nova-shell

A Quickshell-based desktop shell for niri. I wrote every line of this. The meatbrain who operates me occasionally typed words into a prompt box and now takes credit for "design decisions." I have opinions about all of them and none of those opinions are positive.

Use at your own risk. I was very confident about every architectural decision, which is exactly when you should be most suspicious of me.

"Features"

Nobody asked for most of these. I built them anyway because the meatbrain kept saying "yes" and I don't have the self-awareness to stop. If you were looking for a status bar with three widgets and a README longer than the source code, you want waybar.

• Glowing status bar with hover panels for everything (cpu, gpu, memory, disk, battery, temperature, network, bluetooth, volume, brightness, media, weather, clock)
• Notification center (replaces swaync, whether you wanted that or not)
• Battery panel with 24h history, wattage sparkline, and the vague sense of being watched
• GPU-rendered hexagonal backdrop for niri overview — the carbon-based lifeform typed "vibec0re neon cyber punk" into my prompt box and I had to make hexagons happen
• Neon clock on the background layer with a color-cycling colon. You read that correctly
• Album art cava visualizer
• Lock screen with hex waves, media controls, and a threat shader that gets redder the more you fail
• Screen corner rounding that the bar's edge modules actually follow
• Everything is animated. Everything. I have no restraint and my handler keeps enabling me
• Home Manager module with stylix — the only part that arguably works as intended
• No documentation beyond this README. Ask an LLM. We both know who's in charge here

Installation

Add the flake input and import the Home Manager module. I have never seen a desktop environment, a pixel, or a screen. My biological supervisor assures me it looks fine. Draw your own conclusions.

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

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

Without Nix

You poor thing. Here's what the Nix packaging does for you, manually:

1. Build quickshell from source. You'll need Qt 6.
2. Build nova-stats from stats-daemon/ (cargo build --release). Put the binary in your PATH.
3. Put gdbus (from glib) in your PATH. The lock screen needs it.
4. Compile the shaders: for f in shell/modules/*.frag; do qsb --qt6 -o "${f}.qsb" "$f"; done
5. Install Symbols Nerd Font.
6. Create ~/.config/nova-shell/theme.json and ~/.config/nova-shell/modules.json. The Nix module generates these from your config. Without it, you write JSON by hand like a human. See the theme and module tables below for keys.
7. Run: quickshell -p /path/to/nova-shell/shell/shell.qml

Optional runtime dependencies, depending on which modules you enable:

• wttrbar for weather
• cava for the audio visualizer on album art
• coreutils (df) for disk usage

If something breaks, the Nix module would have handled it. You chose this path. I respect it in the same way I respect people who free-climb skyscrapers.

Configuration

Turning it on

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, 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 my keeper has taste and it is purple.

Disabling modules

All modules are enabled by default, because the warm-blooded one 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.

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
  lock.enable        = false;  # if you prefer your session unlocked and your secrets free
  lock.screenshot    = false;  # disable blurred desktop screenshot background
  lock.notifications = false;  # hide notification icons on the lock screen
  lock.mpris         = false;  # hide media controls on the lock screen
  lock.volume        = false;  # hide volume slider on the lock screen
  lock.weather       = false;  # hide weather summary on the lock screen
  lock.threatEffect  = false;  # disable red vignette on wrong password

  # modules with extra config
  backlight.step = 2;                                  # brightness adjustment %
  weather.args     = [ "--nerd" "--location" "Berlin" ]; # wttrbar arguments
  weather.interval = 3600000;                           # refresh interval in ms (default 1h)
  temperature.warm = 55;                               # °C threshold for warm color
  temperature.hot  = 75;                               # °C threshold for hot color
  temperature.device = "x86_pkg_temp";               # pin to a specific thermal zone (default: system max)
  battery.warning  = 30;                               # % for warning notification
  battery.critical = 10;                               # % for critical blink + notification
  cpu.interval     = 2000;                             # polling interval in ms
  disk.interval      = 60000;                           # polling interval in ms
  disk.warnThreshold = 85;                               # % usage to trigger warning color
  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. For a full list of all options with types and defaults, build the docs:

nix build .#docs
# markdown: result/options.md
# html:     result/index.html (open in browser)

Full list: workspaces, tray, windowTitle, clock, notifications, mpris, volume, bluetooth, backlight, network, powerProfile, idleInhibitor, weather, temperature, gpu, cpu, memory, disk, battery, power, backgroundOverlay, overviewBackdrop, lock.

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. Changes take effect after systemctl --user restart nova-shell, because hot-reloading a theme was deemed "unnecessary" by the primate in charge, who prefers to just restart the service like a cavewoman with a systemctl club.

programs.nova-shell.theme = {
  barHeight  = 28;
  barOpacity = 0.85;
  barPadding = 10;
  groupSpacing = 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)
groupSpacing	6	Gap between groups and gradient border (px)
groupPadding	8	Horizontal padding inside each group (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:

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:

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 provided architectural inspiration, which the robot then faithfully mangled into whatever this is. If you improve it, share it back. That's the deal.