pamac is the friendly software manager you'll see in Manjaro's menu. Click an app, click install, done. But the same tool has a command-line version that's genuinely useful — especially if you live in a terminal but still want pamac's nice integration with the AUR.
How it relates to pacman
pacman is the underlying Arch package manager. pamac is a wrapper that adds: a graphical UI, AUR support, Flatpak support, and a few nicer defaults. Both work side by side — using one doesn't break the other.
Day-to-day commands
pamac search bat # search both official repos and the AUR
pamac info bat # show details for a package
pamac install bat # confirm, then install
pamac remove bat # uninstall
pamac update # upgrade everything that has an update
pamac clean # delete cached package downloadsCompare to the pacman equivalents (pacman -Ss, pacman -Si, etc.) — pamac's commands read more like English, which is the whole point.
Building from the AUR
pamac build paru-binThe build verb means "this is an AUR package — fetch the recipe, build it, install the result." pamac shows you the recipe and asks you to confirm before doing anything dangerous.
Check for AUR updates specifically:
pamac checkupdates -aClean up after experiments
pamac remove --orphans"Orphans" are packages that were installed only as dependencies of something else, and that something else is now gone. They're safe to remove.
Disabling the tray icon
If you don't want pamac to live in your system tray and check for updates every hour:
systemctl --user disable --now pamac-tray-icon-plasma # KDE
systemctl --user disable --now pamac-tray-icon-gtk # GNOME / Cinnamon / XfceYou can still open the GUI manually whenever you want.
When to use which
- Single quick install?
pacman -S nameis shorter. - Searching across both repos and AUR?
pamac searchbeats the equivalent dance with pacman and a separate AUR helper. - Scripting?
pacmanis more predictable.pamacassumes a user is watching.