Here’s TROMjaro in its full glory 
This is a long series of videos, but we go in depth about all that TROMjaro is, and why TROMjaro is unique.
I enjoyed watching through this series last night thank you 
A few things mentioned in them that I wanted to ask you about:
Regarding the generic application names – is there any way we can disable or change these? There is already a standard option for this in the Whisker Menu settings (“Show generic application names”) and what these ones are can be changed in MenuLibre. I guess you didn’t want to use that approach because it doesn’t carry over to the Application Finder launcher?
I appreciate some things like Peek are a little obscurely named, but many of the changes are for very well known applications like LibreOffice (which even my mother has used for many years), and names like “Text Editor”, “Web Browser” and “Drawing Program” are a little confusingly generic when I am likely to have a few different of these kinds of applications installed.
(BTW, Warp was not installed or did not work when I first installed the system, as clicking on the icon in the menu did not do anything, but it seems to be working now so I guess one of the past two updates must have fixed it).
Another application I use that doesn’t follow the system theme in TROMjaro is LocalSend (which is a really lovely tool btw – my favourite way of quickly transferring things between phone and laptop, and super simple and user friendly enough to comfortably recommend to everyone).
It is easily changed manually between ‘Sytem’, ‘Light’ and ‘Dark’ in the settings, so not a big deal, but the fact that it has a ‘System’ setting as default, would seem to suggest that it is supposed to be able to follow the system theme. However, it comes out as a light theme when set to ‘System’ for me on my otherwise dark themed TROMjaro. I currently have this installed as a Flatpak as there is no Chaotic build available (I guess that rules it out from inclusion in the web store, but could still be added to the Trade-Free directory?), but I could try building it from the AUR as an alternative if it would be of interest or help.
A feature I hadn’t noticed before is the custom actions in the Application Finder. Unfortunately they do not seem to work for me. I can see they are setup in the preferences, but nothing happens when I try to enter them. E.g. if I type “wiki test” or “news test” etc., nothing happens when I press enter.
…After spending more time looking at this I noticed there was a message at the top of the custom actions preferences window saying “Custom actions are only available in collapsed mode”. Which left me confused, since I couldn’t find anything about “collapsed mode” in the settings. I eventually realised that to the right of the main search dialogue there is a little arrow which you can use to toggle off the default preview window with icons and friendly app names, to be replaced with a simple list of system program names. The custom actions do indeed now work, but it seems strange that you have to first toggle this mode before they will, and I can’t see any option to launch it in the collapsed state (it always reverts when restarted), or how to toggle the mode from the keyboard (and so rather defeating the point of using a keyboard centric launcher).
I will have to play with it more sometime as it is something I would still like to improve with my current workflow. I use a lot of different search shortcuts in my web browser, but then you can’t transfer them to a different browser and it’s a pain to set them all up. So I would ideally like a more portable solution in the future. I’d been meaning to try out some of the alternatives like Cerebro and Ulauncher in any case, so will probably do that at some point too… Actually Cerebro looks like it could be ideal for me being cross platform, and having everything in a config.json file that I could then move between systems. So I might try replacing Flow Launcher with that in Windows as a first step.
One little rough point I noticed with installing from the web store at tromjaro.com, is that it does not provide notification dialogue boxes, so there is no confirmation if something installed correctly or if it fails. E.g. trying to install Tauon fails if you select the optional dependencies as some of these appear to be broken/missing. But the install just disappears same as if it completed successfully. To work out what is going on you have to go to the package manager (and even that takes multiple attempts of trial and error since it only seems to warm you about one missing dependency at a time, e.g.“target not found: python-plexapi”).
I very much agree about SMPlayer. It’s also been my favourite video player for years. I love how easy it makes it to find subtitles, the fact that it loads in .srt files automatically without having to select them from the menu, how easily you can fix audio sync issues on the fly, and also how you can both control and cycle through a number of useful features assigned to mouse buttons. So having it out of the box was certainly another point that made a good first impression on me. I don’t know why it’s not more popular, and I’m not sure how many other distributions come with it as standard.
Anyway, it’s a lovely sunny day here so I best be off to enjoy it. Hope you are doing the same!
I didn’t want to use that approach since it would change the names for ALL apps to Generic Names. I only wanted to change the names for a selected few to make it easier for people to understand what these apps do. I do understand that this approach is not good for those who use a different language than English, but it is what it is for now, and I will see if I can find a better way to do it in the future.
I see I tested it. Probably because they use a sort of electron app for it, perhaps a webpage embed into a chrome-frame. In any case it is them not able to allow the system to theme it. It is rare but you’ll find these apps too. The window decoration works tho:
I grabbed it from AUR via the bin package. Installed in a few seconds. BIN packages (when they have bin in the name) are pre-built ones. They are as good as the packages from the chaotic aur.
Yes I know and I asked the developer to allow for custom actions in the normal mode. But so far no progress have been made. It is how that app works.
Looks nice will have to dig further into it. The reason I chose the one we use is because it is part of XFCE and integrates quite well with the rest of the system. No nonsense or bloat. I love that.
I understand and it is beyond me to fix this. I should talk to the upstream.
Nice! Enjoy it and thanks for the detailed feedback as always!
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OK, I understand. Is there any way I can revert this change on my system?
OK, no problem. I’m actually not too bothered by that kind of thing. As long as I can change it to a sensible dark theme I’m happy enough really
I was very interested to hear this! But then on testing it doesn’t appear to be the case for me. Every -bin package I have tried from the AUR has gone through a build process as part of the install, e.g.:
Also, in this case, the AUR version doesn’t seem to come with the official icon for the program.
I very much agree with going with the simplest option that does what you want, and love lighter tools that do one thing, and one thing well. But for me at least, this is one of those cases where I really do benefit and gain use of some additional functionality. Particularly the ability to open directories or search the file system from the keyboard launcher I find very useful on a regular basis.
I tried Cerebro on both Windows and TROMjaro. It works much better on the latter, and does look promising, but still feels a bit half-baked with some rough edges and not the most intuitive in places to get setup. Then I tried Ulauncher instead and that is far better. It is clearly far more mature, more functional with a better range of extensions, much lighter weight on system resources (Cerebro is an Electron app), and it is easy to add as many custom shortcuts or web searches as you like which are saved in a .json file. The only minor issue I found with it is that the settings screen is always light themed. Maybe that will be fixed as part of the upcoming v6 changes, but otherwise I’m very happy with it
And thank you in turn for all the support! I will post more in a new thread sometime once I get a chance and have made some better sense of it all.
Only to rename the ones that have a custom name. Right click them and rename. Or go to .local/share/applications and delete all .desktop file that you do not need. These desktop files are the ones we or you have modified. So that they all revert back to their original .desktop file.
This should not be the case, unless the one who packaged it mislabeled it. The example you gave me does not build it, it uses the appimage so it is very fast to install.
I see AUR (en) - localsend-bin - it is an error with the PKGBUILD file. See the comments. This is rare but may happen.
Yes but it uses google too in the backend and that’s a nono for us. You can search for files with “files + name” via our App Launcher or the menu. So you know.
Yes I considered that as default for tromjaro, but again has way too many options and plugins.
OK, thank you! I found the option to right-click “Edit”/“Edit Application” in the Application Finder/Whisker Menu, and all is good now
I think I must be confused. For every -bin from the AUR, I get the option to edit the build files as in the screenshot above, and then it shows as “building” before it installs. I’ve just tried it again now with vscodium-bin. …But looking at the build files for that it does say:
pkgdesc=“Binary releases of VS Code without MS branding/telemetry/licensing.”
And it looks more like a standard install script than anything more complicated than that. So I’m wondering if it’s just the way the Pacman GUI presents it, and it isn’t truly building it from source? It only took about 2 minutes for the “build” process to complete for this, and then “installed” in a couple of seconds after that.
Nice spot thanks.
I don’t think there should be any connection to Google unless you are using a particular Shortcut or Extension that relies on it? I haven’t used it for internet searches much yet, but have got at least my usual SearXNG instance setup and working just as simply as you would in any web browser.
There are a few different search/finder extensions, but the one I have found to be most powerful is Fuzzy Finder by Hillary Chan. I just type f, and start typing the name of the file or directory I want and it pops up a preview of possible results that is instantly updated with every character entered.
[Simpler options I also like are Better File Browser for just browsing through your directories in a tree like manner, or the beautifully dead simple Favorite Directories for instant opening of preset bookmarks.]
Thanks for the Application Finder tip which I hadn’t noticed before, but it is a very different experience in practice since you need to be in collapsed mode for it to work, so you don’t get any live preview as you type, and then you pass on the search query to Catfish as a separate step.
Yeah, it did take me a bit of time to go through the extensions and work out which ones are worth having. I can say more on that if you’re interested, or could make a thread in the Tips category sometime. I’m not trying to make a case for making it the default for everyone – it is only to mention as one data point that I find it better for myself. The more advantaged users are the ones who will gain more benefit from it, and they are the ones less bothered by defaults, and more
likely to want to set it up for themselves anyway
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P.S. I found another Flatpak app which doesn’t follow system theming by default in the form of SaveDesktop. But I managed to fix it with a trick I’d come across before for Flatpak apps which is to have Flatseal installed, and then in that go All Applications → Environment →Variables and add a new Variable as GTK_THEME=Adwaita-dark
I don’t know if this is the best way to do it, but I haven’t noticed any issues with it. Probably you can do it without Flatseal from the command line.
I also have in my notes something about instead using:
GTK_THEME_VARIANT=dark
sudo flatpak override --filesystem=~/.themes/
But haven’t tried it since the first method did the trick for me
So BIN should mean the software is already built. At times it has to simply extract some files and copy them in the right folder. But that’s not building. Building means to compile stuff on your computer and that can take a long long time.
Feel free to make an article on the forum about these things. Could help others! - For now I want to keep TROMjaro more simple and perhaps try to help the development of the Application Finder maybe it can be improved and such features can be added to it.
Yeah is tricky with the flatpaks. But what you did is basically enable their default Adwaita dark theme right? It is not syncing with TROMjaro’s themes correct?
We have this enabled by default in TROMjaro.
Thanks for confirming. I’m assuming it is just the pacman UI that is misleading then in claiming there is building going on when it is really only installing things. I guess they just set up all the steps to display the same for the AUR, without taking into account bin packages.
Yes yes! All in good time 
I understand, and it is nice as a simpler option just for launching applications. It also has the advantage in allowing you to access the launcher options editor by right clicking on entries.
Another issue I’ve had with renamed launchers is that the ‘title’ ordering XFCE uses when the Window Buttons are set to ‘Group by title and timestamp’ remains (I think) as the default/original program name, and doesn’t sort by the custom name assigned in the launcher properties. E.g. Mousepad will always be sorted under ‘M’ and Thunar under ‘T’, no matter if you rename their launchers to anything else.
I consider this a general issue with XFCE (Flatpak items are also not sorted correctly) so I will report it to them, but one work around could be to try to make the friendly names to keep the original name at the beginning. E.g. instead of “Peek” or “Screen Recorder”, you could call it “Peek Screen Recorder”. Just a thought
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Edit: Later today I had the thought that it is probably ordering by the package or process name. This seems to work for the Flatpak apps sorted under ‘C’ due to starting with com., but one exception I can’t account for is that ‘Add/Remove Software’ does appear to get sorted under ‘A’ at the start of the list, despite the underlying process name being pamac-manager (by comparison, ‘Appearance Settings’ gets sorted with all the other XFCE apps under ‘X’ for xfce4-appearance-settings).
Another slightly curious example is Usage, which gets sorted under ‘G’ for gnome-usage, but while still being called ‘Processes and Storage’ on my system since I didn’t modify the launcher for that, it only displays ‘Usage’ on the window button for it.
Anyway, I can see why you chose Usage as the default, since it does seem to use the launcher name for labelling applications which is very human friendly. In other task managers it can cause confusion when trying to find the renamed application in the process list. Though that issue still exists with finding them in the software manager if you wish to uninstall or reinstall them.
…I was looking at the tasklist source code just now to try to understand how the window buttons are grouped and sorted in general, and I think that the sorting name is being determined by xfw-application-get-name. But that’s about as far as I can get I think with my zero knowledge of coding 
…I will ask about all this on the XFCE forums.
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Yes, you are correct. I have just been testing it now and my suggestion above forces all Flatpak apps to Adwaita dark, rather than just being a fallback option. I also tried the GTK_THEME_VARIANT=dark option, and that does nothing at all.
So, I have removed it as a global variable, and instead entered it as an environmental variable just for that application. So that all the other Flatpak apps at least still sync with the system theme. I’ve also updated it to follow my current theme so that it now reads GTK_THEME=Skeuos-Grey-Dark , and it works perfectly – even for the window headers!
I don’t know if there is any way to replace the theme name here with a variable that instead refers to the system theme. Could be a good way of fixing Flatpak apps in general if so, but maybe it is not possible. Anyway, at least it is possible to manually fix it
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Edit 2:
It looks like this environmental variable override is also set with the flatpak override command:
The latter guide gives the relevant command as:
sudo flatpak override --env=GTK_THEME=THEME_NAME
They mention some danger of breakage in its use, and also that it needs to be manually edited every time you change theme. But then, since you already have found a way to get the system theme name in your fix-theming script with:
theme=$(xfconf-query -c xsettings -p /Net/ThemeName)
(I found this file the other day from watching another one of your videos, and it helped me to fix something else which I will explain as soon as I get a chance… 
)
Perhaps then it is possible to replace THEME_NAME with $theme in a script with the above command?
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Edit 3:
The approach described in the Flatpak docs is to install themes as Flatpak extensions. I ran flatpak search gtk3theme, and there are quite a few there, but not Skeuos unfortunately. I also came across this project for installing themes as a Flatpak, though it doesn’t appear to be very active:
Ah yes that’s true. It is more of a language issue. Probably nothing they can do since the vast majority of AUR packages are “building”.
Yes exactly and that’s similar to what Whisker has. So it makes it all as one, as part of the same system.
Where is this happening in Whisker? Because works for me in Whisker.
That’s what we are trying to do but we will look more into that in a month or two. Currently am busy with the release of a big project (a documentary) and I do not have the time to look into this but it is a good example that maybe we can force this more.
I will tag @rokosun on this one since he is in charge of that code. Maybe we can indeed find a better way.
Yes we are aware of that but as you said it lacks most themes available out there including our default one. Plus we wanted a way to sync with whatever theme a user installs and not have to make the user install 2 themes, 1 for the system and 1 for the flatpaks…the should have come up with a better approach.
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It is if you are using the ‘Window Buttons’ panel item as the task list/bar, and then in the options for that have the sorting order set as ‘Group title and timestamp’. Anyway, it is an XFCE issue, so will pick it up over there soon.
A new documentary sounds great – good luck with it! 
Yes, I see Flatpak makes things rather complicated and difficult. I think that’s what that Github project is looking to provide – i.e. a way to set the system theme as also installed as a Flatpak. But I don’t know how much that is automated, or if you can quickly/easily sync changes.
Anyway, simply speaking as an ignorant outsider whose opinion carries no weight in these matters, I wonder if Flatpak is a bit of an overkill solution to a problem that might be better solved with a proper version control system in place for packages which avoids conflicting dependencies occuring in the first place.
I see. Thanks for the clarification!
Thank you!
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I’ve noticed now why ‘building’ -bin packages still seems to take a long time. The reason appears to be that the ‘build’ process in this case also includes downloading all the necessary files which happens separately to the bulk download of other packages and updates from the repositories. The pamac details/log view shows the download progress, but it is buggy and only updates to display the data after it has finished the download. So during the download it just show “0” for what has been downloaded, and you are stuck for a long time looking at pamac where it simply says ‘building…’ (whereas it is actually downloading).
Pamac can also be quite a pain with missing dependencies at times. It doesn’t provide any way to easily resolve them or simply skip that package to continue with the rest of the installs or updates. Any little issue breaks the entire process. I’ve had this quite a few times, but the latest example now being on trying to install SchildiChat which gives this error:
Adding electron24 to the install list doesn’t help. Even after removing SchildiChat from the list of things to be installed/updated doesn’t clear this error from preventing Pamac from proceeding. Closing Pamac, restarting it, and then going through the entire process again to search and select all the packages I wished to install (without including SchildiChat) still does not clear this error. In the end I had to reboot the system to reset Pamac properly and get the other packages installed/updated including electron24 after which I could then finally install SchildiChat successfully.
Anyway, I guess there’s not much to be done about these issues. I guess pamac doesn’t get as much use/attention as pacman.
Yes these are not the things we control or have an influence over. I recommend to submit those to the Pamac project. This is way beyond what we can do 
. It is tricky at times to have a rolling release with packages coming from several repos plus AUR…there will be some errors like that. I will think this year if we can improve the situation on our end.
I’m not sure if it was the bet place to do so, considering how quiet it seems to be, but I have now posted a bug report for this here: Pamac fails to clear missing dependency errors from memory (#8) · Issues · Packages / Extra / pamac · GitLab
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I am following that issue- Thanks for reporting it!
Cool, thanks! I don’t know how Gitlab is supposed to work, but maybe it’s not in the right place since it doesn’t seem to appear in the top level list of issues:
https://gitlab.manjaro.org/groups/issues/-/issues