Software

Default applications and startup

Default applications

Settings › Default applications says which program opens each kind of thing. Each list offers the installed applications that can open that kind.

The file manager is Thunar: Super+E opens it, as does a keyboard's Files key, and it is among the menu's applications. An account older than the file manager has neither that key nor the editor's until its hyprland.conf is given the lines bind = SUPER, E, exec, alpymist open files and bind = SUPER SHIFT, E, exec, alpymist open editor, the second in place of bind = SUPER SHIFT, E, exit, which logged out at once and is no longer shipped: logging out is in the menu's System page.

Thunar shows folders as a list; Edit › Preferences in it changes that. Windows shares and phones need gvfs-smb and gvfs-mtp, which the menu's Install › Alpine package adds.

Pictures open in Ristretto, films and music in mpv, and archives in xarchiver, which also gives Thunar's menu "Extract here" and "Create archive". Ristretto opens PNG, JPEG, GIF, BMP, TIFF, SVG and WebP; a phone's HEIF and AVIF pictures need a viewer from the Store. It shows one picture and no strip of the folder's others, since nothing here makes thumbnails; the arrows in its toolbar still go to the next and the last.

There is one game, Solitaire, among the menu's applications: Klondike, in the colours of Settings › Appearance. Drag the cards, or double-click one to send it to its foundation; click the stock to turn it. With the keyboard, the arrows move between the piles, Enter picks cards up and puts them down, Up and Down on a pile picked up from take more cards or fewer, Space turns the stock, H sends a card home, U takes a move back and N deals again. The bar chooses between turning one card and three, and B or its last button changes the picture on the cards' backs: twelve of them, from mountains in mist to the home computers of the 1980s.

A clock on the bar starts at a game's first move. The five shortest games are kept, apart for turning one card and for three, and a game that makes it among them asks for three initials; S or the bar's Best shows them. Dealing again while a game is under way asks first. The back, the way of turning and the best games are kept from one opening to the next, in ~/.local/state/alpymist/solitaire.

The right-hand column is a system with nothing added, and yours shows what you have installed. Where nothing installed opens a kind, the page says so; the Store has applications that do, and once one is installed it appears in the list.

alpymist list default.browser            # what could be chosen
alpymist set default.browser com.vivaldi.Vivaldi
alpymist set default.terminal foot

Super+B and Super+Return follow the browser and the terminal chosen here, as Super+E and Super+Shift+E do the file manager and the text editor.

alpymist open

alpymist open starts whatever is chosen for a category, which makes it the thing to put in a keybinding or a script:

alpymist open browser https://alpinelinux.org
alpymist open editor ~/notes.md
alpymist open files ~/Downloads
alpymist open terminal -- htop
alpymist open browser --print      # show the command, start nothing

The categories are browser, mail, files, editor, terminal, images, pdf, video, music, archives and calendar.

Programs that start at login

Settings › Startup lists the programs that start when you log in: those a package installed to start, each with a switch, and those you add.

• Add a program offers every installed application. Choose one and it starts at every login.
• Switch one off and it no longer starts. Nothing is uninstalled.

alpymist list startup
alpymist autostart --dry-run       # what would be started

Changes apply at the next login. For a command that is not an installed application, add a line to your own ~/.config/hypr/hyprland.conf:

exec-once = syncthing --no-browser

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