Webapp Maker

Turn websites into desktop applications: fill in a name and a URL, and get a launcher entry with the site's own icon that opens in a dedicated browser app window — no tabs, no URL bar. The same panel lists every web app it created, with one-click removal.

Plugin

Field	Value
ID	umedbazarov/webapp-maker
Entries	Panel: panel

Requirements

• A chromium-family browser (Chromium, Chrome, Brave, Vivaldi, Edge, …) for the app windows — that engine family is the only one with an --app mode. If your default browser is one of them it is used; otherwise the first installed one is picked. Firefox alone is not enough.
• bash, chmod, cp, curl, file, grep, head, mkdir, rm, sed, setsid, tr and xdg-settings, required — used by the bundled scripts to fetch the site icon, write the .desktop entry, resolve the default browser and launch the app window.
• gtk-update-icon-cache, update-desktop-database and notify-send, optional — icon-cache/database refresh and the fallback "no browser found" notification; each is skipped when absent.

Usage

The plugin has no bar widget. Open the panel from the plugin's row in Settings, or bind it in your compositor:

noctalia msg panel-toggle umedbazarov/webapp-maker:panel

Fill in the form:

• Name and URL are required (https:// is added automatically).
• Chromium launch flags (optional) are stored in the launcher and passed to the browser on every start — e.g. --proxy-server=http://127.0.0.1:1080 to route one site through a proxy, or --incognito.
• Icon (optional): empty fetches the site's own icon (apple-touch-icon, then the well-known path, then a favicon service); or give an image URL, a local file path, or the name of an installed theme icon.

Create writes ~/.local/share/applications/<Name>.desktop and installs the icon into the hicolor theme; the app immediately appears in Noctalia's launcher and any other application menu. The Installed section at the bottom lists every web app this mechanism created (and only those — regular applications are never touched); the trash button removes the launcher and its icon.

The .desktop entries execute a launch script the plugin copies into its own data directory, so launchers keep working across plugin updates. If the plugin is uninstalled, already-created web apps keep working too; removing them afterwards is a matter of deleting their .desktop files.

Settings

Setting	Type	Default	Description
env_file	string	(empty)	A file sourced before the install command — e.g. one exporting HTTPS_PROXY so site icons download through a proxy. Empty disables it.

Notes

• Commands spawned. Creating: the bundled scripts/webapp-install.sh (curl for the site page and icon — the only network access, file to verify the download is an image, sed/tr/grep for parsing and freedesktop escaping). Listing: grep -l over ~/.local/share/applications/*.desktop. Removing: the bundled scripts/webapp-remove.sh (rm of the entry and icon). Launching (from the created .desktop, not from the panel): scripts/webapp-launch.sh — xdg-settings to resolve the default browser, then setsid <browser> --app=<url> plus the stored flags.
• Files written. ~/.local/share/applications/<Name>.desktop, the icon under ~/.local/share/icons/hicolor/256x256/apps/, and a copy of the launch script in the plugin's data directory. Values written into .desktop files are escaped per the freedesktop spec (both string and Exec quoting), and app names may not contain /.
• No privileges. Everything runs as the user; nothing touches system configuration.
• Removal only ever deletes launchers whose Exec runs the plugin's launch script, so a name clash with a real application cannot delete it.

Credits

Inspired by Omarchy's omarchy-webapp-install tooling (MIT), rebuilt as a self-contained Noctalia panel plugin.

License

MIT.