Synapse is a powerful app launcher for Ubuntu Linux, which allows to start applications as well as find and access relevant documents & files by making use of the Zeitgeist engine.

Synapse supports keyboard shortcuts. By default, you can:

1. press Ctrl+Space on keyboard to bring up the search box
2. type anything and use top/down arrow keys to navigate among results.
3. finally hit Enter to start application or open the document or file.

With the default enabled plugins, Synapse launcher also allows you to:

• find and execute arbitrary commands
• calculate basic expressions
• log out current session and lock screen
• shutdown, restart, suspend, hibernate computer
• share images using imgur
• connect to host with SSH
• search the web.

Install Synapse in Ubuntu 14.04:

Press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open terminal. When it opens, run commands below one by one to add Synapse stable PPA, update system cache and install the program:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:synapse-core/ppa

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install synapse

If you don’t want to add the PPA, download & install the synapse and synapse-dbg packages(.deb packages) from the launchpad page.

Once installed, open the program from the Dash or Menu. When it opens, you can configure the auto-start, keyboard shortcuts, and plugins from the indicator menu preferences window.

That’s it. Enjoy!