Walker shows "No Results" on Arch Linux/Wayland (Niri)

[superbagel9079]

Hi,

I'm new to Wayland (recently switched from X) and trying to get Walker working on Niri. I've followed the documentation and installed the following via yay:

• walker
• elephant
• elephant-desktopapplications
• elephant-providerlist

When I launch Walker, the search window opens but displays "No Results" and doesn't show any applications.

Could you help me confirm:

Is Walker expected to work on Niri?
Are there additional configuration steps or dependencies I might be missing?
Is there a way to check whether Elephant is properly indexing applications or if there’s a permission/compositor integration issue?

I’m on Arch Linux (fully updated) and running Niri as my Wayland compositor. Let me know what logs or info would be helpful to provide.

Thanks!

[abenz1267]

Whats the output of elephant l ? also yay -Q | grep elephant

[ewma18]

I have the same issue, elephant l outputs nothing.
yay -Q | grep elephant outputs
elephant-bin 2.17.2-1
elephant-calc 2.17.2-2
elephant-calc-debug 2.17.2-2
elephant-desktopapplications 2.17.2-2
elephant-desktopapplications-debug 2.17.2-2
elephant-files 2.17.2-2
elephant-files-debug 2.17.2-2
elephant-providerlist 2.17.2-2
elephant-providerlist-debug 2.17.2-2
elephant-runner 2.17.2-2
elephant-runner-debug 2.17.2-2
elephant-symbols 2.17.2-2
elephant-symbols-debug 2.17.2-2

systemctl --user status elephant outputs
● elephant.service - Elephant
Loaded: loaded (/home/ewma/.config/systemd/user/elephant.service; enabled; preset
: enabled)
Active: active (running) since Thu 2026-01-01 18:16:40 -03; 31min ago
Invocation: 9ecbbbec0c1a4c209b66f95a604f21ea
Main PID: 1176 (elephant)
Tasks: 9 (limit: 37951)
Memory: 25.7M (peak: 38.7M)
CPU: 88ms
CGroup: /user.slice/user-1000.slice/user@1000.service/app.slice/elephant.service
└─1176 elephant

Jan 01 18:41:58 ewma-avell elephant[1176]: 2026/01/01 18:41:58 INFO providers p=deskto
papplications,calc,websearch results=0 time=96.946µs
Jan 01 18:41:59 ewma-avell elephant[1176]: 2026/01/01 18:41:59 INFO providers p=deskto
papplications results=0 time=98.421µs
Jan 01 18:41:59 ewma-avell elephant[1176]: 2026/01/01 18:41:59 INFO providers p=deskto
papplications,calc,websearch results=0 time=88.729µs
Jan 01 18:42:00 ewma-avell elephant[1176]: 2026/01/01 18:42:00 INFO providers p=deskto
papplications,calc,websearch results=0 time=127.023µs
Jan 01 18:42:00 ewma-avell elephant[1176]: 2026/01/01 18:42:00 INFO providers p=deskto
papplications,calc,websearch results=0 time=103.431µs
Jan 01 18:42:00 ewma-avell elephant[1176]: 2026/01/01 18:42:00 INFO providers p=deskto
papplications,calc,websearch results=0 time=83.851µs
Jan 01 18:44:18 ewma-avell elephant[1176]: 2026/01/01 18:44:18 INFO comm connection=ne
w
Jan 01 18:44:18 ewma-avell elephant[1176]: 2026/01/01 18:44:18 INFO comm connection=ne
w
Jan 01 18:44:18 ewma-avell elephant[1176]: 2026/01/01 18:44:18 INFO subscription new=m
enus
Jan 01 18:44:18 ewma-avell elephant[1176]: 2026/01/01 18:44:18 INFO providers p=deskto
papplications results=0 time=28.701µs

[abenz1267]

if elephant l outputs nothing, that's your problem.

I highly advise against using the AUR bin package. I don't maintain that. The plugins and main app need to be build from the exact same source.

[ewma18]

running elephant i got this output

2026/01/02 09:35:24 INFO elephant config="using default config"
2026/01/02 09:35:24 INFO config "runprefix autodetect"=<empty>
2026/01/02 09:35:24 INFO menus config="using default config"
2026/01/02 09:35:24 ERROR providers load=/usr/lib/elephant/providerlist.so err="plugin.Open(\"/usr/lib/elephant/providerlist\"): plugin was built with a different version of package internal/goarch"
2026/01/02 09:35:24 ERROR providers load=/usr/lib/elephant/calc.so err="plugin.Open(\"/usr/lib/elephant/calc\"): plugin was built with a different version of package internal/goarch"
2026/01/02 09:35:24 ERROR providers load=/usr/lib/elephant/files.so err="plugin.Open(\"/usr/lib/elephant/files\"): plugin was built with a different version of package internal/goarch"
2026/01/02 09:35:24 ERROR providers load=/usr/lib/elephant/desktopapplications.so err="plugin.Open(\"/usr/lib/elephant/desktopapplications\"): plugin was built with a different version of package internal/goarch"
2026/01/02 09:35:24 ERROR providers load=/usr/lib/elephant/symbols.so err="plugin.Open(\"/usr/lib/elephant/symbols\"): plugin was built with a different version of package internal/goarch"
2026/01/02 09:35:24 ERROR providers load=/usr/lib/elephant/runner.so err="plugin.Open(\"/usr/lib/elephant/runner\"): plugin was built with a different version of package internal/goarch"
2026/01/02 09:35:24 ERROR providers load=/lib/elephant/providerlist.so err="plugin.Open(\"/lib/elephant/providerlist.so\"): plugin was built with a different version of package internal/goarch (previous failure)"
2026/01/02 09:35:24 ERROR providers load=/lib/elephant/calc.so err="plugin.Open(\"/lib/elephant/calc.so\"): plugin was built with a different version of package internal/goarch (previous failure)"
2026/01/02 09:35:24 ERROR providers load=/lib/elephant/files.so err="plugin.Open(\"/lib/elephant/files.so\"): plugin was built with a different version of package internal/goarch (previous failure)"
2026/01/02 09:35:24 ERROR providers load=/lib/elephant/desktopapplications.so err="plugin.Open(\"/lib/elephant/desktopapplications.so\"): plugin was built with a different version of package internal/goarch (previous failure)"
2026/01/02 09:35:24 ERROR providers load=/lib/elephant/symbols.so err="plugin.Open(\"/lib/elephant/symbols.so\"): plugin was built with a different version of package internal/goarch (previous failure)"
2026/01/02 09:35:24 ERROR providers load=/lib/elephant/runner.so err="plugin.Open(\"/lib/elephant/runner.so\"): plugin was built with a different version of package internal/goarch (previous failure)"
2026/01/02 09:35:24 INFO elephant startup=92.200106ms
2026/01/02 09:35:24 INFO comm listen=starting

Will install again from source, thx!

[ewma18]

Ok, using
yay -S walker elephant elephant-providerlist elephant-desktopapplications elephant-files elephant-runner elephant-calc elephant-symbols

worked for me, cheers!