Sometimes I spend a lot of time with searching / testing apps, and I fell into thought about optimizations of it.
My base flow is:
search on net → search on NixOS Search → copy-paste install command → run app
So I tried to remove / optimize copy-paste and run steps.
I add button “Launch” to every package in results list. On button click selected package starts.
Here is the example.
I use Tampermonkey browser extension to inject my custom script on webpage.
Script checks if specific elements are appeared on page and inject button (technically, <a> tag).
Buttons have href built with template nixpkgs://<install_name>&<run_name>.
nixpkgs - custom mime type, tell about it later.
Here is the script
// ==UserScript==
// @name Inject Button to search.nixos.org/packages site
// @namespace http://tampermonkey.net/
// @version 2026-07-14
// @description Inject button to package element to launch package with nix-shell
// @author skilletfun
// @match https://search.nixos.org/packages*
// @icon https://www.google.com/s2/favicons?sz=64&domain=nixos.org
// @grant none
// ==/UserScript==
(function() {
'use strict';
const proto = "nixpkgs";
function injectLink(element) {
const ul = element.querySelector('ul');
if (!ul) return;
const lis = ul.querySelectorAll('li');
if (lis.length < 2) return;
const installPkg = element.querySelector('span').textContent;
const runPkg = element.querySelector('code').textContent;
const newLi = document.createElement('li');
const newCode = document.createElement('code');
const link = document.createElement('a');
link.textContent = 'Launch';
link.href = `${proto}://${installPkg}&${runPkg}`;
newCode.appendChild(link);
newLi.appendChild(newCode);
ul.insertBefore(newLi, lis[2]);
}
const observer = new MutationObserver((mutations) => {
mutations.forEach((mutation) => {
mutation.addedNodes.forEach((node) => {
// If it's an element node
if (node.nodeType === 1) {
if (node.classList && node.classList.contains('package')) {
injectLink(node);
}
}
if (node.querySelectorAll) {
node.querySelectorAll('.package').forEach((el) => {
injectLink(el);
});
}
});
});
});
observer.observe(document.body, {
childList: true,
subtree: true
});
})();
Browser cannot directly exec bash scripts by obvious reasons, so script wrapped with .desktop file (generated with home-manager). And I define custom mime type, named nixpkgs, so now any urls started with nixpkgs:// like nixpkgs://foo?bar=baz are handled and passed to my script.
Here is xdg.nix file imported in home-manager config
{ config, pkgs, ... }:
{
xdg.desktopEntries.pkgQuickLaunch = {
name = "Nixpkgs";
comment = "Launch provided package with nix-shell";
terminal = false;
exec = "script.sh %u";
type = "Application";
mimeType = [ "x-scheme-handler/nixpkgs" ];
noDisplay = true;
};
xdg.mimeApps = {
enable = true;
defaultApplications = {
"x-scheme-handler/nixpkgs" = [ "pkgQuickLaunch.desktop" ];
};
};
xdg.configFile."mimeapps.list".force = true;
}
Here is bash script. It gets data from browser, extract package names, install and run it.
#!/bin/sh
input=$1
fixed="${input/nixpkgs:\/\/}"
installPkg="$(echo "$fixed" | cut -d'&' -f1)"
runPkg="$(echo "$fixed" | cut -d'&' -f2)"
kitty nix-shell -p "$installPkg" --run "$runPkg"
I make it more for fun / learning, not as kinda serious project.
Hope it will be interesting for someone 
