Daniel Gustaw - Difference between i3-dmenu-desktop and dmenu

In ~/.config/i3/config you can see lines

# start dmenu (a program launcher)
bindsym $mod+d exec --no-startup-id dmenu_run
# A more modern dmenu replacement is rofi:
# bindcode $mod+40 exec "rofi -modi drun,run -show drun"
# There also is i3-dmenu-desktop which only displays applications shipping a
# .desktop file. It is a wrapper around dmenu, so you need that installed.
# bindcode $mod+40 exec --no-startup-id i3-dmenu-desktop

so there is by default dmenu_run and possible to activate i3-dmenu-desktop

Fist program - dmenu_run search by $PATH so it is more suitable for cli tools. Second - i3-dmenu-desktop checks locations /usr/share/applications and ~/.local/share/applications so it is better for applications with GUI.

So i3-dmenu-desktop gives better user experience.

Confounding bindcode $mod+40 means the same what bindsym $mod+d where 40 is selected to denote “d” in agreement with X Window System (X11) convention. You can check it by command:

xmodmap -pke | grep 40
keycode 40 = d D d D eth ETH eth

You will not see difference between bindsym $mod+d and bindcode $mod+40 unless you will use any exotic keyboard layout.

Finally I recommend settings with i3-dmenu-desktop instead of default dmenu_run, or you can try rofi.