xdgctl - TUI for managing XDG default applications

xdgctl is a TUI for managing XDG default applications. View and set defaults for file categories without using xdg-mime directly.

Built with C using GLib/GIO and termbox2.

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/076c9934-f373-486d-9595-eec480e3a429

Features

Browse by category (Browsers, Text Editors, etc.)
Current default marked with *

Navigation & Controls

Key	Action
Arrow Up/Down	Navigate through categories or applications
Arrow Right/Tab	Switch from category list to application list
Arrow Left	Switch back to category list
Enter	Set selected application as default for current category
Esc / q	Quit the application

Prerequisites

To build xdgctl, you need the following development libraries:

glib-2.0
gio-2.0
gio-unix-2.0
clang or gcc

# On Void Linux
sudo xbps-install glibc-devel pkg-config

Installation

From source

git clone https://github.com/mitjafelicijan/xdgctl.git
cd xdgctl

# Build
make
sudo make install

# Using prefix
sudo make PREFIX=/usr/local install
make PREFIX=~/.local install

If you manually add new applications to your ~/.local/share/applications directory, you might need to run update-desktop-database again.

Arch Linux package

xdgctl is available on the AUR:

xdgctl (release package)
xdgctl-git (git package)

You can install it using your AUR helper of choice.

Example:

yay -Sy xdgctl

More about XDG

Application directories

ls /usr/share/applications
ls ~/.local/share/applications

Querying defaults

xdg-mime query default text/plain
xdg-mime query default text/html
xdg-mime query default x-scheme-handler/http
xdg-mime query default x-scheme-handler/https
xdg-mime query default inode/directory

Setting defaults manually

xdg-mime default brave.desktop x-scheme-handler/http
xdg-mime default brave.desktop x-scheme-handler/https

Desktop Entry example

# ~/.local/share/applications/brave.desktop
[Desktop Entry]
Exec=/home/m/Applications/brave
Type=Application
Categories=Applications
Name=Brave Browser
MimeType=text/html;text/xml;application/xhtml+xml;x-scheme-handler/http;x-scheme-handler/https;

Other useful commands/files

update-desktop-database ~/.local/share/applications
less ~/.config/mimeapps.list
less /usr/share/applications/mimeapps.list