This launcher ships with fast and user-friendly UI, written in Tkinter
The major feature of this app launcher is its grid system, which allows you to select and run apps using keys, fingers or a TV remote.
Nero remembers the most popular apps and shows them (if none are specified).
Personally, I find the tiled view much more usable than traditional dropdown, like in Raspbian. This project is mainly targeted at RPI users with TVs or mobile screens (VNC) as there are currently no launchers with similar features.
Note: Nero doesn't scan the desktop files each time, so you need to press Ctrl-R to update the app cache.
Nero can be fully customized using its config system. You may specify, for example, theme config, colors config, dimensions config, video config and apps config, variables will be overridden by the each next config.
Place main.py file under .config/nero-launcher directory and specify all the config files (without .py) in MODULES=[] variable.
Each config file must contain CONFIG={...} variable, please view variables.py for available configuration variables.
You shouldn't edit the variables.py file directly, because it is used as a default configuration file.
To apply themes you will need to copy the theme file to ~/.config/nero-launcher folder and add the theme name without the .py to MODULES=[...] variable in main.py
Example:
MODULES=["adwaita-dark", "custom-config"]
Theme files with screenshots are located under https://github.com/enaix/nero-launcher/tree/master/themes
Please run pip3 install -r requirements.txt to install some of the libraries.
On Debian-based systems run:
sudo apt install python3-pil.imagetk python3-tk
On Arch-based systems run:
sudo pacman -S python-pillow tk
Then run sudo ./install.sh to install Nero executable
Please note that you will need to configure frame skip and dropdown animation speed, because of the Tkinter limitations:
In your config file specify
...
'CanvasDropdownSpeed': ...,
'CanvasDropdownFrameSkip': ...,
'CanvasDropdownReturnSpeed': ...,
'CanvasDropdownReturnFrameSkip': ...,
...
where CanvasDropdownSpeed/CanvasDropdownReturnSpeed should be between 5 and 15-20 and CanvasDropdownFrameSkip/CanvasDropdownFrameSkip should be between 10 and 50, according to your system.
If you have a TV with Raspberry PI, you may want to install a service that will allow you to control Nero and other apps like Kodi using a TV remote. Installation instructions are located in https://github.com/enaix/nero-launcher/tree/master/extras
In case of Nero not launching after the code update please clear app cache by removing appcache.json and appmeta.json
Thanks @bahamas10 for the cec-keypresses script (https://gist.github.com/bahamas10/6996290)