Online Firmware: Circular App Launcher Gnome Pie 0 6 7 Gets New Clipboard Slice Group Other Changes

Friday, December 16, 2016

Circular App Launcher Gnome Pie 0 6 7 Gets New Clipboard Slice Group Other Changes

Gnome Pie 0.6.7 was released recently with a new experimental feature: clipboard slice group, along with other changes.

Update: version 0.6.8 was released which adds two new themes (Simple Clock and Space clock along with other minor changes).

Gnome Pie is an application launcher inspired by a World of Warcraft addon called OPie. The app consists of multiple "pies", each being triggered by a keyboard shortcut or mouse button you set. Each pie has its own role: applications, bookmarks, main menu, multimedia (play/pause/previous/next), a pie that allows you to control the focused window (maximize, close, etc.) and so on.

Pies are customizable so you can create new pies, delete existing ones, etc. You can even access pies from a dock (screenshot above) or the desktop.

The new Clipboard slice group remembers an adjustable amount of your last copied items and allows quickly pasting them:

This feature is currently considered experimental because, according to its author, its hard to use quickly because it contains a variable amount of items and also, because its not exactly easy in some cases to tell the entries apart (this also depends on the Pie theme youre using because the copied text is displayed in the center but some themes dont offer this).

Besides this, I would also add the lack of a way to clear the clipboard to this list.

If you have an idea on how to improve this, submit a bug on GitHub!

Despite this, the new Gnome Pie clipboard feature is actually quite useful, especially if youre already a Gnome Pie user and you do a lot of copy/pasting.

To enable the new Clipboard slice feature, from the Gnome Pie settings, select a pie on the left, then on the right click "+" to add a new slice and add select "Group: Clipbord" from the slice type list:

Other changes in Gnome Pie 0.6.7:

Its now possible to delete imported themes;
Slices can now be activated with the key pad’s return key;
Its now possible to load themes which are stored in a directory in an archive;
The window list groups have been merged into one group. This new group has an option whether to show windows of the current workspace only;
Updated default configuration of Gnome-Pie with a Window List group;
Updated default configuration to hide Slice labels.

Also, since our last article about Gnome Pie (0.6.1), the app has received quite a few improvements, including theme import/export, a new Numix theme and the ability to select slices by typing their names, among others.

Furthermore, a while back, the apps preferences dialog was updated to use Header Bars by default (which unfortunately means it doesnt look very pretty under Unity), but you can change this by launching the app with the "--no-header-bar" argument (for instance, you can add this to the gnome-pie.desktop file).

Install Gnome Pie in Ubuntu or Linux Mint

To install the latest Gnome Pie in Ubuntu 15.10, 15.04 or 14.04 / Linux Mint 17.x and derivatives, you can use its official PPA. Add the PPA and install Gnome Pie using the following commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:simonschneegans/testing
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install gnome-pie

If youre not using Ubuntu / Linux Mint, you can download the Gnome Pie source via GitHub.

Once installed, launch Gnome Pie from the menu / Dash and then use CTRL + ALT + A to launch some applications, CTRL + Alt + B for bookmarks, etc. You can find all these keyboard shortcuts, change them or create new "pies" in the Gnome Pie Preferences (which you can access via its AppIndicator / Notification Area icon). For more info on using Gnome Pie, see THIS page.

Available link for download