Problem
Linux launchers tend to be either slow, split across a dozen small utilities, or both.
Hark is a resident daemon with a GTK4 overlay: it stays warm, so the hotkey path does not pay for a cold start.
Approach
A resident Rust daemon owns the index and the overlay. The hark-hotkey stub is GTK-free: it writes a toggle to the daemon instead of starting the full binary. Triggering the overlay is about 5x cheaper than spawning a fresh GTK process.
Search is local-first: apps, files, math, units, currency, timezones, battery state, definitions, translation, and a web fallback. Network-backed providers are cached.
Result
~8 µs
Median isolated app search across ~9,100 indexed items, October 2026.
The binary is ~7.8 MB and idle daemon RSS is ~60–65 MB.
Use
Hyprland: keep the daemon warm and bind the cheap stub.
exec-once = hark --daemon
bind = ALT, A, exec, hark-hotkeyA few queries it accepts:
2+2calculator100 km to miunit conversion100 usd to eurlive FX, cached15:00 here to tokyotimezonestr Holatranslationbatterypower status
Next
It targets Linux x86_64, with layer-shell recommended on Hyprland. Remaining work is distro packaging (AUR, Flatpak), daemon lifecycle edge cases, and test coverage for the search providers.