xfce4-appfinder - Preferences

This page details all of the settings available for the Application Finder. To edit the settings, open up the application in its expanded mode and select Preferences.

• General
  • Behaviour
  • Appearance
  • History
• Custom Actions
  • Usage

Remember last selected category

Select this option to make the Application Finder select the last selected category in the expanded view. If this option is disabled, the category All Applications is selected.

Always centre the window

By default, Xfwm4 might position the window in a place that isn't in the centre of the screen (see the section Placement under Window Manager Tweaks to change this behaviour). Select this option to always centre the Application Finder screen on startup, regardless of Window Manager settings.

Keep running instance in the background

Keeps Application Finder running in the background to speed up opening times. You might want to disable this to reduce memory usage.

Single window

This option in only active if Keep running instance in the background is enabled. Only keep one instance of the application open at a time.

Sort recently user items first

Sort items by frequency, i.e. taking into account the frequency and how recent an item has been launched.

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View items as icons

Select this option to show the applications and commands as icons rather than in a list view.

Text beside icons

This option in only active if View items as icons is enabled. Select this option to position the application name or command beside the icon rather than below.

Item icon size

The size of the icons in the item view.

Hide category pane

Hides the category side pane when in expanded mode.

Category icon size

The size of the category icons in the side pane.

Clear Custom Command History

Use this option to remove the history of custom commands you've entered in the collapsed mode that did not match any of the installed application commands.

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You can set custom actions to quickly perform tasks when a certain character or combination of characters is entered in the collapsed view. For example, you can go to a certain article on Wikipedia by typing !w and then the article name.

Custom Actions

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You can add a new (empty) action by clicking on the Add (+) button and remove the selected action by pressing the Delete (x) button. You can edit an existing action by selecting it from the list and using the Type, Pattern and Command fields.

Type

There are two types of pattern matches:

• Prefix - if this type is selected, there is a match if the entered string starts with the pattern specified.
• Regular Expression - For complex matches you can write a Perl-compatible regular expression that's matched against the entered string.

Pattern

Depending on the type selected, it describes the prefix or regular expression.

Command

The command that is executed when the pattern is matched. To include parts of the search in the command the following variables are available:

Prefix

%s - Include the string after the matched pattern. For example, if the prefix-pattern is abc and the entered command is abcdef, %s will be replaced with def.

%S - Include the complete string after the matched pattern. For example, if the prefix-pattern is abc and the entered command is abcdef, %s will be replaced with abcdef.

Regular Expression

During the process of matching, the results of the sub-pattern between parentheses ( ) are recorded for later use. \ plus a number to refers to the corresponding sub-string. For instance, \1 refers to the 1st pair of parentheses' match result, while \2 refers to 2nd pair of parentheses' match result. A special case is \0, which will be replaced with the entire match.

If the pattern is ^ab(.*)fg$ and the entered command abcdefg for example, \1 will be replaced with cde.

Save match in command history

Select this option if you want matches to be saved in the Commands History category.

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