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labwc-menu(5) File Formats Manual labwc-menu(5) NAME labwc - menu file DESCRIPTION Static menus are built based on the menu.xml file located at "~/.con- fig/labwc" and equivalent XDG Base Directories. SYNTAX The menu file must be entirely enclosed within <openbox_menu> and </open- box_menu> tags. Inside these tags, menus are specified as follows: <!-- A toplevel menu --> <menu id="external_menu_settings" label="External Settings" icon="preferences-other"> <item label="Display setting"> <action name="Execute" command="wdisplays" /> </item> </menu> <!-- Another toplevel menu --> <menu id=""> <!-- A menu entry with an action, for example to execute an application --> <item label="" icon=""> <action></action> </item> <!-- A submenu defined elsewhere, uses external label and icon attributes --> <menu id="external_menu_settings" /> <!-- Horizontal line --> <separator /> <!-- An inline submenu --> <menu id="" label="" icon=""> ...some content... </menu> <!-- Title --> <separator label="" /> <!-- Pipemenu --> <menu id="" label="" icon="" execute="COMMAND" /> </menu> menu.id (when at toplevel) Define a menu tree. Each menu must be given an id, which is a unique identifier of the menu. This id is used to refer to the menu in a Show- Menu action. Default identifiers are * "root-menu" for the root window context menu * "client-menu" for a window's titlebar context menu * "client-list-combined-menu" for a list of all windows across all workspaces. Will change focus to the app that gets selected or go to workspace without activating any app if "Go there" is selected. * "client-send-to-menu" shows all workspaces and sends current window to that workspace when selected. menu.id (when nested under other <menu> element) Link to a submenu defined elsewhere (by a <menu id=""> at toplevel). menu.label The title of the menu, shown in its parent. A label must be given when defining a menu unless it is the topmost menu element. Note that Openbox requires a label="" defined for topmost elements too, but for simplicity labwc handles these with or without the label at- tribute. menu.icon An icon to be rendered, shown in its parent. This argument is optional. See menu.item.icon for further details. menu.item.label The visible name of the menu item. menu.item.icon The name of an icon to be rendered in front of the menu entry. This at- tribute is optional. The name follows naming conventions of "Icon=" en- tries in .desktop files. If used, it is recommended to use the name of the icon only rather than a full path. This ensures that the icon will be looked up in the scale of the output where the menu is rendered. E.g. use of icon="vlc" is suggested over using icon="/usr/share/icons/hicolor/16x16/apps/vlc.png". menu.item.action See labwc-actions(5). Note: XML CDATA is supported for this node in or- der to maintain compatibility with obmenu-generator. menu.separator Horizontal line. menu.separator.label In a "separator" element, the label attribute transforms the separator from a horizontal line to a menu title (heading) with the text speci- fied by label in it. menu.execute Command to execute for pipe menu. See details below. PIPE MENUS Pipe menus are menus generated dynamically based on output of scripts or binaries. They are so-called because the output of the executable is piped to the labwc menu. For any <menu id="" label="" execute="COMMAND" /> entry in menu.xml, the COMMAND will be executed the first time the item is selected (for example by cursor or keyboard input). The XML output of the command will be parsed and shown as a submenu. The content of pipemenus is cached until the whole menu (not just the pipemenu) is closed. The content of the output must be entirely enclosed within <open- box_pipe_menu> tags. Inside these, menus are specified in the same way as static (normal) menus, for example: <openbox_pipe_menu> <item label="Terminal"> <action name="Execute" command="xterm" /> </item> </openbox_pipe_menu> Inline submenus and nested pipemenus are supported. Note that it is the responsibility of the pipemenu executable to ensure that ID attributes are unique. Duplicates are ignored. When writing pipe menu scripts, make sure to escape XML special characters such as "&" ("&"), "<" ("<"), and ">" (">"). A pipemenu can also be used to define the toplevel <menu> element. In this case the entire menu.xml file would be reduced to something like this (re- placing obmenu-generator with the menu generator of your choice): <?xml version="1.0"?> <openbox_menu> <menu id="root-menu" label="" execute="obmenu-generator" /> </openbox_menu> ACCELERATORS / MNEMONICS Menu accelerators are one-letter mnemonics to quickly select/exec items from the current menu. For each menu item, the accelerator is defined as the first character of the item label, converted to lowercase. A different accelerator can be explicitly defined in menu.xml with the special '_' character before the target letter. Accelerators can be any unicode charac- ter and are not limited to ASCII. A usual underscore can be shown by dupli- cating it. If the menu only contains a single instance of the pressed accelerator the item will be executed directly. Otherwise, all matching items are cycled through. Example: The accelerator for an item with the label "e_Macs" is 'm'. LOCALISATION Available localisation for the default "client-menu" is only shown if no "client-menu" is present in menu.xml. Any menu definition in menu.xml is interpreted as a user-override. SEE ALSO labwc(1), labwc-actions(5), labwc-config(5), labwc-theme(5) 2026-08-05 labwc-menu(5)
NAME | DESCRIPTION | SYNTAX | PIPE MENUS | ACCELERATORS / MNEMONICS | LOCALISATION | SEE ALSO
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