gtk4-launch(1)

💖 gtk4-launch(1) — the "GTK commands" girlies know 💖

okay bestie, so this is a page from the GTK commands manual (section 1, obviously), and it's literally the lil tool that makes apps go poof into existence ✨

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🌸 NAME 🌸

gtk4-launch — launch an application 🚀

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🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

gtk4-launch [OPTIONS...] <APPLICATION> [URI...]

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

So gtk4-launch launches an application based on the name you give it. It starts that app up with proper startup notification, on a default display, unless you've specified otherwise. Periodt. 💅

It needs at least one argument, and that argument is the name of the application you wanna launch. And like — that name should match the application's desktop file name, the one chillin' in the applications subdirectories of the XDG data directories. You can give it with or without the .desktop suffix, both are fine, no biggie 🫶

Now if you pass more than one argument? The rest of them, besides the application name, get treated as URI locations, and they're passed as arguments straight to the launched application. It's giving "here's your app, and also here's some places to go" 😌

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✨ OPTIONS ✨

• -?, -h, --help — prints the command's help and dips out. iconic behaviour honestly 🙈
• --version — prints the command's version and exits. short, sweet, slay 💖

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🌈 ENVIRONMENT 🌈

a few environment variables affect how gtk4-launch behaves, bestie — pay attention 👑

• XDG_DATA_HOME, XDG_DATA_DIRS — these are the environment variables that specify the XDG data directories. yes, the same ones we were just talking about for finding those desktop files. iykyk 🍓

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ngl, the whole "at least one argument" thing is not optional — give it an app name or it's not gonna have a good time 😭

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okay that's the whole page, you ate that 💅✨

this came to you from GTK (that's the source, mwah 🎀) and it's page gtk4-launch(1) in the GTK manual — go launch something cute, bestie 🦋💜