noctalia-dev / noctalia

# Noctalia
Noctalia is a native Wayland desktop shell for people who want a polished, configurable Linux desktop without stitching
together a separate bar, launcher, notification daemon, lock screen, wallpaper tool, and settings UI.
It provides the shell layer around your compositor: bars, widgets, dock, launcher, control center, notifications,
wallpaper, lock screen, session actions, clipboard history, OSDs, tray integration, and desktop widgets. The project is
built directly on Wayland and OpenGL ES with no Qt or GTK dependency, so the UI, rendering, configuration, and IPC model
are designed as one cohesive shell instead of a collection of unrelated panels and scripts.
## Why Noctalia?
Most Wayland setups leave the desktop shell to a stack of small tools: one bar, another launcher, another notification
daemon, a lock screen, a wallpaper daemon, scripts for session actions, and separate config formats for each piece. That
can be flexible, but it also makes a complete desktop feel fragile and hard to keep visually consistent.
Noctalia solves that by providing one configurable shell layer that owns the common desktop surfaces and services while
still fitting into compositor-driven Wayland workflows. It is meant for users who want the control of a custom desktop
environment with fewer moving parts and a consistent UI.
To understand the values and philosophy guiding the project, read our ethos.
## What It Includes
- Multi-monitor bars with configurable widgets, taskbar, workspaces, system tray, media, network, battery, brightness,
 weather, clipboard, and custom script-backed widgets.
- Dock, launcher, control center, notification toasts/history, wallpaper picker, OSD overlays, lock screen, session
 panel, and desktop widgets.
- TOML configuration with hot reload, GUI-managed overrides, theme/palette support, template application, and IPC for
 runtime control.
- Direct Wayland integration for layer-shell, session lock, idle behavior, clipboard, foreign toplevels, workspaces,
 fractional scaling, and compositor-specific workspace backends where needed.
## Wayland Compositor Support
Noctalia supports Wayland compositors that provide the layer-shell protocols it needs for shell surfaces. Workspace
integration works through compositor-native backends where needed, or through `ext-workspace-v1` on compositors that
implement it.
Current compositor integrations include Niri, Hyprland, Sway, Scroll, Mango, Labwc, dwl, and other compatible
Wayland compositors. Other compositors may run Noctalia but can have reduced workspace, window, output, or
session-action integration depending on the protocols and IPC they expose.
## Scope
Noctalia is a desktop shell, not a full desktop environment. It provides the visual and service layer around your
Wayland compositor: bars, panels, launcher, notifications, dock, lock screen, idle behavior, OSDs, theming, wallpapers,
desktop widgets, and multi-monitor shell surfaces.
Window management, tiling, compositor configuration