networkmanager-dmenu VS dmenu-extended

Also not an answer but I use networkmanager-dmenu to control it through dmenu.

You could also try networkmanaget-dmenu which is a dmenu or rofi frontend to NetworkManager.

if you want to install networkmanager dmenu, just install it from its github repo: https://github.com/firecat53/networkmanager-dmenu

Networkmanager-dmenu : full instructions are included.

I wanted the same experience (press hotkey, type part of the name of the file, press enter) and wrote this small program that does exactly that (plus handles websites, shell commands, and is very customizable). By default it uses dmenu but you can make it use rofi or anything else. There's actually a whole bunch of similar programs, such as dmenu-extended which probably is the most famous.

which are then used as system-wide applications. For example this one here.

I'll have to have a look at how this differs, but I recently came across dmenu_extended, which had a lot of features, but which I found to be a slight pain to set up.