Pacsea

Pacsea is a TUI application for browsing and installing Arch and AUR packages. It includes an integrated Arch news and advisory feed, keyboard-first navigation, and optional support for extra package repositories you configure yourself.

Community

✨ Idea or bug? Open an issue or check out Idea Discussions

❤️ Thank you to the Pacsea community for your ideas, reports, and support!

Supported Platforms

Supported Distributions	Supported Languages

Main app view

News feed view

Browse Arch news, security advisories, package updates, and AUR comments in a unified feed. Filter by source, search with history, bookmark important items, and track read/unread status. All content is cached for offline access and automatically updated in the background.

Demo

Part 1 of a multipart walkthrough: Pacsea demo on YouTube

Table of Contents

• Demo
• Quick start
• Features
• Usage
• CLI Commands
• Configuration
• Troubleshooting
• Roadmap
• Credits
• License

Quick start

• Install (stable):

paru -S pacsea-bin   # or: yay -S pacsea-bin

• Install (latest):

paru -S pacsea-git   # or: yay -S pacsea-git

• Install via Cargo:

cargo install pacsea

• Run:

pacsea

A .desktop launcher and SVG icon ship under data/ for menus and packaging; the AUR packages install them for you.

Prefer a dry run first? Add --dry-run.

Features

Security-first approach for AUR Packages

• Security-first approach for installing AUR Packages.
• Security Coverage via automatic Scans and Optional Measures (e.g., converting AUR packages to Flatpak (in Planning)), and more

Security scans for AUR

Pacsea adds a security‑first workflow for AUR installs. Before building you can run one or more checks — ClamAV (antivirus), Trivy (filesystem), Semgrep (static analysis), ShellCheck for PKGBUILD/.install, VirusTotal hash lookups, custom suspicious pattern scanning, and aur-sleuth (LLM audit). Scans generate a comprehensive summary showing infections, vulnerabilities by severity, Semgrep findings count, and VirusTotal statistics.

VirusTotal API Setup: Configure your VirusTotal API key directly from the Optional Deps modal. The modal blocks main UI interactions to prevent accidental clicks/keys. For detailed setup instructions, see the How to use Pacsea wiki page.

System update dialog

TUI Optional Deps

• Install and verify recommended helper tools directly from a dedicated view with environment-aware defaults.
• Desktop-aware preferences include GNOME Terminal on GNOME, Klipper on KDE, and support for multiple editors (nvim, vim, helix, emacs/emacsclient, nano).
• The modal detects your:
• environment (Wayland/X11, desktop environment, distro)
• and shows relevant options.
• Tools include editors, terminals, clipboard utilities (wl-clipboard for Wayland, xclip for X11),
• mirror updaters (reflector, pacman-mirrors, eos-rankmirrors, cachyos-rate-mirrors),
• AUR helpers (paru, yay), and
• security utilities (ClamAV, Trivy, Semgrep, ShellCheck, VirusTotal API setup, aur-sleuth).
• Quickly see what's installed and install missing packages directly from the modal.

Usage

Pacsea provides a keyboard-first interface for searching, queueing, and installing packages. For detailed usage instructions, keyboard shortcuts, and workflows, see the How to use Pacsea wiki page.

Quick overview: - Type to search packages across official repos and AUR - Queue packages for installation - Review packages before installing with the Preflight modal - Run security scans for AUR packages - Manage installed packages, including removal and downgrade - Switch to News mode (Options → News) or start directly in News mode to browse Arch news, security advisories, package updates, and AUR comments. Filter by source/age/installed-only, search with history (independent search inputs for each mode), bookmark/read items, and track package changes with automatic detection - Open Options → Repositories to review and apply your optional repository settings—Space turns lines on or off; after changes are applied, you might see a short prompt if something you already installed also shows up in a newly enabled source - All operations execute directly in the TUI with real-time output and progress indicators

For a complete reference of all keyboard shortcuts, see the Keyboard Shortcuts wiki page.

PKGBUILD preview

AUR Comments viewer

View community comments for AUR packages directly in Pacsea. Comments are automatically fetched and displayed with markdown formatting support, clickable URLs, and user profile links. The comments pane splits the Package Info area and updates automatically when navigating between packages. Toggle comments visibility with Ctrl+T or click the "Show comments" button in Package Info.

CLI Commands

Pacsea supports powerful command-line operations, allowing you to manage packages without launching the TUI. For a complete list of all CLI commands, options, and detailed usage instructions, see the CLI Commands section in the wiki.

You can also run pacsea --help to see all available commands and options.

Configuration

Pacsea uses configuration files in ~/.config/pacsea/: - settings.conf — app behavior (including main_pane_order and per-band vertical min/max for the main stack, layout percentages, defaults, visibility, scans, news, custom repo filter toggles, etc.) - theme.conf — colors and styling - keybinds.conf — keyboard shortcuts - repos.conf (optional) — third-party sync repo recipes for search, filters, and the Repositories modal; baseline template: config/repos.conf

Opening any of these from the app uses your VISUAL or EDITOR environment variable.

Privilege/auth behavior is configurable via privilege_tool (auto | sudo | doas) and auth_mode (prompt | passwordless_only | interactive) in settings.conf.

AUR voting over SSH is configurable in settings.conf with aur_vote_enabled, aur_vote_ssh_timeout_seconds, and aur_vote_ssh_command.

For complete configuration documentation, including all available settings, theme customization, and keybind configuration, see the Configuration wiki page.

Example configuration files are available in the config/ directory.

News mode supports multiple sources (Arch news, advisories, package updates, AUR comments) with smart caching and background processing. Configure via app_start_mode (package or news to start in News mode), news_filter_* toggles for each source type, news_filter_installed_only, and news_max_age_days (default: unlimited) in settings.conf.

Preflight Modal

By default, Pacsea shows a Preflight review modal before installs/removals. This allows you to inspect dependencies, files, config conflicts, and optionally run AUR security scans.

For Install actions: Review dependencies that will be installed, files that will be added, and optionally run security scans for AUR packages.

For Remove actions: Review reverse dependencies (packages