Alternatives to nwg-drawer
A searchable full-screen application drawer for sway, Hyprland and other wlroots Wayland compositors. The listings below can replace it for an important use case. Each note says what changes if you switch.
The original
nwg-drawer
A searchable full-screen application drawer for sway, Hyprland and other wlroots Wayland compositors.
Replacements
Listings that take over the same core job as nwg-drawer.
rofi
A keyboard-driven window switcher, application launcher and dmenu replacement for Linux desktops.
rofi adds a window switcher and dmenu replacement with theming, and is MIT licensed, but uses a keyboard prompt instead of a graphical app grid.
fuzzel
An application launcher and fuzzy finder for Wayland compositors, inspired by rofi and dmenu.
fuzzel is a native Wayland launcher and fuzzy finder that also works as a dmenu-style picker for scripts, but shows a list prompt rather than a full-screen app grid.
wofi
A GTK-based launcher and menu program for wlroots Wayland compositors such as Sway.
wofi is a GTK-styled launcher and dmenu replacement for wlroots compositors, widely used with Sway, but it is not actively maintained.
tofi
A tiny, fast dmenu and rofi replacement for wlroots-based Wayland compositors.
tofi is a very fast, minimal launcher menu for wlroots compositors with bundled themes from a slim bar to fullscreen, but has no plugin system.
Hyprlauncher
A fast, multipurpose application launcher and picker built for the Hyprland Wayland compositor.
Hyprlauncher is built for Hyprland and adds emoji, Unicode, math and font providers with frequency ranking, beyond just launching applications.
Anyrun
A Wayland-native runner in the style of KRunner, built around plugins and customization.
Anyrun is a Wayland-native KRunner-style runner extended with plugins, replacing the app grid with a search prompt, and it is not open source.
Kickoff
A minimalistic fuzzy program launcher for wlroots-based Wayland compositors, written in Rust.
Kickoff is a minimalistic fuzzy launcher for wlroots compositors written in Rust, replacing the app grid with a simple rofi-style search prompt.
sirula
A simple Rust app launcher for Wayland that starts applications from their .desktop files.
sirula is a plain Rust launcher for Wayland that starts apps from .desktop files and is styled with CSS, maintained by one author.
Similar software
Related functionality, not a direct replacement.
j4-dmenu-desktop
A fast desktop-entry launcher that feeds installed applications into dmenu or a compatible menu.
Walker
A customizable GTK4 application launcher for Linux that also runs commands and does calculations.
Cairo-Dock
A customizable application dock and launcher for Linux desktops with applets and multiple docks.
Plank
Simple, lightweight dock for Linux styled after macOS-style launchers.
dmenu
A minimal dynamic menu for X that picks from large lists of items using the keyboard.
Latte Dock
Highly customizable dock replacement for the KDE Plasma desktop.
