Vicinae (pronounced "vih-SIN-ay") is a high-performance, native launcher for your desktop — built with C++ and Qt.
It includes a set of built-in modules, and extensions can be developed quickly using fully server-side React/TypeScript — with no browser or Electron involved.
Inspired by the popular Raycast launcher, Vicinae provides a mostly compatible extension API, allowing reuse of many existing Raycast extensions with minimal modification.
Vicinae is designed for developers and power users who want fast, keyboard-first access to common system actions — without unnecessary overhead.
demo.mp4
We can't show everything in the demo, far from it, so please go read the docs!
- Launch apps
- File search
- Emoji picker
- Calculator with history (multiple backends available)
- Clipboard history
- Quickly open links using any app (can be used to set up web search)
- Focus open windows
dmenu
compatibility mode- Theming system
- Fallback commands
- React/Typescript extension SDK, allowing to build complex search-focused UIs
- Raycast compatibility support
→ Includes access to the official Raycast extension store, with one-click installs directly from within the launcher
→ Many extensions may not work yet due to missing APIs or general Linux incompatibilities (improvements in progress)
Until we reach version 1 you should expect breaking changes from release to release. Watch the changelogs to learn about them.
We try to not introduce breaking changes that result in a definitive loss of data, but you should expect to have to redo your configuration from time to time.
For more details on installation, usage, configuration, extension development, and contributing, visit docs.vicinae.com.