Bookmarks

A user-managed bookmarks plugin for Noctalia. You can add bookmarks by selecting a glyph, a label, and a shell command to execute. You can backup your bookmarks as well!

Plugin

Field	Value
ID	dunarand/bookmarks
Entries	Bar widget: bar; panel: panel; Launcher provider: provider;
Launcher Prefix	/bk

Requirements

• Noctalia v5.3.0 or higher

IPC & Keybinds

1. Open the bookmarks panel:

   noctalia msg panel-toggle dunarand/bookmarks:panel
   

2. Open the bookmarks panel in search mode (immediately puts you into search mode) so that you can use your bookmarks panel as a launcher:

   noctalia msg panel-toggle dunarand/bookmarks:panel search
   

You can interact with the bookmarks list via keybinds:

Keybind	Purpose
CTRL + J or Down Arrow	Select the next (below) item
CTRL + K or Up Arrow	Select the previous (above) item
CTRL + H or Left Arrow	Return to the root level when in a folder
CTRL + L or Right Arrow	Get into a folder
CTRL + F	Search bookmarks
CTRL + N	New bookmark
CTRL + SHIFT + N	New folder
CTRL + E	Edit the selected bookmark or folder
CTRL + D (double press)	Delete the selected bookmark or folder
CTRL + SHIFT + K or CTRL + SHIFT + Up Arrow	Move the selected item one up
CTRL + SHIFT + J or CTRL + SHIFT + Down Arrow	Move the selected item one down
Enter / Return	Execute the selected bookmark's command / Navigate into a folder

Usage

The plugin ships a bar widget, a panel, and a launcher provider. The bar widget just launches the panel. The panel is able to be toggled via IPC. For example, in Hyprland v0.55 or higher, you can assign it to a keybind as follows:

hl.bind(
    "SUPER + SHIFT + B",
    hl.dsp.exec_cmd("noctalia msg panel-toggle dunarand/bookmarks:panel")
)

• Bookmarks and folders are listed in the main panel.

  

• You can create or edit bookmarks by assigning them a glyph, a label, a command, and an optional description.

  

  • "Run in background" toggle runs the bookmark command as a detached background process that outlives the bookmarks panel, without waiting for the command to finish.

    For example, for a command like xdg-open "$HOME", toggling "Run in background" will launch the application independently in the background.

  • "Run in terminal" switch executes the command with the default terminal. These switches are mutually exclusive so you can only choose one. Toggling on a switch will result the other to turn off.

• You can create folders and nest other bookmarks within folders.

  Folders cannot nest other folders. This is by design and it'll not change unless I find a genuine use case. You can edit folders by clicking on the "pen" icon next to its name.

• You can press the "eye" icon to enter edit mode where you can edit, delete, and reorder bookmarks.

  

• You can also use your launcher to query your bookmarks with the /bk prefix.

  

  • Queries are folder-aware, meaning if you nested a bookmark inside a folder, the folder name will be displayed as well.

Bookmarks Data

The saved bookmarks are written to $NOCTALIA_STATE_HOME/plugins/data/dunarand/bookmarks/data.json. By default, $NOCTALIA_STATE_HOME should point to ~/.local/state/noctalia. You can point to a different location for saving and backing up your bookmarks. This setting is configurable via plugin settings under Settings -> Plugins. Only JSON format is accepted.

You can manage the bookmark data via external scripts.

Root

[ <entry>, <entry>]

The root is a JSON array of entries. Order in the array is display order (used directly by drag-and drop reordering).

Entry

Two types of entries exist: bookmark and folder.

Bookmarks

{
  "type": "bookmark",
  "glyph": "bookmark",
  "label": "My Bookmark",
  "cmd": "firefox",
  "description": "Opens Firefox",
  "runInBackground": false,
  "runInTerminal": false
}

Key	Type	Required / Default	Notes
type	string	"bookmark"
glyph	string	falls back to "bookmark" if empty/missing
label	string	required, enforced at save time	"" fails validation
cmd	string	required for bookmarks	shell command to execute, enforced at save time
description	string	optional, defaults to ""	shown in the hover tooltip
runInBackground	boolean	optional, defaults to false	mutually exclusive with runInTerminal in the UI but the schema itself doesn't enforce that
runInTerminal	boolean	optional, defaults to false

Folders

{
  "type": "folder",
  "glyph": "folder",
  "label": "My Folder",
  "items": [ <bookmark>, <bookmark>, ... ]
}

Key	Type	Required/Default	Notes
type	string	"folder"
glyph	string	falls back to "folder" if empty/missing
label	string	required
items	array	optional, treated as {} if missing, folder.items=folder.items or {}	contents — bookmarks only, one level of nesting

Settings

The bar widget has the following settings:

Setting	Type	Default	Description
glyph	glyph	bookmark	Glyph displayed on the bar
tooltip	string	Bookmarks	Tooltip displayed on the bar
text	string	Bookmarks	Widget text displayed on the bar

The plugin itself has the following settings:

Setting	Type	Default	Description
data_path	file		data.json file to store the saved bookmarks. Leave empty to use the default location.
enable_bk_provider	bool	true	Enable bookmarks launcher provider
bk_sort_by	select	"history"	Provider's sorting strategy. Options: "history", "usage_count"

Changelog

v1.3.0

• Added /bk launcher provider
• Changed the following keybinds (check IPC & Keybinds section for what they do)
  • CTRL + N changed to CTRL + J
  • CTRL + P changed to CTRL + K
  • CTRL + S changed to CTRL + F
• Added the following keybinds (check IPC & Keybinds section for what they do)
  • CTRL + H or Left Arrow
  • CTRL + L or Right Arrow
  • CTRL + N
• Index tracking on root level for keyboard-centric usage
  • Previously, when using a keyboard to navigate, going into a folder would reset the selected entry's index to 1 causing fat fingers to be annoying

v1.3.1

• Fixed a bug where hovering over a bookmark would trigger scrolling event in populated lists
  • It was also causing the scroll bar to render incorrectly
  • The fix introduces a new bug where navigating items via keybinds doesn't trigger scrolling. This issue will be fixed in future

v1.3.2

• Fixed the issue where keyboard navigation would not auto-scroll. The issue has been fixed with changes introduced with Noctalia v5.3.0 plugin API 33 so newer versions of bookmarks, including this patch, now requires Noctalia v5.3.0 or higher

v1.4.0

• Added keyboard shortcuts for managing bookmarks without touching the mouse:
  • CTRL + SHIFT + N to create a new folder
  • CTRL + E to edit the selected bookmark or folder
  • CTRL + D to delete the selected item (requires a quick double press so you don't delete things by accident)
  • CTRL + SHIFT + K / CTRL + SHIFT + Up and CTRL + SHIFT + J / CTRL + SHIFT + Down to reorder items up and down
• Overhauled edit mode layout and styling:
  • Fixed row heights and spacing so entries don't blow up in size compared to normal view
  • Folders in edit mode no longer have the clunky red border box and badge styling
  • Shrunk action buttons into compact ghost buttons that fit neatly on the right
• Replaced the ? info button and show_info_button setting with native row hover tooltips
• Modernized the search bar and glyph input fields
• Dropped the nohup dependency for running bookmarks in the background, switching to Noctalia's native fire-and-forget async runner
• Added a direct settings shortcut button to the panel header
• Fixed a UI glitch where ghost boxes or action buttons would bleed over when switching views
• Fixed an unknown fontWeight 'regular' warning in the console