# Pacman GUI Frontends

This is a list of frontends for the pacman CLI tool. The list includes full featured GUI frontends, informational tools, and a variety of system tray notifiers. The list also includes categories for GTK2 based and Qt based software.

Warning: None of these tools are officially supported by Arch Linux/Pacman developers.

## Pacman frontends

### X11

- PacmanXG4 — GUI front-end for pacman. Depends neither GTK+ nor Qt, just X11. This graphical tool allows to do the following:

  - Install/remove/upgrade packages
  - Search packages/filter packages
  - Retrieve package info include screenshots
  - Downgrade packages (need downgrade utility from AUR)
  - Refresh package database, synchronize mirrors.
  - Update system in one click
  - Find out which package a specific file belongs to (include file with pkgfile utility)
  - Package Cache management
  - yaourt support
  Screenshots http://almin-soft.ru/index.php?programmy/pacmanxg/pacmanxg-screenshots
  Direct link to binary: http://almin-soft.ru/data/files/pacmanxg/download.php?get=pacmanXG4.tar.bz2
  Web page: http://almin-soft.ru/index.php?programmy/pacmanxg/tags/pacmanxg (ru, present "Google site translate" ability) || AUR : pacmanxg4-bin

- PacmanExpress — GUI front-end for pacman. Depends neither GTK+ nor Qt, just X11. This graphical tool is a lightweight version of PacmanXG

  - Interface "all in one box"
  - No query. Install/remove packages takes place immediately.
  - Ability to run multiple operations/remove packages (be careful!)
  - yaourt support

  Direct link to binary: http://almin-soft.ru/data/files/pacmanxg/download.php?get=pacmanexpress.tar.bz2
  Web page: http://almin-soft.ru/index.php?programmy/pacmanexpress/tags/pacmanexpress (ru, present "Google site translate" ability) || AUR : pacmanexpress

- tkPacman — GUI front-end for pacman. Depends on Tcl/Tk and X11 but neither on GTK+, nor on QT. It only interacts with the package database via the CLI of 'pacman'. So, installing and removing packages with tkPacman or with pacman leads to exactly the same result.

  - Browse packages available in repositories;
  - Browse installed packages;
  - Many ways for filtering packages (word, group, repo, upgrades, orphans, explicit, foreign, fileowner);
  - Display detailed information of packages;
  - Display list of files belonging to installed packages;
  - Refresh package database;
  - Full system upgrade;
  - Install a package from a local file;
  - View pacman.log file.
  Web page:http://sourceforge.net/projects/tkpacman || AUR : tkpacman

### GNOME/GTK+

- GNOME PackageKit — Distribution-agnostic collection of utilities for managing packages. Using the alpm backend, it supports the following features:

  - Install and remove packages from the repos.
  - Periodically refresh package databases and prompt for updates.
  - Install packages from tarballs.
  - Search for packages by name, description, category or file.
  - Show package dependencies, files and reverse dependencies.
  - Ignore IgnorePkgs and hold HoldPkgs.
  - Report optional dependencies, .pacnew files, etc.
  You can change the remove operation from -Rc to -Rsc by setting the DConf key org.gnome.packagekit.enable-autoremove.

  http://packagekit.org/ || gnome-packagekit

- zenity_pacgui — Zenity GUI for Pacman.

  http://sourceforge.net/projects/zenitypacgui/ || zenity_pacgui

- Argon — lightweight python GUI package manager

  - package installation/removal and system update, including AUR (via pacaur)
  - top-level package list
  - configurable update notifier

  http://code.google.com/p/arch-argon || argon

### KDE/Qt

- KPackageKit/Apper — GUI frontend for PackageKit. Pacman integration is accomplished via the packagekit, which gained upstream support for pacman. This graphical tool allows to do the following from KDE's systemsettings:

  - Install/remove/upgrade packages
  - Search packages/filter packages
  - Retrieve package info
  - Refresh package database
  - Choose which repositories will be updated
  - Automatically refresh database (Hourly, daily etc.)
  - Automatically update packages
  While pacman support in PackageKit is relatively new, it works with no major problems, providing ease of use, simplicity, and good integration with KDE (and PolicyKit).
  Screenshots: http://kde-apps.org/content/show.php/Apper?content=84745
  http://kde-apps.org/content/show.php/Apper?content=84745 || apper

- AppSet — Advanced and feature rich GUI front-end for Package Managers. AppSet has the following features:

  - Software sections (games, office, multimedia, internet etc.)
  - Shows homepages for selected packages in an embedded web browser
  - Shows distributions news with an embedded feed reader
  - Upgrades, installs and removes packages
  - Shows available upgrades with a Tray Icon
  - Updates database periodically
  - Informs about dependencies (for example when trying to remove a package needed by others)
  - Cache clean command (to free disk space)
  - Intelligent launcher that uses what is already installed to get administrative privileges (by searching for kdesu, gksu or at last for an xterm where it starts with a sudo command)
  - Now with AUR support with Packer as backend
  AppSet needs only QT libs as dependence for installation. It can be used in any desktop environment. Currently only works for Archlinux using pacman.
  Screenshots http://sourceforge.net/project/screenshots.php?group_id=376825
  http://appset.sourceforge.net/ || appset-qt

- Octopi — Powerful Pacman frontend written in Qt. Features include:

  - LOW in resource consumption (including memory)
  - FAST
  - Supports Antergos, Arch, ArchBang, Chakra, KaOS, Manjaro Linux, mooOS and Netrunner Rolling
  - Supports Cinnamon, KDE 4.x, XFCE, LXDE, LXQt, MATE, Openbox and TDE
  - Systemtray icon providing notifier support
  - Pacman sync database, system upgrade and clean cache support
  - Yaourt / Pacaur support
  - Install/Re install/Upgrade/Remove selected packages – watching the output of these commands on demand – in a trasaction based abstraction
  - View the contents of installed packages (including opening and editing its files)
  - View the description of packages in tooltips, just moving the mouse over them
  Octopi needs QT(4/5) libs as dependence for installation.
  Screenshots http://octopiproject.wordpress.com/screenshots/
  http://octopiproject.wordpress.com/ || octopi-git

### Ncurses

- pcurses — Package management in a curses frontend, including:

  - regexp filtering and searching any package property
  - customizable colorcoding
  - customizable sorting
  - external command execution with package list string replacements
  - user defined macros and hotkeys
  Screenshots https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=122749
  https://github.com/schuay/pcurses || pcurses

- yaourt-gui — Designed for new users who want to start using Arch Linux. Written in Bash, it offers a GUI from terminal to the common tasks of yaourt and pacman.

  Screenshots http://sourceforge.net/projects/yaourt-gui/
  Direct link to source: http://sourceforge.net/projects/yaourt-gui/files/yaourt-gui-0.9.tar.gz
  Web page:http://alexiobash.com/yaourt-gui-a-bash-gui-per-yaourt-3/ || AUR : yaourt-gui

## Pacman/AUR package browser

- PkgBrowser — Application for searching and browsing Arch packages, showing details on selected packages.

  - Search and browse Arch packages including the AUR
  - Purely an informational application that cannot be used to install, remove or update packages
  - By design, is an accessory to CLI package management via pacman
  - Further details on use via manual accessed from help menu
  Forum page: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=117297
  https://code.google.com/p/pkgbrowser/ || pkgbrowser

- Pacinfo — Application to browse the installed packages and show information like screenshot, installed files, installation date and others. Written in Mono/GTK#

  https://code.google.com/p/pacinfo/ || pacinfo

## System tray notifiers

- Aarchup — Fork of archup. Has the same options as archup plus a few other features. For differences between both please check changelog.

  Screenshots: http://i.imgur.com/yTNvg.png
  https://github.com/aericson/aarchup/ || aarchup

- pacman-notifier — Written in Ruby, uses GTK+. Shows an icon in the system tray and popup notifications (using libnotify) for new packages.

  Screenshots: https://github.com/v01d/pacman-notifier/wiki

  https://github.com/v01d/pacman-notifier/wiki || pacman-notifier

- Pacupdate — Small application that notifies the user about new updates for Arch Linux. If Pacupdate finds out that a update is available, it will display a notification in SystemTray

  https://code.google.com/p/pacupdate/ || pacupdate-svn

- Yapan — Written in C++ and Qt. It shows an icon in the system tray and popup notifications for new packages and supports AUR helpers.

  Forum page: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=113078
  http://code.google.com/p/arch-yapan/ || yapan

- ZenMan — Pacman frontend (tray update notifier) for GTK+/GNOME/zenity/libnotify.

  Screenshots: http://show.harvie.cz/screenshots/zenman-screenshot-2.png
  https://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=25948 || zenman

- pkgnotify.sh — Simple 14 line shell script that displays the number of available updates in the dzen2 title window and a list of these updates in the slave window. Depends on dzen2, inotify-tools, package-query and optionally an AUR helper (yaourt by default).

  Screenshots: http://andreasbwagner.tumblr.com/post/853471635/arch-linux-update-notifier-for-dzen2
  http://pointfree.net/repo/?r=dzen2_scripts;a=headblob;f=/src/pkgnotify/pkgnotify.sh || not packaged? search in AUR

- kalu — Small C application that adds an icon in the systray and can show notifications for Arch Linux News, Upgrades, AUR upgrades, and watched (AUR) upgrades (upgrades for packages not installed). Also includes a GUI system upgrader.

  Screenshots: http://jjacky.com/kalu
  Forum: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=135773
  https://github.com/jjk-jacky/kalu || kalu

## Inactive software packages

- Wakka - Next generation of gtkpacman
- GtkPacman - GTK+ frontend
- Guzuta - GTK+ frontend.
- Shaman - GUI using Pacman’s libalpm library
- pacmon - notification GUI.
- Paku - GUI alternative to Pacman.
- YAPG.

Categories:

- Arch User Repository
- Package management