Show HN: TUI for managing XDG default applications

> claude code, opencode, I’m looking at you

Could you elaborate? I mean, I get the usual criticism of web/Electron-based desktop applications (slow, includes a whole Chrome engine, non-native UI, …) but Claude Code isn't one of them?

That's where codex-cli shines (rust)

the startup time is crazy, you can start writing as soon as you hit the command

(I don't use codex, just noticed that it's crazy fast)

That was the exact reason for it. I made my own window manager for fun and was missing a simple way of changing default apps.

Making home read-only can get there, and I can't find the project that forced using XDG paths. I think it used LD_PRELOAD or somesuch trick.

edit: https://soc.me/standards/defending-home

> No one on earth has so far managed to get xdg default apps work on Linux.

I've only been using Linux for a few weeks but what am I missing here?

I set a bunch of mime types in `~/.config/mimeapps.list` which are assigned to desktop apps and they all open perfectly with `xdg-open` or when I launch them through a file manager.

It is documented in the XDG specification https://specifications.freedesktop.org/mime-apps/latest/file....

Great. I must be living on the moon then. I guess gnome work great there since it manages this part

I probably haven't. :) They are a nightmare indeed. But it does help a little.

I haven't thought about this. That makes sense. I will add this.

Yeah, I did write it myself, yes. It's actually a very simple program.

I heard so many great things about ratatui. I am, however, not well versed in Rust. Only did a couple of toy little things in it.

Who are you to tell people what to be proud of, and and what to want to share?

Either you're so lame that you created an account just to say this, or you don't have the courage to say it from your real account.

Either way, why don't you show us some of the stuff you've made.

Ackchyually XDG default applications aren't set via env vars but through the `${XDG_CONFIG_HOME}/mimeapps.list` file manipulated (either via text editor if track desktop files yourself or, better) via `xdg-mime {query|default}` tool. This TUI is a replacement (doesn't wrap it) to this tool for this functionality, with twist that does multiple-defaults category-wise rather one-by-one ("word processor documents" rather odt/doc/docx).

Compared to what slopcalypse has brought, this one (project; vibe coded maybe, certainly not slop) at very least is useful (also is quite short; within a sea of thousand LOC generated in 1s this is refreshing).

What have you shown that's better?

I do agree with some of your sentiment. But by that logic, nothing would ever be made.

The same goes with aliases. Why not just use the actual commands. You give it your best shot, and sometimes something good comes out. And sometimes it's crap. That's life.

And I made it for fun and to learn something. And it wasn't AI coded. It's like 200 lines. I wanted to learn termbox2.h a bit more than I already had.

Let people make and use what they want, you don’t have to use it.

The nice thing about AI coded TUIs is they're so easy to make you can make the ones that suit you yourself and ignore the rest.

reading the code, what make you think it was vibe coded?

I absolutely fail to see the problem and I think the whole "best to stick to built in linux commands" is an utterly dinosaur-esque take that can, and will, and should, go extinct in the age of AI-assisted coding.