Software discovery and installation broadly comes in two flavors – via graphical user interface or on the command line. If you’re using a Linux distribution with a friendly software frontend offering integrated snap support, e.g. KDE Discover or GNOME Software, you can enjoy the experience without having to resort to using a terminal window.

For command-line users, the experience is somewhat different. When you want to search for snaps, the default results may be a little too generic, and finding the applications you need can take some time. Moreover, this is in contrast to the colorful Snap Store, which lets you browse categories, individual publishers, and so on. Well, working on the command line does not mean you need to be left out.

Finding you way

Running snap find without any arguments will show the list of featured snaps, a curated list showcasing the new, interesting or unique software available in the Snap Store. The results are identical to the set you will in Gnome Software in Ubuntu, as well as what you see under the Featured category on the store page.

snap find

No search term specified. Here are some interesting snaps:

Name                    Version                  Publisher              Notes    Summary
postman                 7.13.0                   postman-inc✓           -        API Development Environment
color-picker            1.0                      keshavnrj              -        A colour picker and colour editor for web designers and digital artists
powershell              6.2.3                    microsoft-powershell✓  classic  PowerShell for every system!
...

If you are not happy with the default results, you can fine-tune your search. Type snap find -h to see what additional options are available. Please note that typing snap find help will in fact search for snaps containing the string “help” in their name, summary or description.

[find command options]
  --private                       Search private snaps
  --narrow                        Only search for snaps in “stable”
  --section=                      Restrict the search to a given section (default: no-section-specified)
  --color=[auto|never|always]     Use a little bit of colour to highlight some things. (default: auto)
  --unicode=[auto|never|always]   Use a little bit of Unicode to improve legibility. (default: auto)

Notably, the section search is rather useful. If you don’t know which sections exist, you can just type snap find –section to get the list of available categories.

snap find --section
No section specified. Available sections:
 * art-and-design
 * books-and-reference
 * development
 * devices-and-iot
...

For example, the results for the development section:

snap find --section=development

Name                     Version                         Publisher            Notes    Summary
sublime-text          3211                            snapcrafters         classic  A sophisticated text editor for code, markup and prose.
pycharm-community    2019.3                          jetbrains✓             classic  Python IDE for Professional Developers
postman              7.13.0                          postman-inc✓           -        API Development Environment
atom                 1.42.0                          snapcrafters           classic  A hackable text editor for the 21st Century.
...

Another interesting feature is the ability to view snaps that are not necessarily accessible to everyone. Developers have the option to have their applications listed publicly, have them unlisted (accessible if you know the name but not searchable) or marked as private, in which case you can only access them if you have the right credentials. Indeed, if you’re logged into the store in the current shell, you can also search for your private snaps. This can be useful if you’re a publisher with multiple collaborators, and need to look for content created by your colleagues or peers.

Once you’ve narrowed down your search, you can then get more details with snap info. This command returns the full snap description, as well as a list of all the available channels and versions they include. For example, this could be useful if you intend to parallel install the snap, and test multiple versions of the application.

snap info vlc
name:      vlc
summary:   The ultimate media player
publisher: VideoLAN✓
contact:   https://www.videolan.org/support/
license:   GPL-2.0+
description: |
  VLC is the VideoLAN project's media player.

  Completely open source and privacy-friendly, it plays every multimedia file and streams.

  It notably plays MKV, MP4, MPEG, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, MOV, 
  WMV, QuickTime, WebM, FLAC, MP3, Ogg/Vorbis files, BluRays, 
  DVDs, VCDs, podcasts, and multimedia streams from various 
  network sources. It supports subtitles, closed captions and is 
  translated in numerous languages.
snap-id: RT9mcUhVsRYrDLG8qnvGiy26NKvv6Qkd
channels:
  stable:    3.0.7                       2019-06-07 (1049) 212MB -
  candidate: 3.0.8                       2019-12-16 (1397) 212MB -
  beta:      3.0.8-107-g46d459f          2019-12-17 (1399) 212MB -
  edge:      4.0.0-dev-10357-g3977a4f1de 2019-12-17 (1398) 328MB -

Summary

Small things can sometimes go a long way. In this regard, the snap command-line search functionality does offer some useful extras that people might not necessarily be aware of, or discover right away. Our goal is to make the overall snap experience as streamlined as possible, so if you have any clever ideas on this topic, please join our forum for a discussion.

Photo by Christer Ehrling on Unsplash.