UWSM-APP(1)

uwsm-app(1) — app-to-unit launcher, bestie edition 💅

okay so this page is from the General Commands Manual, and it's all about uwsm-app — an application-to-unit launcher that uses UWSM's app daemon. iconic. ✨

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✨ NAME ✨

uwsm-app — Application-to-unit launcher using UWSM's app daemon. 🫶

📜 SYNOPSIS 📜

uwsm-app [-h] [-s {a,b,s,custom.slice}] [-t {scope,service}] [-a app_name] [-u unit_name] [-d unit_description] [-S ] [-T] -- application [args ...]

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

This is an application-to-unit launcher with Desktop Entry support. It's basically the same energy as the uwsm app command and uses the same arguments, since the argument parsing is done on the app daemon's side with the same parser. 💖

🎀 OPTIONS 🎀

• -s {a,b,s,custom.slice} — slice selector, default is a. Here's the selector tea:
  • a — app-graphical.slice
  • b — background-graphical.slice
  • s — session-graphical.slice
  • any slice by full name
• -t {scope,service} — type of unit to launch, default is scope; it can be preset by the UWSM_APP_UNIT_TYPE env var. 👑
• -a app_name — override app name (a substring in unit name).
• -u unit_name — override the whole autogenerated unit name.
• -d unit_description — Unit Description.
• -S {out,err,both} — silence stdout, stderr, or both. 🤫
• -T — launch app in a terminal. This allows the command to be empty to just launch a terminal. 🖥️

Application can be provided as a command with optional arguments, or a Desktop Entry ID, optionally suffixed with a ":"-delimited Action ID. If Desktop Entry is being launched, arguments should be compatible with it. 🍓

bestie, always use -- to disambiguate dashed arguments intended for application itself. no cap. 💅

Special arguments that are passed through to app daemon:

• ping — check app daemon, it should return "pong"n
• stop — stop app daemonn

🛠️ OPERATION 🛠️

The uwsm-app client sends arguments to uwsm's app daemon via a pipe. Upon receiving arguments, the app daemon returns shell code to uwsm-app which it natively executes. Single commands are prepended with exec, iterated commands are assembled with trailing & each, followed by wait. ✨

The purpose of all this is to skip all the expensive Python startup and import routines that slow things down every time uwsm app is called. Instead the daemon does it once and then listens for requests, while a simple shell script may dump arguments to one pipe and run the code received from another via eval, which is much faster. slay for performance. 🔥

👀 SEE ALSO 👀

• uwsm(1)
• systemd-run(1)

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mwah 💖 — this page is UWSM-APP(1), dated 2026-10-15. bye bestie, go launch something cute. 🦋