Why & How I Added Flatpak Support to My Omarchy Setup

If you’ve been following the Omarchy world, you know it’s beautifully opinionated. It’s built on the "Arch way"; lean, fast, and heavily reliant on the AUR. For a long time, I stayed within those lanes. But recently, I hit a wall that every Linux user eventually faces: a specific app that just works better as a Flatpak.

For me, it was Microsoft Edge (I know, I know). I needed account syncing for work, and while the AUR version is great, the sync features were stuck in "coming soon" limbo land. The Flatpak version? It worked instantly.

I realized that while Omarchy is perfect for purists, sometimes we just need stuff to work without fighting dependency hell. So, I decided to roll my own Flatpak integration for the Omarchy menu. I submitted it as Issue #1881, and even though it won't become a "default" feature (because the team is against flatpaks), I wanted to share the scripts so anyone can add it.

The "Why": Reliability and Sandboxing

The AUR is amazing, but it's maintained by the community. Flatpaks are often maintained by the actual authors (except in the case of Microslop). Plus, as Omarchy gets more popular, we're seeing more "non-tech" users jump on Arch. For them, a sandboxed Flatpak is a lot safer than blindly trusting a build script from a random person on the internet.

How to Set It Up

If you want to add Flatpak management to your runner like I did, here’s the breakdown.

1. The Tools

First, make sure you have flatpak installed via the omarchy menu at install > package > flatpak. Then, we’re going to use fzf to make the search process look and feel like the rest of the system.

2. The Mods

To get this showing up in your Omarchy runner, you just need to tweak your omarchy-menu file. I added a "Flatpak" option to the show_install_menu and show_remove_menu cases.

before updating the function, copy the file from the ~/.local/share/omarchy/bin and place it in ~/.local/bin

file: /omarchy-menu

show_install_menu() {
  case $(menu "...others \n Flatpak") in
  ... others
  *Flatpak*) terminal omarchy-flatpak-install ;;
  esac
}

show_remove_menu() {
  case $(menu "...others \n Flatpak") in
  ...others 
  *Flatpak*) terminal omarchy-flatpak-remove ;;
  esac
}

3. The Scripts

I wrote two bash scripts to handle installing and removing apps. Drop these into ~/.local/bin and run chmod +x on them.

To Install/Remove Apps: This gives you a nice TUI with a preview window so you can actually see what the app does before you hit enter.

file: /omarchy-flatpak-remove

#!/bin/bash

# some flatpak app names are space seperated and thus we need to traverse until we find
# the id of the flatpak which must contain a minimum of 2 dots
extract_dotted() {
    awk '{
        for (i = 1; i <= NF; i++) {
            if (gsub(/\./, "&", $i) >= 2) {
                print $i
            }
        }
    }'
}

fzf_args=(
  --multi
  --preview 'flatpak info $(echo {} | awk "{for (i = 1; i <= NF; i++) { if (gsub(/\\./, \"&\", \$i) >= 2) { print \$i; exit } }}")' # redudant reuse of extract_dotted func. Could abstract to util bin
  --preview-label='alt-p: toggle description, alt-j/k: scroll, tab: multi-select, F11: maximize'
  --preview-label-pos='bottom'
  --preview-window 'down:65%:wrap'
  --bind 'alt-p:toggle-preview'
  --bind 'alt-d:preview-half-page-down,alt-u:preview-half-page-up'
  --bind 'alt-k:preview-up,alt-j:preview-down'
  --color 'pointer:red,marker:red'
)

pkg_names=$(flatpak list --app | fzf "${fzf_args[@]}")

if [[ -n "$pkg_names" ]]; then
  val=$(echo "$pkg_names" | extract_dotted)
  echo "$pkg_names" | extract_dotted | xargs flatpak remove -y
  omarchy-show-done
fi

file: /omarchy-flatpak-install

#!/bin/bash

fzf_args=(
  --multi
  --preview 'flatpak remote-info flathub {2}'
  --preview-label='alt-p: toggle description, alt-j/k: scroll, tab: multi-select, F11: maximize'
  --preview-label-pos='bottom'
  --preview-window 'down:65%:wrap'
  --bind 'alt-p:toggle-preview'
  --bind 'alt-d:preview-half-page-down,alt-u:preview-half-page-up'
  --bind 'alt-k:preview-up,alt-j:preview-down'
  --color 'pointer:green,marker:green'
)

pkg_names=$(flatpak remote-ls | fzf "${fzf_args[@]}")

if [[ -n "$pkg_names" ]]; then
  echo "$pkg_names"
  echo "$pkg_names" | awk '{print $2}'
  # Convert newline-separated selections to space-separated for yay
  echo "$pkg_names" | awk '{print $2}' | xargs flatpak install -y
  omarchy-show-done
fi

3. Hooking it into the Menu

Lastly, make sure your Super+Alt+Space (or whatever your runner key is) points to your new custom menu in your Hyprland config:

file: ~/.config/hypr/bindings.conf

...others
unbind = SUPER ALT, SPACE
bindd = SUPER ALT, SPACE, Omarchy menu, exec, ~/.local/bin/omarchy-menu

Wrapping Up

At the end of the day, Linux is about choice. Whether you’re an AUR purist or a Flatpak fan, Omarchy gives us the foundation to build exactly what we need.