Launch Any Package via Dmenu

Documentation for setting up Flatpack, Snap and other packages installed to non-standard locations to launch via dmenu and other minimal application launchers.

Issue

By default demnu (and most other minimal app launchers) look(s) for packages installed in /usr/bin. This is where most packages installed via apt, pacman or other package managers generally write to. However when installing apps with services like Flatpak or Canonical's Snap Store, the appImage is often placed elsewhere.

Note: I have found that Snap packages specifically often do launch via dmenu without issue, though not always. This fix will apply to any application that is installed to a non-standard location.

Steps

Locate your newly installed package:

• Flatpak installs to /var/lib/flatpak/exports/bin
• Snap Store typically installs to either /var/lib/snapd/snap or /snap
• Blackmagic installs Davinci Resolve in /opt/resolve/bin

Create a symlink to /usr/bin, where dmenu can find it:

sudo ln -s /var/lib/flatpak/exports/bin/com.app.NAME /usr/bin/appNAME

Replace appNAME with whatever you want to type into dmenu to launch the app.

Examples

PlexAMP (Flatpak)

sudo ln -s /var/lib/flatpak/exports/bin/com.plexamp.Plexamp /usr/bin/plexAMP

Davinci Resolve (Blackmagic installer)

sudo ln -s /opt/resolve/bin/resolve /usr/bin/resolve

Source

I found the original fix from a gist written by Swati Jaiswal.