extensions
Kupfer	Plugin system	Slow, dated UI
Albert	Clean UI	Stalled development
Rofi	Extremely configurable	Configuration is painful
Ulauncher	Easy to use	Limited, slight input delay
Keypirinha (Windows)	Fast, great plugin API	Windows only
Vicinae	Fast, extensible, batteries included	Still young, but actively developed

For me, Vicinae feels like the best parts of all these launchers combined.

If you’re on Linux and you’ve been using Rofi scripts or bouncing between launchers trying to find “the one”, give Vicinae a try.