Getting Started with Tiling WM [Part 2] - Rofi

Apr 19, 2021

In the part1, I’ve used rofi instead of dmenu. This part will show you how to start with rofi.

1. Introduction #

Rofi is a window switcher, application launcher and dmenu replacement.
Features:
- Fully configurable keyboard navigation.
- Type to filer.
- Built-in modes:
  - Window switcher mode.
  - Application laucher.
  - Desktop file application launcher.
  - SSH laucher mode.
- History-based ordering.
- …

2. Getting started #

Installing rofi is quite easy.

sudo apt install rofi -y

Run it for the first time.

rofi -lines 12 -padding 18 -width 60 -location 0 -show drun -sidebar-mode -columns 3 -font 'DejaVu Sans 8'

       -show mode

       Open  rofi in a certain mode. Available modes are window, run, drun, ssh, combi. The
       special argument keys can be used to open a searchable list of supported  key  bind‐
       ings (see KEY BINDINGS)

       To show the run-dialog:

           rofi -show run

       -lines

       Maximum number of lines to show before scrolling.

           rofi -lines 25

       Default: 15

       -location

       Specify  where  the window should be located. The numbers map to the following loca‐
       tions on screen:

             1 2 3
             8 0 4
             7 6 5

       Default: 0

       -padding

       Define the inner margin of the window.

       Default: 5

       -sidebar-mode

       Open in sidebar-mode. In this mode a list of all enabled modes is shown at the  bot‐
       tom. (See -modi option) To show sidebar, use:

           rofi -show run -sidebar-mode -lines 0

Press hot key (defined in i3 configuration file) <Window>+d to start rofi. Use <Shift>+<left/right> to switch between mode.
More details you can found in rofi github.

3. Tweaking #

The default setup looks quite boring. Let’s tweak a bit!
There are currently three methods of setting configuration options:
- Local configuration. Normally, depending on XDG, in ~/.config/rofi/config. This uses the Xresources format.
- Xresources: A method of storing key values in the Xserver. See here for more information.
- Command line options: Arguments are passed to Rofi.
We will use configuration file.

mkdir -p ~/.config/rofi/themes
touch ~/.config/rofi/themes/onedark.theme

Copy the follow content into ~/.config/rofi/themes/onedark.theme:

configuration {
  show-icons: true;
  font: "DejaVu Sans Mono 10";
  modi: "window,run,drun";
}

* {
  background: #282c34;
  foreground: #abb2bf;
  background-color: @background;
  selected-normal-foreground: @foreground;
  selected-normal-background: #98c379;
  selected-urgent-background: #e5c07b;
  selected-urgent-foreground: @foreground;
  border: 5;
  lines: 12;
  padding: 0;
  margin: 0;
  spacing: 0;
}

window {
  width: 50%;
  transparency: "real";
}

mainbox {
  children: [inputbar, listview];
}

listview {
  columns: 1;
}

element {
  padding: 12;
  orientation: vertical;
  text-color: @foreground;
}

element selected {
  background-color: @selected-normal-background;
  text-color: @background;
}

inputbar {
  background-color: @background;
  children: [prompt, entry];
}

prompt {
  enabled: true;
  font: "DejaVu Sans Mono 10";
  padding: 12 0 0 12;
  text-color: @selected-urgent-background;
}

entry {
  padding: 12;
  text-color: @selected-urgent-background;
}

Run it and you can see the magic!

rofi -theme ~/.config/rofi/themes/onedark.theme -show drun

Don’t forget to update hotkey in i3 configuration file.

bindsym $mod+d exec rofi -theme ~/.config/rofi/themes/onedark.theme -show drun