This utility is an app indicator (tray icon) to help you reboot into other OSes, or UEFI/BIOS, or the same OS. Instead of picking the OS you want during reboot at the grub menu, you can just preselect it from the menu here.
Behind the scenes, it calls grub-reboot.
I have tested it on Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Arch Linux.
You can apt install it from the PPA. This should work on recent releases of Ubuntu and Linux Mint.
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mendhak/ppa
sudo apt update
sudo apt install grub-reboot-picker
You can also download the .deb file from the Github Releases and install it.
sudo apt install ./grub-reboot-picker_0.0.12+noble_all.deb
There is an Arch AUR too. Thank you for creating it.
The application will auto start the next time you log in to Ubuntu/Mint.
You can also launch it directly by searching for Grub Reboot Picker in Activities
Click on the application icon. 
A menu with grub entries will appear.
Click one of the entries.
After a moment, the system will reboot.
The grub menu item you chose should be preselected.
If necessary for troubleshooting, you can view logs using journalctl as shown here:
journalctl -r -t grub-reboot-picker
This will show the logs in reverse order, the most recent log entry will be on top.
Configuration file or Configuration screen:
- Top level or double level menu items
- Nicknames for menu items
StartupNotify = true might be causing 'wait' cursor to appear
Run a single instance of the application
Show 'Linux Mint' instead of 'Ubuntu' on Linux Mint.
You can run this application directly from this git repo.
First get the dependencies
sudo apt install python3-gi python3-gi-cairo gir1.2-gtk-3.0 gir1.2-appindicator3-0.1
Clone this repo, then run the python script.
git clone https://github.com/mendhak/grub-reboot-picker.git
cd grub-reboot-picker
./grub-reboot-picker/grub-reboot-picker.py
You'll get prompted because the script wants to run grub-mkconfig which generates the grub config output.
Alternatively run the script with sudo so that you don't get prompted.
To view the logs, use journalctl as shown here:
journalctl -r -t grub-reboot-picker.py
This project uses pybuild to create a .deb file. The pyproject.toml file holds the information needed to do the build, and there are additional configuration files in debian folder such as control, links, install, changelog. All of these get used by pybuild to create the .deb.
The debian directory contains the files needed to build the .deb, but the .deb appears in the parent directory for some reason. It's messy which is why I prefer the Docker way.
# Set the version and suite (noble, jammy, etc)
nano version.sh
# Update the changelog, carefully
nano CHANGELOG.md
# Read the version
source version.sh
# Build the image which will build the deb
docker build --build-arg version=$version --build-arg suite=$suite --progress=plain -t docker-deb-builder .
# Alternately: docker buildx bake deb-builder
# Now grab the deb and dsc files
mkdir -p output
cd output
docker create --name docker-deb-builder docker-deb-builder
docker cp docker-deb-builder:/build/grub-reboot-picker_${version}.dsc ./
docker cp docker-deb-builder:/build/grub-reboot-picker_${version}.tar.xz ./
docker cp docker-deb-builder:/build/grub-reboot-picker_${version}_all.deb ./
docker rm docker-deb-builder
ls -lah
First, some build dependencies:
sudo apt install dpkg-dev fakeroot debhelper python3-all dh-python lintian devscripts python3-hatchling pybuild-plugin-pyproject build-essential
Then to build:
# Set the version and suite (noble, jammy, etc)
nano version.sh
# Update the changelog, carefully
nano CHANGELOG.md
# Read the version
source version.sh
# Clean everything
git clean -fdx
# Generate and test changelog
python3 other/generate_changelog.py
dpkg-parsechangelog -l debian/changelog
# Build the package
dpkg-buildpackage -uc -us
# Grab the deb and dsc files
mkdir -p output; mv ../grub-reboot-picker_${version}* output/
Either way, once the .deb is built, it's good to inspect it.
cd output
# Run a lint against this deb, check for errors
lintian grub-reboot-picker_${version}_all.deb
# Look at information about this deb
dpkg -I grub-reboot-picker_${version}_all.deb
# List all the files in the deb
dpkg -c grub-reboot-picker_${version}_all.deb
# Extract contents to a dir
dpkg-deb -R grub-reboot-picker_${version}_all.deb extracted/
# View changelog
zless extracted/usr/share/doc/grub-reboot-picker/changelog.gz
rm -rf extracted/
# View its dependencies
dpkg-deb -f grub-reboot-picker_${version}_all.deb Depends
After building, to upload to launchpad, I have to extract the sources, then GPG sign, then use dput to push up.
Then wait for launchpad to build the code, which can take up to an hour.
cd output
# Extract the source into a subdirectory
dpkg-source -x grub-reboot-picker_${version}.dsc
cd grub-reboot-picker-${version}/
# Build a debian package and GPG sign it - it uses the key id from the changelog
debuild -S -sa
# Also possible to specify the key id: debuild -S -sa -k6989CF77490369CFFDCBCD8995E7D75C76CBE9A9
# Upload to launchpad
dput ppa:mendhak/ppa ../grub-reboot-picker_${version}_source.changes
There is a Github action that will build and upload to Github releases, it just needs a tag to be created.
git tag -s v0.0.12 -m "Release v0.0.12"
git push origin --tags
Once the tag is pushed, Github Actions should publish it to the Releases.
There's a lot happening in a .deb file. For my own benefit, here are the files it creates, and their purpose.
The com.mendhak.grubrebootpicker.desktop file goes in two places.
/etc/xdg/autostart/ - ensures that the app is launched when the user logs in
/usr/share/applications/ - ensures that the app can be found when searching through Activities.
The com.mendhak.grubrebootpicker.rules is a polkit rules file that goes in /usr/share/polkit-1/rules.d/.
This allows members of administrative groups (sudo, wheel, admin) to reboot and power off via systemctl reboot and systemctl poweroff without a password prompt even when session inhibitor locks exist. Have a look at the big list of action IDs in there.
As part of the build the .py extension is removed. During install, the executable, extensionless Python script is put in /usr/sbin so that it's on the user's $PATH.