The Verve panel plugin is a comfortable command line plugin for the Xfce panel

• Usage
• Screenshots
• Required Packages
• Latest Release
• Source Code Repository
• Reporting Bugs

. The Verve plugin supports several nice features, such as:

• Opens URLs, e-mail addresses, directories, and programs
• Command history
• Auto-completion (including command history)
• Focus grabbing via D-BUS (so you can bind a shortcut to it)
• Custom input field width

New features in version 1.1.0:

• Ability to use the verve plugin to run smart bookmarks instead of commands
• Support for tilde and variable expansion in directory paths
• Support for running “normal” commands through your default shell (to expand variables and aliases)
• Ability to direct command beginning with ! or \ to DuckDuckGo
• Optional label (screenshot below)

• Add the plugin to the panel.

Once added to the panel, you can use the following keys to control Verve:

• TAB to iterate through auto-completion entries
• UP and DOWN arrows to iterate through the command history
• CTRL+ENTER to run a command in a terminal emulator
• ESC to clear your input

If you want to launch URLs or email addresses using Verve, just paste them into the input field and press ENTER.

Verve installs a script named verve-focus which can be used to bind a keyboard shorcut for Verve to grab the focus. To do so, you first need to open the Xfce settings manager:

xfce-setting-show

Once the dialog has appeared, chose Keyboard. In the next dialog, select the Shortcuts tab and add a shortcut for verve-focus.

After this, Verve should grab the focus and start blinking whenever you press this shortcut. To stop the blinking, just type something (like a command or something else) or click on it with the mouse.

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Verve Plugin Indicator Normal State

Verve Plugin Indicator Blinking After Grabbing Focus

Verve Plugin Auto-completion

Verve Plugin Indicator with Label

Verve Plugin Configuration General Tab Window

Verve Plugin Configuration Behaviour Tab Window

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• GLib
• GTK+-3.0
• exo
• libxfce4ui
• libxfce4util
• xfce4-panel
• libpcre

• wordexp (for tilde and variable expansion in directory paths)

For detailed information on the minimum required versions, check the meson.build file.

verve-focus is no longer supported in the GTK 3 version of xfce4-verve-plugin, due to changes in libraries related to dbus. (Let me know if you can contribute a patch to bring it back!)

• xfce4-verve-plugin 2.1.0 released (2025/05/20 10:44)

Read the CHANGELOG

• Download current release (older versions of this component are also available here)

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https://gitlab.xfce.org/panel-plugins/xfce4-verve-plugin

• Reporting Bugs – List of currently open bugs and instructions on how to submit new bug reports

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