Spear

Spear is a keyboard-activated application launcher for the GNOME desktop on Linux. Think of it as the Linux equivalent of Raycast on macOS or Flow Launcher on Windows: press a hotkey, type a few letters, and quickly launch apps, run calculations, search the web, or browse files, all from a single floating window without touching your mouse.

The project was created by someone who returned to Linux after using Windows launchers and found nothing quite like them in the GNOME ecosystem. Spear is built using Rust and Libadwaita, which is the visual design framework that GNOME itself uses, so the launcher matches the appearance of the rest of your desktop and works with popular color themes like Tokyo Night, Dracula, Catppuccin, and Gruvbox.

The default hotkey to open and close the launcher is Alt+Space. Once open, you can search for installed applications, run quick math calculations, execute terminal commands directly, get web search suggestions, preview text files and images from search results without opening a separate app, and browse your file system. Each of these capabilities is a built-in mode.

You can also add custom plugins by creating a small folder in your configuration directory. Each plugin needs a manifest file that defines a keyword trigger and a command to run, plus a script in any programming language (Python, Node.js, Bash, or anything else) that prints a JSON list of search results to the terminal's standard output. Spear reads that output and displays it as search results, with actions like opening a URL or running a command.

Installation requires Rust and the GTK4/Libadwaita development libraries. You can either install it into your home directory using the provided shell script, or build a Debian or Red Hat package for system-wide installation. The project is licensed under MIT.