App Launcher

A searchable grid of the desktop applications installed on the machine, including the RobOS apps.

packages/app-launcher

App Launcher is a centered 800 by 600 window with a search box, a row of category buttons and a grid of application icons. It closes when it loses focus, so it behaves like a menu.

What you do in it

Open it from the panel or dock. Starting it again while it is open closes it, so a keyboard shortcut bound to the launcher toggles the window.
Start typing. Any letter focuses the Search applications… box. Search matches the name (with a leading “RobOS “ ignored), the comment line and the category list of each entry.
Optionally click a category button (All, Utilities, System, Internet, Development, Graphics, Media, Office, Games, Education, Accessibility, Other). Only categories that contain at least one app are shown.
Click an icon, or use the arrow keys and Enter. If the search leaves exactly one result, Enter starts it. Esc closes the window.

The launcher runs the entry’s Exec line (with %f, %u style field codes removed) in a detached shell and then closes.

Where the list comes from

The app scans these folders for .desktop files with Type=Application, skipping entries marked NoDisplay or Hidden:

/usr/share/applications
/usr/local/share/applications
/var/lib/snapd/desktop/applications
~/.local/share/applications

If two files launch the same program, only the first is kept. Each RobOS app ships its own .desktop file (for example packages/agent-chat/agent-chat.desktop), which is how it appears here. Icons are looked up in the Yaru, hicolor and Adwaita themes, ~/.local/share/icons and /usr/share/pixmaps.

Requirements and notes

Linux with an X11 or Wayland session. The window hides itself from the task bar using xdotool and wmctrl when they are installed; without them it may show up in the task bar.
Settings are not stored. The only persistent file is Electron’s own profile in ~/.config/robos/electron/app-launcher.
packages/app-launcher/deploy.sh copies the app to a running RobOS VM over SSH (port 2224 by default; override with SSH_PORT and SSH_HOST).

Source: packages/app-launcher.

More in Desktop & Command Center

Desktop Customizer

A slash-command console that changes GNOME settings (clock, taskbar, theme, shortcuts, startup apps) and keeps git-backed snapshots to roll back.

Desktop Dashboard

A full-screen window that sits at desktop level and shows a grid of widgets; today it contains one clock and date widget.

Desktop Manager

The background process that launches RobOS apps, restarts the ones marked keep-alive, owns the tray icon and listens on a Unix socket.

Desktop Shell

Full-screen top bar and bottom dock for RobOS on a GNOME/X11 session, replacing the GNOME panel while it runs.

Desktop Widgets

A transparent panel on the right edge of the desktop with five status widgets: active task, system stats, AI agent, work journal and security.

Dev Central

Your daily task list: issues from your task servers as an epic tree, with buttons to start design or implementation agents and to open the related PR.

Dev Discussions

A chat-style view of discussion threads attached to tasks and pull requests, stored in a local cache with optional posting to GitHub.

Icon Manager

Shows the icon of every installed RobOS app, lets you replace one, and rewrites the apps' installed icon.svg and .desktop Icon= lines.

Manager Dashboard

Team metrics for one GitHub repository: open issues, merged PRs, PR cycle time, deploy frequency, approval rate, tasks by stage and PRs per developer.

Notifications Center

Shows the notification history stored in ~/.config/robos/notifications.json, with filters by category, tier and date, and edits the notification preferences.

Package Manager

Prototype screen for listing apps and daemons with start, stop and health-probe buttons. It shows built-in sample data.

RobOS App Manager

Choose, download, launch and remove RobOS apps

RobOS Audio Player

Open-source audio player, custom playlist engine, procedural focus soundscapes, and zero-cloud Google Cast smart speaker streaming.

RobOS Dashboards

Create KGraph graphical dashboards from card layouts where each widget is any RobOS component, embeddable via <robos-dashboard> and castable to Smart TVs

RobOS GNOME Desktop App Installer

Install, manage, and repair GNOME Desktop shortcuts, App Grid launchers, multi-scale icons, and Dock favorites for all RobOS apps.

RobOS Google Calendar

Installs Mozilla Thunderbird if needed and writes Google Calendar, Google Contacts and optional Gmail settings into its profile for a Google account from Cloud Accounts.

RobOS Home for Android

The home screen of the RobOS phone: the time, the date and every app, with the RobOS apps first.

RobOS Home Speaker

Two-way smart speaker intercom, Home Assistant Voice PE (NC-VK-9727) hands-free voice approval, neural TTS broadcast, and soundboard.

RobOS Movie Player

Open-source cinema, TV series & Tablo OTA DVR player sharing the warm theater theme of RobOS Audio Player: 100,000-movie & TV series library, Show & Season Navigator, Tablo 4th Gen OTA DVR live & recorded broadcast streaming, TMDB/TVmaze posters, AI Watchlists, Virtual Cinema Host, synced .srt/.vtt subtitles, and a 3-row visual image-card Roku & Smart TV app.

RobOS Preferences

Settings window for RobOS apps: Config Sync & Sharing (cloud backup and shared configs), optional AI API mode, agent tiers, prompt security, GitHub accounts, IDE, notifications, journal and theme.

RobOS Preferences for Android

Signs in to Google Drive on an Android phone, opens your RobOS Config Sync backups and restores the settings phone apps use.

RobOS Smart TV Studio

Pair Smart TVs, build & sideload Developer Mode TV apps (LG webOS, Samsung Tizen, Google TV/ADB, Roku), serve the 10-foot D-Pad TV Portal (:19210), and stream 4K games.

Search Indexer

Builds plain-text lists of file paths under folders you choose, which RobOS text areas search for @-mentions.

Software Center

Install and manage coding-agent CLIs, IDEs, browsers, game tools and utilities on Windows or Linux.

System Logs Viewer

Viewer for the structured logs that RobOS apps write to ~/.config/robos/logs, with search and level filters.

Toast Daemon

Shows overlay toast windows for new entries in ~/.config/robos/notifications.json, with tiers, categories, do-not-disturb and anti-spam limits.

Workspace Manager

Window showing a sample multi-repo task workspace with sync, teardown and open-in-IDE buttons that return canned results. Discovery helpers exist in the code but are not wired to the window.