AvengeMedia/DankMaterialShell
DankMaterialShell
DankMaterialShell is a complete Wayland desktop environment that provides a unified set of panels, widgets, system tray, notifications, and an application launcher out of the box. It is built on a plugin-based shell architecture that allows for extending the desktop with custom widgets, launcher items, and background services through a unified component interface. The shell renders its panels, widgets, and overlays using the Wayland layer shell protocol for compositor-agnostic desktop integration.
The project distinguishes itself through several integrated capabilities that work together as a cohesive system. It includes a Material Design 3 dynamic theming engine that generates color palettes from wallpapers and applies them consistently across GTK, Qt, terminal, and editor applications. A unified calendar aggregator synchronizes events from local, CalDAV, Google, and iCloud accounts into a single agenda view with background sync and reminders. The shell also provides a filesystem index search service for fast full-text, regex, and fuzzy search with automatic incremental syncing and a REST API. System resource monitoring uses a cursor-based stateless sampling technique to measure CPU, disk, and network usage on demand without persistent daemons.
The desktop environment includes a graphical login screen that authenticates users and launches their desktop session on Wayland. It exposes system metrics through an HTTP server with a documented REST API for programmatic access, and provides command-line tools for querying metrics, managing screenshots, controlling brightness, and discovering keybindings. The entire desktop shell can be managed declaratively through NixOS modules with automatic dependency resolution and compositor configuration generation.
Features
- Desktop Shells - Provides a complete Wayland desktop environment with panels, widgets, system tray, notifications, and app launcher out of the box.
- Desktop Panel Systems - Provides a complete desktop shell with panels, widgets, system tray, notifications, and media controls for Wayland compositors.
- Unified Agenda Aggregators - Aggregates events from local, CalDAV, Google, and iCloud accounts into a single agenda view.
- Filesystem Indexers - Indexes files for fast full-text, regex, and fuzzy search with automatic syncing.
- Filesystem Search Scopes - Ships a filesystem search service that indexes directories for fast file retrieval.
- File Search Queries - Provides a CLI tool for querying the local file index and returning matching results.
- Unified - Uses a single, unified configuration approach instead of separate tools with different syntaxes.
- Dependency Verification - Checks that every optional and required component is present and correctly configured for the shell.
- Desktop Shell Replacements - Replaces fragmented desktop components with a unified shell for Wayland compositors.
- Searchable Indexes - Crawls specified directories and builds a searchable index of file metadata for fast lookups.
- Desktop Shell Plugin Frameworks - Extending the shell with custom widgets, launcher items, and background services through a plugin framework.
- Shell Plugin Architectures - Extends the desktop shell with hot-reloadable plugins for widgets, launchers, and daemons.
- NixOS Deployments - Manages the entire desktop shell declaratively through NixOS modules with automatic dependency resolution.
- Event Notifications - Sends native desktop notifications for calendar events with configurable per-event and per-calendar reminders.
- Layer-Shell Protocol Integration - Renders panels, widgets, and overlays using the Wayland layer-shell protocol for compositor-agnostic integration.
- Cursor-Based Stateless Samplers - Implements cursor-based stateless sampling for on-demand CPU, disk, and network measurement.
- Stateless Samplers - Tracks CPU, disk, and network usage using a cursor-based stateless sampling technique.
- Multi-Provider Calendar Aggregators - Aggregates local, Google, Microsoft, CalDAV, and iCloud calendars into a single view with background sync.
- Desktop Color Palette Theming - Generates a cohesive color palette from a wallpaper or accent color and applies it across applications.
- Calendar Views - Aggregates events from multiple providers into a single unified agenda view.
- Desktop Widgets - Renders freely positionable and resizable widgets directly on the desktop background layer.
- Desktop Environment - Renders a modern desktop shell with dynamic theming and smooth animations for a cohesive look.
- Material Design Palette Generation - Generates Material Design 3 color palettes from wallpapers and applies them across desktop applications.
- Search-Based Application Launchers - Opens apps and searches the filesystem through a launcher with plugin support.
- Shell Widgets - Creates UI components that appear in the shell's bar or control center using a plugin component base.
- Hot-Reloaded Plugin Development - Reloads plugins at runtime without restarting the shell for faster development iteration.
- Google Calendar Synchronizations - Creates an OAuth application and completes authentication flow to synchronize with Google Calendar.
- iCloud Calendar Synchronizations - Uses an app-specific password to connect to iCloud's CalDAV service for calendar synchronization.
- Editor Themes - Applies generated color palettes to VSCode, Codium, Cursor, and Windsurf editors.
- Action Categorizations - Groups keybindings into semantic categories like Window, Workspace, and Execute for easier discovery.
- Quick Settings Toggles - Provides a configurable quick settings panel with toggle buttons for common system actions.
- Unified System Overview Panels - Shows media controls, weather, calendar, and system info in a unified panel for quick access.
- Qt Theme Applications - Applies the generated color palette to Qt applications via qt5ct or qt6ct, with optional environment variable configuration.
- Launchers And Search - Integrates filesystem search into the application launcher triggered by typing a slash.
- Background Calendar Daemons - Runs a background daemon that manages calendar data and provides a tray icon for user interaction.
- Calendar Event Management - Creates, updates, lists, and deletes calendar events with fields for summary, time, location, and reminders.
- Per-Calendar Configurations - Provides per-calendar and per-event reminder configuration through a graphical interface.
- Upcoming Event Displays - Displays upcoming events from configured calendars in a dedicated window accessible from tray or command.
- Calendar Servers - Connects to any CalDAV-compatible server using URL, username, and password for calendar synchronization.
- Fuzzy Matching - Applies fuzzy string matching to file names for typo-tolerant search results.
- Plugin Preferences - Saves and loads user-configured plugin preferences automatically using dedicated settings components.
- Photo - Filters image files by embedded EXIF metadata for searches based on camera settings or capture details.
- CLI Metric Queries - Queries system metrics through a command-line interface with sorting, filtering, and JSON output.
- Incremental Index Integration - Updates the search index incrementally with only new or modified files since the last sync.
- Multi-Directory Indexers - Indexes several directories with per-path depth limits and exclusion rules for targeted search.
- Window Manager Discoveries - Automatically discovers and displays keybindings from Hyprland, Sway, and other window manager configs.
- Launcher Extensions - Integrates with the launcher to provide searchable results triggered by a prefix without rendering its own UI.
- System Metric CLI Queries - Retrieves any system metric in human-readable or machine-readable format from the command line.
- Dependency Feature Managers - Toggles individual feature options to automatically install required system dependencies.
- REST APIs - Provides a documented REST API for programmatic retrieval of system metrics.
- Screen Capture Tools - Takes screenshots of the entire focused output or all outputs combined, saving to a file.
- Local File Indexers - Monitors the filesystem for changes and automatically refreshes the search index in real time.
- Theme Installers - Installs icon themes either system-wide or per-user for use by the shell.
- Automated Installers - Installs and manages the entire desktop suite with a single automated tool.
- Plugin Installations - Adds community or custom plugins to the shell through a plugin registry flake or source paths.
- Headless Plugin Development - Runs background services that monitor events or automate tasks without any user interface.
- Desktop Shell Restarts - Terminates and relaunches the desktop shell backend and UI processes to reload configuration changes.
- System Metrics HTTP Servers - Serves system metrics over HTTP with an OpenAPI specification for programmatic monitoring.
- Systemd Services - Runs the search API server as a systemd service with automatic restart and journal logging.
- NixOS Module Packages - Combines the project's flake package with the native NixOS module for declarative system-level setup.
- Compositor Configuration Generation - Generates default configuration files for niri or Hyprland covering keybinds, colors, and layout.
- Background Daemons - Runs a background service for automation, monitoring, and event handling with no user interface.
- Dynamic Theme Application - Applies the generated color palette to kitty, alacritty, ghostty, foot, and wezterm terminals using custom templates.
- Wayland Graphical Greeters - Provides a Wayland-compatible graphical login screen with session chooser and user authentication.
- Secure Token Storage - Saves OAuth tokens and account secrets in the system keyring instead of plaintext files.
- Calendar Account Syncs - Runs background synchronization of all configured calendar accounts with manual sync option.
- Transient Data Stores - Stores transient data like command history or cached results in per-plugin files separate from user settings.
- On-Screen Displays - Ships a brightness on-screen display with step-based increment and decrement via shell IPC.
- Cursor-Based Samplers - Collects metric data across user-defined time windows using cursor-based stateless sampling.
- Desktop Dashboard - Shows upcoming events from CalDAV calendars directly on the desktop dashboard.
- Background Calendar Sync Daemons - Runs a lightweight daemon that keeps all connected calendar accounts synchronized and serves the UI over IPC.
- Local ICS Calendar Sources - Points a calendar tool at a directory of .ics files for local calendar management.
- Variant Generators - Generates dark, light, and mode-aware palette variants in a single command for theming templates.
- Browser Theme Applications - Applies generated color palettes to Firefox and Zen Browser via extensions and user stylesheets.
- User-Greeter Theme Coordination - Automatically synchronizes the greeter's wallpaper, themes, and fonts with the user's desktop configuration.
- Multi-Monitor Wallpaper Assignments - Assigns a different wallpaper image, solid color, or animated asset to each connected display.
- Automatic Contrast Adjusters - Adjusts generated colors to meet minimum contrast ratios using Delta Phi Star or WCAG 2.1 algorithms.
- Interface Color Schemes - Reads color definitions from a JSON file to apply a consistent visual theme across the desktop.
- Draggable Resizable Placements - Renders draggable, resizable widgets on the desktop background layer with per-monitor positioning.
- GTK Toolkits - Creates symlinks from generated color files to GTK CSS files for GTK 3 and GTK 4 applications.
- Greeter Display Configurations - Sets clock format, weather display, theme, fonts, colors, corner radius, and animation speed via JSON.
- Keyboard Navigation Shortcuts - Provides full keyboard-driven navigation, a shortcuts overlay, and spotlight-style search across events.
- Keybinding Overlays - Opens a modal overlay within the desktop shell to display keybindings for any provider.
- Popout Overlays - Attaches popout overlay menus to widgets with consistent header, footer, and close functionality.
- Separate Light and Dark Palettes - Creates matching light and dark palette variants from a single input color for automated theme switching.
- Toggle Items - Adds toggleable items to the control center with configurable icon, text, and active state.
- Custom Widget Additions - Adds custom widgets to the desktop bar for displaying system monitors, media controls, or weather.
- Base16 Generators - Generates a 16-color ANSI palette from a single input hex color following the Base16 specification.
- Emulator Format Outputs - Formats generated palettes for direct use in Kitty, Foot, Alacritty, Ghostty, or Wezterm terminal emulators.
- Calendar Metadata Management - Lists, renames, and hides calendar accounts to control which calendars are visible.
- Desktop Shells - Material 3 inspired shell with high customizability.
