/applications-rs

Primary LanguageRust

apps-rs

Code recovered from https://crates.io/crates/applications. The original repository is now removed.

According to https://crates.io, the code originally had an MIT License, however, I was not able to find it.

This crate is used to read available desktop applications on different platforms.

Platforms

  • Mac
  • Linux
  • Windows

Usage

use std::path::PathBuf;
use applications::{get_apps, open_file_with};

fn main() {
    let apps = get_apps();
    for app in apps {
        println!("{:#?}", app);
    }

    let file_path = PathBuf::from("/User/username/Desktop/app/main.rs");
    let app_path = PathBuf::from("/Applications/Visual Studio Code.app");
    open_file_with(file_path, app_path);
}

How?

How and where to search for available desktop applications on each platform?

Linux

Desktop applications are specified in files that ends with .desktop. echo $XDG_DATA_DIRS to see a list of paths where these desktop files could reside in.

The .desktop files are in toml format. Parse them with toml crate.

The Exec can be used to launch the app, and Icon field contains the app icon.

MacOS

The simplest way is to search in /Applications folder. The app icon is in .icns format. Apple silicon macs can now run iOS apps. iOS app icons are in .png format.

system_profiler command can be used to get installed applications.

system_profiler SPApplicationsDataType is the command to use to get a full list of applications. The output format is not a standard format, greping is needed.

https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep may be a good choice.

Windows

https://crates.io/crates/winreg could be useful. Ask chatgpt for sample code.

Libraries