The default menu can be opened with Ctrl+Space. You can use this to get used to Fly-Pie, however you should definitely create your own menus!
To open the settings dialog, you can use the gnome-tweak-tool, the gnome-extensions-app or this command:
gnome-extensions prefs flypie@schneegans.github.com
The configuration dialog of Fly-Pie has four pages. On the first you will find the tutorial, on the second you can define its appearance, and on the third you can define your own menus. The last one... well, we will come to this later!
Here are the main take-aways from the interactive tutorial:
- You can click anywhere in an item's wedge. It does not matter whether you click directly on an item or at the edge of your screen as long as you are in the same wedge.
- To enter Marking Mode, click and drag an item. As soon as you pause dragging or make a turn, the item will be selected. This way you can select items with gestures!
- Try remembering the path to an item. Open the menu and draw the path with your mouse. You can start with individual segments of the path, put you can also try to draw the entire path!
- You may find it more successful if you explicitly try to compose your gesture of straight parts. Do not draw curvy paths but rather expressive zig-zag-lines!
- You can also "draw" gestures as long as a modifier key, such as Ctrl, Shift, or Alt is held down without having to press your mouse button! This is especially useful when you opened the menu with a shortcut involving such a modifier key. You can just keep it pressed and move the pointer with the mouse or your touch-pad!
On the second page, you can adjust the appearance of Fly-Pie. At the beginning, you may want to load a preset with the first button in the action bar at the bottom.
With the play-button you can always open a live-preview of your menu. Just play around with the options, most of it should be more or less self-explanatory.
Once you are happy with your menu style, you can export the settings in order to switch between different themes.
If you installed and enabled Fly-Pie for the very first time, you can bring up the default menu with Ctrl + Space. The default menu may give you the opportunity to play around with Fly-Pie, but you should definitely define your own menus!
ℹ️ Tip: If no menu shows up, you can execute the following command in a terminal, try again to open the menu and look for any errors.
This may print many unrelated messages, but using grep like this highlights all occurrences of flypie
which makes spotting Fly-Pie-related messages much easier.
journalctl -f -o cat | grep -E 'flypie|'
To the best of my knowledge, Fly-Pie is the first GNOME Shell extension featuring achievements! While you will not get any rewards (you will get fancy badges though!), this feature can motivate you to use Fly-Pie as efficiently as possible.
There are two possibilities to open menus. Either via the configured shortcut or with a terminal command as described on the next page. This second approach can be used in combination with other tools. Interesting companions are:
- Custom Hot Corners - Extended: Open menus by moving your mouse to one corner of your screen!
- Input Remapper: Bind menus to your additional mouse buttons!
- xbindkeys: X11-only alternative to Input Remapper.
- Easystroke: X11 only, use mouse gestures to open menus!
Installation
Index