[community] Forum-scout — an arch based forums search tool. Available with yay

muzqs · May 22, 2026, 7:13am

Hey all,

Wanted to share something I’ve been working on for a while:

SCOUT, a lightweight GTK3 desktop app that searches multiple Arch-based forums simultaneously.

Available in repo:

Mabox
Manjaro
AUR

yay forum-scout

Choose which forums to search.

Get already asked questions. [type and use space]

Create bookmarks.

Look back what you search for in the past.

The idea started simple — I wanted a quick way to search all the usual forums at once, instead of visiting them one by one.
Turned out useful enough to keep building on it.

What it does:

Searches Mabox, EndeavourOS, Manjaro, Arch Wiki and Arch BBS in one query
Bookmarks — save useful topics, open or copy link later
Search history — re-run previous searches with double click
Dropdown search autocomplete from Discourse forums
Keyboard shortcuts — Ctrl+L focus search · Escape clear · F5 re-run
Persistent settings, multilingual (EN/NL/ES/PL)

For some topics I find it handy to keep a quick offline overview of threads I want to come back to.

Feedback welcome — bugs, feature ideas, whatever.

Disclaimer: Parts of this tool were built with AI assistance (Claude Sonnet by Anthropic). All code has been reviewed and tested by me.

M0nst3r · May 22, 2026, 7:47pm

Playing around with the script.

Man, this is f…g awesome! Already looking for an available keyboard letter, this one goes ASAP into my daily flow.

Thanks a million.

muzqs · May 22, 2026, 9:20pm

@M0nst3r ,

Thanks you like it.
If you have a github account, could you star it

M0nst3r · May 22, 2026, 10:23pm

Done. Well deserved.

muzqs · May 23, 2026, 12:12pm

Update:

Scout v0.1.1 is out — a few improvements based on early feedback:

CachyOS added — discuss.cachyos.org is now included as a search source (Discourse)
Forced theming removed — Scout now uses your system GTK theme instead of overriding it with its own colors. Thanks Daniel for pointing that out.
Forum colors adjusted — the color labels in the topbar and results list are now readable on both light and dark themes
Easy install — added install.sh for a one-command install to ~/.local/bin

Testing with feedback would be appreciated

muzqs · May 23, 2026, 3:29pm

Small update — improved forum colors based on feedback from the Manjaro forum:

Feedback from manjaro.

CachyOS color changed from red to violet, to avoid clashing with Arch BBS orange and improve readability on dark system themes.

Text should be better readable.

muzqs · May 23, 2026, 4:48pm

Update:

I think it has now all major distro’s in the search.

Searches

Arch Wiki
Arch BBS
Manjaro
Garuda
EndeavourOS
RebornOs
CachyOS
Mabox

M0nst3r · May 23, 2026, 6:58pm

Great.

My little suggestion would be (if possible) to make the Added column sortable. As a test, for example, I was searching for an old post in Manjaro and clicking on that column, if available, would get the result faster.

muzqs · May 23, 2026, 9:31pm

Update:

Changed the name to “forum-scout”. Scout is already in the aur.

Major changes in release forum-scout v0.2.0

muzqs · May 23, 2026, 9:46pm

Option to save old values

mv ~/.config/scout ~/.config/forum-scout 
mv ~/.cache/scout/ ~/.cache/forum-scout

To remove scout

rm -rf ~/.config/scout
rm -f ~/.local/bin/scout
rm -f ~/.local/share/applications/scout.desktop
rm -rf  ~/.cache/scout/

muzqs · May 24, 2026, 9:42am

Update:

v0.2.0

Added a Forums toggle button — hide the forum checkboxes when you don’t need them and get more space for results.

Getting great feedback from a closed Manjaro group — one moderator even suggested adding it to the AUR.
Not quite ready for that yet, but that’s the plan. A bit more testing first.

Thanks for testing!

napcok · May 24, 2026, 2:58pm

Hi @muzqs
Just FYI PKGBUILD works fine here
Congrats

muzqs · May 24, 2026, 3:15pm

Hahaha thats quick. Thanks for testing.

muzqs · May 24, 2026, 3:22pm

Now at version. 0.3.0

added pkgbuild
hotkey ctrl-F toggle forum menu
for moderators of the forums, they will see forum-scout searching the forum instead of Mozilla Navigator
some more development behind the screen

SauronsMouth · May 24, 2026, 6:29pm

Okay, I love it.

napcok · May 24, 2026, 7:11pm

Version 0.3.0 is available from Mabox repo.

yay forum-scout

Thanks @muzqs for handy tool

muzqs · May 24, 2026, 7:51pm

WOOw.

v0.3.0 is updated to v0.3.1 has (info hotkeys)

Non trivial…

Mabox20260524-21-52-52

napcok · May 24, 2026, 7:54pm

Thanks, updated

muzqs · May 24, 2026, 7:55pm

yay forum-scout
1 maboxlinux/forum-scout 0.3.0-1 (22.9 KiB 70.9 KiB) 
    Multi-forum search tool for Arch-based distros (GTK3)
==> Packages to install (eg: 1 2 3, 1-3 or ^4)
==> 1
Sync Explicit (1): forum-scout-0.3.0-1
resolving dependencies...
looking for conflicting packages...

Packages (1) forum-scout-0.3.0-1

Total Download Size:   0,02 MiB
Total Installed Size:  0,07 MiB

:: Proceed with installation? [Y/n] 
:: Retrieving packages...
 forum-scout-0.3.0-1-any.pkg.tar.zst failed to download
error: failed retrieving file 'forum-scout-0.3.0-1-any.pkg.tar.zst' from repo.maboxlinux.org : The requested URL returned error: 404
warning: failed to retrieve some files
error: failed to commit transaction (failed to retrieve some files)
Errors occurred, no packages were upgraded.
 -> error installing repo packages

napcok · May 24, 2026, 7:56pm

Try again
Use:

yay

first to update pkgslists.