How to Configure Fluxbox menu?

Question

How do you modify the default Fluxbox menu?

Answer 1

To configure fluxbox menu, you need to edit the ~/.fluxbox/menu file.

This file is just a text file, so you can edit it with any text editor. The fluxbox documentation explains the syntax of this file:

The Fluxbox menu is just a text file that allows you to make subfolders, launch applications, control workspaces, configure fluxbox, and exit X. The menu can take the following commands:

[begin] (MenuTitle)

[submenu]  (SubMenuName) {SubMenuTitle}

[exec] (ApplicationName) {/path/to/program}

[include] (/path/to/meufile)

[end]

[nop] (--------)

[workspaces] (SubMenuName)

[stylesdir] (/path/to/stylesdir)

[config] (FluxboxConfiguration)

[reconfigure] (Reconfigure)

[restart] (Restart)

[exit] (Exit)

Most of this should be pretty self explanatory as to what it does. The italicized items > are the words that actually show up on your screen. I will explain the harder to understand items further.

[nop] - This allows you to put text or an empty line if you wish that will not execute anything but just act as a seperator in your menu.

[reconfigure] - If you use the menu to change your fluxbox configuration, the changes will not stay after you exit fluxbox. They need to be written to the init file to be permanent changes and can be done by hitting reconfigure after you've made changes you want.

[restart] - I just want to make sure that everyone knows restart only restarts fluxbox, and not your whole system.

Answer 2

From the manual page:

fluxbox installs a default menu file in @pkgdatadir@/menu. You can also use fluxbox -i to confirm this action. Of course this system-wide menu can be customized for all users at once, but it is also possible to create an individual menu file for each user. By convention, users create a menu file in ~/.fluxbox/menu . Once you've created your own menu file, you'll want to make sure that you properly declare this location in your `init' file so that fluxbox knows where to look. The value you'll want to add or change is:

session.menuFile:

For this change to take effect, fluxbox must be restarted. Be sure that your menu is usable, then choose 'Restart' from the default fluxbox root menu. This restart is only necessary if you make changes to the 'init' file; otherwise, fluxbox will automatically detect your changes.

See also this wiki entry: Editing the menu