dotfiles/omarchy/README.md

Omarchy config

Omarchy 4 replaced waybar with the Quickshell bar built into omarchy-shell. shell.json is the whole bar config; it hot-reloads on save, and install.sh deploys it to ~/.config/omarchy/shell.json.

Bar layout

Ported from the old waybar/config.jsonc, section for section:

Old waybar module	shell.json widget
custom/omarchy	omarchy.menu
hyprland/workspaces	blob.workspaces (cloned plugin)
clock	blob.clock (custom module)
custom/update	omarchy.system-update
custom/voxtype	dropped (voxtype is not installed)
custom/screenrecording-indicator	AGS quick settings -> Record tile
custom/idle-indicator	AGS quick settings -> Stay Awake tile
custom/notification-silencing-indicator	AGS quick settings -> Silence tile
group/tray-expander	omarchy.tray
bluetooth	omarchy.bluetooth
network	omarchy.network
pulseaudio	omarchy.audio
battery	omarchy.power
cpu	blob.cpu (custom module)
custom/notification	blob.notifications (custom module)
(new in Omarchy 4)	omarchy.agents - AI agent usage
(new in Omarchy 4)	omarchy.monitor - brightness and display controls

The bar carries no omarchy.indicators widget: those four toggles live in the AGS quick settings panel instead, so the bar keeps only the clock and the update indicator in its center. Add { "id": "omarchy.indicators" } back to center to restore them (omit items for all six, which adds NightLight and Reminder).

Idle timings

idle.screensaver and idle.lock are both counted from the moment the session goes idle, not from each other. The screensaver is what paints branding/screensaver.txt across every monitor, so the two values need a real gap between them or the lock screen covers the branding as soon as it appears. Screensaver at 300 and lock at 900 leaves ten minutes of branding before the session locks.

Neither timer runs while ~/.local/state/omarchy/indicators/stay-awake exists. That file is the Stay Awake toggle, it is runtime state rather than config so it is not tracked here, and while it is set the idle service cancels every cycle with idle-cycle-cancel: stay-awake. omarchy-toggle-idle allow-idle clears it. The lock screen carries the branding on its own (see plugins/blob.lock/ below), so this only affects the screensaver.

Custom modules

The bar accepts arbitrary ids with type: "command", which is how the two AGS entry points survive the move off waybar:

• blob.cpu - left opens btop, middle opens alacritty, right toggles the AGS system monitor
• blob.notifications - left toggles the AGS notification center, right toggles notification silencing
• blob.clock - left toggles AGS quick settings, middle opens the shell's own calendar panel, right opens the timezone selector. omarchy.clock hardcodes its click actions, so matching the old waybar behavior needs a command module and centerAnchor pointed at it.

A command module with no exec key is a static icon; add exec and interval for one that refreshes its own text.

Cloned plugins

blob.workspaces and blob.menu were made with omarchy plugin clone, which copies a built-in plugin, disables the original, and points the bar at the copy

• hence the blob. ids in shell.json. blob.bar and blob.lock were copied by hand; see below for why.

plugins/blob.workspaces/ clones omarchy.workspaces. The stock widget hardcodes workspaces 1-5 as always visible and has no setting for it, so the clone changes that list to 1-9 to match the old waybar persistent-workspaces.

plugins/blob.menu/ clones omarchy.menu to widen it, to let a menu row choose where it sits, and to put the Blob icon on the bar button. cardWidth in Menu.qml is hardcoded at Style.space(300); the clone raises it to 440, so the apps menu (Super + Space) and the root menu (Super + Alt + Space) are both wider. The two oversized menus (screen recording, font picker) keep their own 520 and are untouched. omarchy-menu still targets omarchy.menu on the CLI - the manifest records clonedFrom, and the shell routes those calls here.

BarWidget.qml swaps the stock \ue900 glyph from the omarchy icon font for branding/blob_icon.svg. Qt renders SVG through qt6-svg, but an Image cannot be recolored, so the icon is used as an alpha mask over a rectangle filled with the bar foreground. That keeps it following the theme and the bar's own color animation the way a glyph did, and it means the black fill in the source file never matters.

mergeMenuSources in MenuModel.js reads the default menu first and the user extension second, so a row that only exists in extensions/omarchy-menu.jsonc lands at the bottom of its menu with no way to move it. The clone adds a before: key naming another row's id, and applyBeforeHints moves the row ahead of it once both sources are merged - which is how Blob sits directly under Apps instead of below System. A before: that names an unknown id is ignored, and a row without one keeps its file order.

plugins/blob.lock/ clones omarchy.lock to put branding/screensaver.txt on the lock screen and to restyle the password field like the AGS widgets. Stock LockView.qml draws a blurred wallpaper, the field, and a fingerprint hint - there is no branding element and no config key for one, so a fork is the only way in.

The fork is three small changes. BrandingSource.qml is new and holds both file reads: the branding text, and the color4 slot parsed out of the active theme's colors.toml. Color resolves a palette down to foreground, background, accent, urgent, and muted and never exposes color4, which is the color AGS borders with. Stock Color reads that file once at startup and takes theme switches over IPC, but ~/.local/state/omarchy/current/theme is a real directory rewritten in place rather than a swapped symlink, so watching the file is enough here. Service.qml gains only that component and two bindings on each of its two LockView instances (the lock surface and the theme preview). LockView.qml gains a Text above the field, and the field's own skin.

The styling follows ags/style.css: a 2px border and square corners in place of the shell's 3px rounded outline, an alpha(background, 0.6) fill matching .qs-tile, and the AGS border pair - alpha(color4, 0.5) while the field is empty, going to a solid accent once there is something in it, and urgent on a failed attempt. Only the geometry and the alphas are fixed; the colors come from the active theme, so the field follows a theme change the way the AGS widgets do. The [lock] tokens in a theme's shell.toml no longer reach the border or the fill. Text.Fit scales the branding into whatever room is left above the field, so a wider or taller screensaver.txt cannot run off the screen, and a missing file leaves the lock unbranded rather than broken.

Unlike the other clones this one is load-bearing for security. The lock is a service plugin, so it is enabled by its id appearing in plugins[] and the original is switched off through disabledPlugins[] - both are needed, because the two would otherwise register the same lock IPC target. There is no fallback: a QML error means the service never loads and omarchy-shell lock lock silently does nothing, which leaves the machine unlockable rather than locked open. journalctl --user -t omarchy-shell names the fault as service plugin load failed for blob.lock. To back out, drop blob.lock from plugins[] and omarchy.lock from disabledPlugins[]; cloneSourceRestores lists blob.lock so the shell restores the original by itself if the clone is removed through omarchy plugin remove.

Re-copy LockView.qml and Service.qml from /usr/share/omarchy/shell/plugins/lock/ after an Omarchy update that touches the lock, then re-apply the two blocks above. BrandingSource.qml is wholly ours and carries over untouched.

plugins/blob.bar/ replaces the whole bar so the clock cannot be dragged out of the center. Omarchy 4 puts a drag-to-reorder handler on every bar module and persists the drop into bar.layout; once blob.clock leaves the center list, centerAnchor matches nothing and the center renders as a plain group. The bar config has no setting for this, so the only lever is canReorder in Bar.qml. The lock itself is two lines: an anchored property on ModuleSlot, and canReorder gated on it, so only the module named by centerAnchor is pinned. Every other widget still drags.

Three more lines are needed just to make the file loadable outside the packaged slot. Stock Bar.qml declares omarchyPath, barWidgetRegistry, and barConfig as required, which only works for the built-in bar because the host instantiates it from an inline Component that sets them. A plugin bar is loaded by URL and configured in the loader's onLoaded, so the required properties are still unset at construction and the whole bar fails to build. The copy declares them as ordinary properties defaulting to ""/null, and guards the one barWidgetRegistry.widgets read; applyBarConfig already falls back to an empty layout, so nothing renders until the host injects the real config a moment later.

When this happens the bar does not fall back to the stock one, it simply does not appear: the host's Loader.Error branch calls a nonexistent errorString, throws, and never sets failedBarId. If the bar ever vanishes after editing this plugin, that is the first thing to check - journalctl --user will name the offending property.

Do not run omarchy plugin clone omarchy.bar to refresh it. That command copies the whole directory, including widgets/, whose manifests re-declare omarchy.workspaces, omarchy.tray, and four more ids that already exist. Bar.qml needs only BarModel.js - its widgets come from the host registry - so the copy is just manifest.json, Bar.qml, and BarModel.js. A bar is selected by bar.id in shell.json rather than by the enabled-plugin list, and it has no disabled state: you leave one bar by naming another.

Re-copy after an Omarchy update if the upstream widget or bar gains something worth picking up: omarchy plugin clone omarchy.workspaces then re-apply the one-line workspaceIds() change, or copy Bar.qml and BarModel.js from /usr/share/omarchy/shell/plugins/bar/ and re-apply the two canReorder lines.

Editing

Dragging widgets in the bar rewrites ~/.config/omarchy/shell.json directly. That makes the live file diverge from this one, so after rearranging by hand, copy it back:

cp ~/.config/omarchy/shell.json omarchy/shell.json

Run ./install.sh --check to see whether the two have drifted.

Not portable from waybar

• Bar height: fixed by the shell's style (26px horizontal, 28px vertical).
• Per-widget click actions on first-party widgets: omarchy.network and omarchy.bluetooth own their popups, so the old right-click-into-AGS bindings only exist on the custom modules above.