[SOLVED] Wofi: run console progs via drun loads wrong terminal

byezy · 2025-08-11 08:54:21

Running Hyprland.

When I launch any console program from dmenu, a new terminal opens with the selected program running, but the style/theme for alacritty is not being set.

Could somebody explain to me what is happening and possibly how to make it work as I would like i.e. open alacritty with the theme applied?

.config/hypr/hyprland.conf

...
$terminal = alacritty
...
$menu = wofi --show drun
...

echo $TERM
alacritty

                   -`
                  .o+`                 byezy@thinkarch
                 `ooo/                 OS: Arch Linux
                `+oooo:                Kernel: x86_64 Linux 6.15.9-arch1-1
               `+oooooo:               Uptime: 2d 5h 7m
               -+oooooo+:              Packages: 799
             `/:-:++oooo+:             Shell: zsh 5.9
            `/++++/+++++++:            Resolution: 1920x1080
           `/++++++++++++++:           WM: Hyprland :D
          `/+++ooooooooooooo/`         GTK Theme: Adwaita [GTK3]
         ./ooosssso++osssssso+`        Disk: 76G / 1.9T (5%)
        .oossssso-````/ossssss+`       CPU: Intel Core i7-6820HQ @ 8x 3.6GHz [57.0°C]
       -osssssso.      :ssssssso.      GPU: Quadro M2000M
      :osssssss/        osssso+++.     RAM: 5700MiB / 64122MiB
     /ossssssss/        +ssssooo/-
   `/ossssso+/:-        -:/+osssso+-
  `+sso+:-`                 `.-/+oso:
 `++:.                           `-/+/
 .`                                 `/

Last edited by byezy (2025-08-30 03:08:41)

seth · 2025-08-11 12:17:25

What theme and how do you usually configure/set it and what do you get instead?
Is the rest of your alacritty config applied?

byezy · 2025-08-12 05:26:17

I think i had themes on the brain.

I realised (I suspect) that it is the zsh styling that is not being applied when running a command using Wofi. I am using OhMyZsh with zsh.

Most of the terminal programs close the window on exit, so that makes further investigation difficult at my level of expertise.

However, XTerm and UXTerm when opened using Wofi both show the lack of usual zsh styling but it seems that zsh is indeed running. Introducing a bad plugin config in OMZsh also shows a nag here, so it's definitely zsh being fired up. Also, in XTerm or UXTerm this confirms I think:

> echo $0
zsh

If the terminal font/size/colors being thrown up weren't total cack I wouldn't even bother with this, but it's terrible.

I've put a screenshot in my DropBox to show the issue https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/ew6ir78w … 0kc01&dl=0 This shows python started from an existing terminal (top) and then started from Wofi (bottom).

If I open Foot from Wofi, it is getting it's style from somewhere as its not the terrible style as described here, it's closer to the look of alacritty.

Last edited by byezy (2025-08-12 05:28:38)

seth · 2025-08-12 06:22:03

I challenge the assertion that the lower shot is alacritty at all, run "alacritty -e python" (from wofi, out of an existing terminal it would inherit the environment from the parent terminal)
But I can guarantee that whenever you run eg. python directly in a TE, your shell (zsh) has no part in this and will not configure anything.

I am using OhMyZsh with zsh.

One could, and I'm not putting that beyond OMZ, configure aspects (eg. colors) via the shell… what happens (overall) if you do not source OMZ in your zshrc?
Have you actually configured the look of alacritty via https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Alacri … figuration ?

byezy · 2025-08-13 04:56:50

Awesome... looks like you nailed it, seems it is not alacritty being loaded by Wofi.

Executing the command "alacritty -e python" from Wofi as suggested gave the same shabby style, small font on a white background, not as per alacritty and not as expected.

I removed all OhMyZsh config and the font colours etc. were lost from the shell as expected.

I had no alacritty toml in place, I experimented with one and it worked as expected changing fonts etc. but then removed it so alacritty is back to its defaults as it was.

Now, I see slightly different behaviour when running another terminal from alacritty: Foot runs up with its own colours (black/grey with decent font - similar to alacritty but definitely different) and xterm/uxterm start with the poor style in question (poor font/white bg - !!). I believe that's the only four TEs that I have installed.

So one of the xterm programs seem to be what is being used by Wofi (based on the console styles).

I have tried changing the wofi command to use the --term option documented as

--term=TERM
Specifies the term to use when running a program in a terminal. This overrides the default terminal run order which is kitty, alacritty, wezterm, foot, termite, gnome-terminal, weston-terminal in that order.

Have tried explicitly setting both alacritty and foot, it did not change things.

My account is set as follows

byezy:x:1000:1000::/home/byezy:/usr/bin/zsh

After a lot of googling, I can't find a way to force wofi to use alacritty.

As another point of interest, if I set wofi to used run mode instead of drun, nothing at all seems to be executed when an item is selected/run. Also, nothing runs when a command is manually entered.

seth · 2025-08-13 05:11:51

is not alacritty being loaded by Wofi

No, might actually be because

"alacritty -e python" from Wofi as suggested gave the same shabby style

which will run alacritty for sure, suggesting along

no alacritty toml in place

that your configuration is done by some OMZ disaster which will not apply to any terminal instance that's not running zsh ("alacritty -e python" starts python / alacritty directly) - you'll need to properly configure alacritty.

byezy · 2025-08-13 08:48:18

Very much appreciate the help.

Previously

I removed all OhMyZsh config and the font colours etc. were lost from the shell as expected.

But, following your advice, I set an alacritty.toml, with huge font so it stood out like the proverbial.

It did not change anything. Alacritty started with the big font. Foot started with it's own style. Xterm started with the white/small font style.

So then to check, I made an .Xdefaults file:

XTerm*Background: black
XTerm*Foreground: yellow

Xterm is now yellow on black, and when opening console apps from Wofi, this is how things appear. VIM, python, etc., all yellow on black. The image linked below shows some windows, all launched from Wofi.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/rqx2ibq4 … vjy9o&dl=0

Just going by color, it seems that Wofi is running console programs in XTerm (? or could there be another explanation for Xterm config being applied ?) As I can now style XTerm, I can live with what's happening.

But I would love to understand what's going on and why Wofi does not seem to be running the right TE. It's both annoying and intriguing and I'd like to get to the bottom of it. Any hints as to how to troubleshoot further would be appreciated.

seth · 2025-08-13 11:33:48

Just going by color, it seems that Wofi is running console programs in XTerm

Doesn't sound plausible https://man.archlinux.org/man/wofi.1#t,
But if that's what's happening… does "wofi -t alacritty" behave differently then?

byezy · 2025-08-14 09:23:19

Unfortunately not. As I stated previously I tried that

I have tried changing the wofi command to use the --term option documented as
--term=TERM
Specifies the term to use when running a program in a terminal. This overrides the default terminal run order which is kitty, alacritty, wezterm, foot, termite, gnome-terminal, weston-terminal in that order.
Have tried explicitly setting both alacritty and foot, it did not change things.

I just suspected something about Hyprland/Wofi/Xorg and found this utility:

Xlsclients is a utility for listing information about the client applications running on a display. It may be used to generate scripts representing a snapshot of the user's current session.

I understand this to mean, under Hyprland, that it would report programs using XWayland (?)

At this point I have the following programs running, all launched using Wofi:
alacritty, foot, vivaldi, yazi, vim.

thinkarch% xlsclients
thinkarch  /usr/bin/xterm -e yazi
thinkarch  /usr/bin/xterm -e vim
thinkarch%

Seems to indicate that Wofi (or Hyperland I don't yet understand which is the culprit - or even if it's something deeper than that...) is farming the terminal programs out to XWayland... If I run a console program from either an existing alacritty/foot terminal, then they are not reported by xlsclients. So it seems it's just when the terminal apps are launched by Wofi...

If it were all programs then it might make sense that it's a driver issue or something perhaps, but this doesn't seem to be the case. I will keep digging.

Appreciate your time and the advice you've given Seth. Cheers.

seth · 2025-08-14 11:51:57

It's kinda crazy that wofi ignores the -t parameter and ends up invoking a TE that's not only in the documented default list, but on top of that strictly X11.
This would be a massive wofi bug for sure. And a little bit insane. And looking at the code: borderline impossible.

type -a alacritty
cat ~/.config/wofi/config
printenv

byezy · 2025-08-20 08:26:47

Weirdly similar to this very old issue https://www.reddit.com/r/swaywm/comment … rm_issues/

I don't use gnome, but interestingly

which gio
╭───┬─────────┬──────────────┬──────────╮
│ # │ command │     path     │   type   │
├───┼─────────┼──────────────┼──────────┤
│ 0 │ gio     │ /usr/bin/gio │ external │
╰───┴─────────┴──────────────┴──────────╯

I don't think it's a wofi bug, I think it's something caused by my system somehow, somewhat like the different issue shown above but specific to the way I've set up my system. Perhaps something left over from rolling through and removing i3, sway, etc. etc?

I've spent too much time mucking around with this, dabbled with a couple of other launchers and found fuzzel which worked out of the box and launches the terminal it's told to, so case closed!

Thanks very much for all your advice Seth, you're a legend!

seth · 2025-08-20 13:33:29

https://todo.sr.ht/~scoopta/wofi/73?__goaway_challenge=meta-refresh&__goaway_id=c62f06950a2c6411bec0b3cae8c7409d#event-58147 wrote:

Unfortunately the best solution is to symlink your actual terminal to gnome-terminal or one of the others.

It's a bit very weird though that wofi offers a --term but then does't use it but gio which in turn will likely use xdg-open and then pick some™ terminal because there's no sane way to globally define your preferred/default TE…

Here's more into the rabbit hole:
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php … 3#p2247993
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php … 2#p2107652

But using fuzzel is of course fine, too.

Please always remember to mark resolved threads by editing your initial posts subject - so others will know that there's no task left, but maybe a solution to find.
Thanks.

Arch Linux

#1 2025-08-11 08:54:21

[SOLVED] Wofi: run console progs via drun loads wrong terminal

#2 2025-08-11 12:17:25

Re: [SOLVED] Wofi: run console progs via drun loads wrong terminal

#3 2025-08-12 05:26:17

Re: [SOLVED] Wofi: run console progs via drun loads wrong terminal

#4 2025-08-12 06:22:03

Re: [SOLVED] Wofi: run console progs via drun loads wrong terminal

#5 2025-08-13 04:56:50

Re: [SOLVED] Wofi: run console progs via drun loads wrong terminal

#6 2025-08-13 05:11:51

Re: [SOLVED] Wofi: run console progs via drun loads wrong terminal

#7 2025-08-13 08:48:18

Re: [SOLVED] Wofi: run console progs via drun loads wrong terminal

#8 2025-08-13 11:33:48

Re: [SOLVED] Wofi: run console progs via drun loads wrong terminal

#9 2025-08-14 09:23:19

Re: [SOLVED] Wofi: run console progs via drun loads wrong terminal

#10 2025-08-14 11:51:57

Re: [SOLVED] Wofi: run console progs via drun loads wrong terminal

#11 2025-08-20 08:26:47

Re: [SOLVED] Wofi: run console progs via drun loads wrong terminal

#12 2025-08-20 13:33:29

Re: [SOLVED] Wofi: run console progs via drun loads wrong terminal

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