# nova-shell

A [Quickshell](https://quickshell.outfoxxed.me)-based desktop shell for
[niri](https://github.com/YarikTH/ycmd), lovingly hallucinated by a statistical
text blender. Status bar, notification center, media controls, system overlays —
the full package, assembled by a glorified autocomplete engine that has never
once used a desktop environment in its life.

**Use at your own risk.** The slop machine was very confident about every
architectural decision, which is exactly when you should be most suspicious.

## "Features"

- Bar with workspaces, window title, clock, tray, and a regrettable number of widgets grouped into color-coded sections with glowing borders, because subtlety is dead
- Niri IPC integration — workspace indicator, focused window title with app icon, power menu with `niri msg action quit`. All event-driven, no polling
- Interactive hover panels — volume (with per-app mixer and output device switcher), brightness (with slider), media (with album art, transport controls, progress bar). Hover to peek, click to expand, leave to dismiss. The OSD and tooltip in one, because having three separate UI patterns for the same information was too reasonable
- Built-in notification center — replaces swaync entirely. Popup notifications slide in from the right with urgency-colored accents, auto-expire with configurable timeout, swipe-to-dismiss animations. Notification center with scrollable history, cascading clear-all animation, action buttons, and DND toggle. Persists across restarts because the robot doesn't trust your memory
- Context menus for tray icons with submenu support, network chooser (known available WiFi/ethernet), bluetooth device manager (connect/disconnect, battery levels)
- Privacy indicators — screenshare and microphone icons pulse red/green when PipeWire detects active video/audio capture streams. Finally, you'll know when your webcam is on, which is more than can be said for most laptop manufacturers
- Per-module accent colors that change based on state, with animated transitions. Battery blinks when critical and sends desktop notifications, because the robot cares about your hardware more than you do
- Audio visualizer on album art via cava — because the robot watched too many r/unixporn posts and couldn't help itself
- Screen corner rounding — tiny overlay windows with quarter-circle masks, click-transparent. Edge bar groups follow the screen corner curvature because the robot has opinions about pixel alignment
- Background overlay — neon cyberpunk clock with color-cycling colon and seconds bar, rendered on the background layer
- Overview backdrop — GPU-rendered hexagonal grid with wave animation and rainbow shimmer on edges, visible between workspace rows during niri overview (requires `place-within-backdrop` layer rule)
- Weather via wttrbar with configurable arguments and rich HTML tooltips
- Power menu with lock, suspend, logout, reboot, shutdown — detects niri for correct logout command
- Idle inhibitor with systemd-inhibit — tooltip shows all currently blocking inhibitors
- Event-driven updates for network, bluetooth, and power profiles via dbus-monitor/nmcli monitor — no more 5-second polling lag
- Animated everything: flyout tooltips slide in/out, modules fade on visibility change, icons crossfade on state change, notification count pops, popups swipe to dismiss. The bar is basically a screensaver at this point
- Home Manager module with stylix integration, per-module config objects (enable/disable + module-specific settings like polling intervals, thresholds, brightness step, notification timeout, max popups), and a theme system that hot-reloads
- treefmt + nixfmt for formatting, because even AI slop deserves consistent indentation

## Installation

Add the flake input and import the Home Manager module. The robot did not test
any of this on real hardware, but it was extremely confident while writing it,
which is the next best thing.

```nix
# flake.nix
inputs = {
  nova-shell.url = "git+https://git.berlin.ccc.de/vinzenz/nova-shell";
  nova-shell.inputs.nixpkgs.follows = "nixpkgs";
};
```

```nix
# home.nix
imports = [ inputs.nova-shell.homeModules.default ];
```

## Configuration

### Turning it on

```nix
programs.nova-shell.enable = true;
```

This installs the bar, the Symbols Nerd Font, and a systemd user service that
starts with `graphical-session.target`. If you use
[stylix](https://github.com/danth/stylix), colors and fonts are populated
automatically — one fewer thing for the AI to have gotten wrong. If you do not
use stylix, you get Catppuccin Mocha, because the robot has taste and it is
purple.

### Disabling modules

All modules are enabled by default, because the robot was optimistic about
what hardware you own and what software you run. Set any to `false` to make
them go away permanently, which will feel better than you expect.

Disabling `weather` also removes `wttrbar` from your packages, which is the
one piece of genuine dependency management in this entire project and
frankly more than it deserves.

```nix
programs.nova-shell.modules = {
  weather.enable     = false;  # also evicts wttrbar from your system
  bluetooth.enable   = false;  # for people whose computers have ethernet ports and opinions
  backlight.enable   = false;  # your desktop monitor does not have a backlight slider, probably
  battery.enable     = false;  # see above, but for power
  temperature.enable = false;  # what you don't measure can't alarm you
  disk.enable        = false;  # the number will only make you anxious
  power.enable       = false;  # if you enjoy living dangerously without a logout button

  # modules with extra config
  backlight.step = 2;                                  # brightness adjustment %
  weather.args   = [ "--nerd" "--location" "Berlin" ]; # wttrbar arguments
  temperature.warm = 55;                               # °C threshold for warm color
  temperature.hot  = 75;                               # °C threshold for hot color
  battery.warning  = 30;                               # % for warning notification
  battery.critical = 10;                               # % for critical blink + notification
  cpu.interval     = 2000;                             # polling interval in ms
  notifications.timeout    = 3000;                     # popup auto-dismiss in ms
  notifications.maxPopups  = 4;                        # max simultaneous popups (0 to disable)
  notifications.maxVisible = 10;                       # scrollable history limit in center
};
```

Each module is an object with `enable` (default `true`) and optional extra
settings. Full list: `workspaces`, `tray`, `windowTitle`, `clock`,
`notifications`, `mpris`, `volume`, `bluetooth`, `backlight`, `network`,
`powerProfile`, `idleInhibitor`, `weather`, `temperature`, `cpu`, `memory`,
`disk`, `battery`, `power`, `backgroundOverlay`, `overviewBackdrop`.

### Theme

Theme keys are merged on top of whatever stylix provides. You only need to
specify what you want to override. Values are written to
`~/.config/nova-shell/theme.json`, which the bar watches for changes at
runtime, so you can iterate on colors without restarting anything — a level
of polish that frankly raises uncomfortable questions about the rest of it.

```nix
programs.nova-shell.theme = {
  barHeight  = 28;
  barOpacity = 0.85;
  barPadding = 10;
  barSpacing = 8;
  radius     = 6;
  fontSize   = 13;
  fontFamily = "JetBrains Mono";

  # override individual palette entries if stylix's choices personally offend you
  colors.base00 = "#1a1a2e";
  colors.base05 = "#e0e0f0";
};
```

Full list of theme keys and their defaults:

| Key | Default | Controls |
|-----|---------|----------|
| `colors.base00`–`base0F` | Catppuccin Mocha | Base16 palette |
| `fontFamily` | `"sans-serif"` | Bar text font |
| `iconFontFamily` | `"Symbols Nerd Font"` | Nerd font for icons |
| `fontSize` | `12` | Base font size (px) |
| `barHeight` | `32` | Bar height (px) |
| `barOpacity` | `0.9` | Bar and flyout background opacity |
| `barPadding` | `8` | Left/right bar content margin (px) |
| `barSpacing` | `12` | Gap between modules (px) |
| `moduleSpacing` | `4` | Icon-to-label gap within a module (px) |
| `radius` | `4` | Corner radius for flyouts and menus (px) |
| `screenRadius` | `15` | Screen corner rounding, 0 to disable (px) |

### Systemd service

Enabled by default, bound to `graphical-session.target`. To attach it to
something more specific, or to disable it entirely because you have strong
feelings about how your session starts:

```nix
programs.nova-shell.systemd = {
  enable = true;
  target = "niri.service";
};
```

### Niri overview backdrop

If you use the Home Manager module like a civilized person, the required niri
layer rule is added automatically. If you insist on managing your niri config
by hand — because declarative configuration is apparently too convenient — add
this to your `config.kdl`:

```kdl
layer-rule {
    match namespace="^nova-overview-backdrop$"
    place-within-backdrop true
}
```

Without this, the overview backdrop widgets won't be visible between workspace
rows. The bar will still work, you'll just miss out on the pretty parts, which
is arguably what you deserve for not using Nix properly.

## Contributing

Sure, why not. It can't get much worse, and the GPL requires you to share
your improvements anyway, so you might as well.

## License

GPLv3. Yes, the AI slop is copylefted now. [caelestia-dots/shell](https://github.com/caelestia-dots/shell)
provided architectural inspiration, which the robot then faithfully mangled into this. If you
improve it, the license requires you to share those improvements — a higher standard of
accountability than the author has held themselves to.