OMARCHY-inspired workflow and aesthetics for COSMIC Desktop.
Built with libcosmic.
The terminal screensaver — the COSMIC mark revealed by one of TerminalTextEffects' beam effects on a blue→purple gradient.
- Theme Management — Browse, preview, and create COSMIC themes with a 4-step creation wizard. 36 bundled themes (dark and light).
- Tool Theme Sync — Propagate COSMIC colors to Ghostty, btop, Neovim, Zellij, fzf, lazygit, and custom hooks. Auto-sync on theme change.
- Screensaver — Terminal-based screensaver with ASCII art effects, session lock, idle/DPMS timeout integration, and power-aware profiles.
- Panel Applet — A COSMIC panel button with a popup for quick screensaver control: lock now, start the screensaver, an enable/disable toggle, and open settings.
- CLI — Scriptable commands for theme switching, color extraction, tool sync, hooks, and wallpaper management.
- Power Management — Battery-aware screensaver effect profiles via UPower
D-Bus / system76-power (Full/Standard/Simple/Minimal/Skip tiers). Idle
inhibition ("caffeine") isn't bundled — use
systemd-inhibitor an applet.
# Pop!_OS / Ubuntu
sudo apt install cargo cmake just libexpat1-dev libfontconfig-dev \
libfreetype-dev libxkbcommon-dev pkg-configRust 1.90+ required.
The app itself only needs its shared libraries (pulled in automatically by the
.deb). The terminal screensaver additionally uses:
| Tool | Purpose | Install |
|---|---|---|
alacritty |
default screensaver terminal (renders fullscreen) | sudo apt install alacritty |
terminaltexteffects (tte) |
the text-effect animations | pipx install terminaltexteffects (not packaged) |
swayidle |
idle detection that starts the screensaver | sudo apt install swayidle |
figlet |
optional — clock between effects | sudo apt install figlet |
ydotool |
optional — hides the mouse pointer | sudo apt install ydotool |
The .deb lists alacritty/swayidle under Recommends and
figlet/ydotool under Suggests; tte must be installed manually since it
isn't in the Debian/Ubuntu archive.
COSMIC ORDER writes your COSMIC theme into these tools' configs when they are installed — install only the ones you use:
| Tool | Where to get it |
|---|---|
| Ghostty | https://ghostty.org |
| btop | sudo apt install btop |
| Neovim | sudo apt install neovim |
| fzf | sudo apt install fzf |
| Zellij | https://zellij.dev (release binary) |
| lazygit | https://github.com/jesseduffield/lazygit/releases (release binary) |
just # build release
just run # run with info logging
just check # clippy pedantic
just test # run tests
just pre-commit # fmt + clippy + testscosmic-order sync # Sync colors to all enabled tools
cosmic-order colors --json # Extract palette as JSON
cosmic-order theme dark # Switch to dark mode
cosmic-order theme set-accent '#FF5733'
cosmic-order theme export theme.ron # Export current theme
cosmic-order hooks run # Run custom hooks
cosmic-order wallpaper add <url> # Download a wallpaper
Download the latest .deb from the
Releases page and install
it:
sudo dpkg -i cosmic-order_*_amd64.debOr build it from source:
# Build the .deb package
dpkg-buildpackage -us -uc -b
# Install the resulting package
sudo dpkg -i ../cosmic-order_*.debBuilding requires debhelper, just (>= 1.13.0), and rust-all.
See docs/UPSTREAM-BUGS.md for known fullscreen-related bugs in upstream dependencies and workarounds.
COSMIC ORDER draws inspiration from OMARCHY by DHH. The curated workflow, application choices, and keyboard-first philosophy informed this project's design.
Built on COSMIC Desktop by System76, using libcosmic (MPL-2.0).
Bundled theme color schemes are derived from open-source projects under MIT or compatible permissive licenses:
- Tokyo Night by folke
- Catppuccin by the Catppuccin organization
- Gruvbox by morhetz
- Nord by Arctic Ice Studio
- Rose Pine by the Rose Pine team
COSMIC ORDER is independent third-party software and is not
affiliated with or endorsed by System76. "COSMIC" is a trademark of
System76, Inc.; the project name and the bundled cosmic-* ASCII
logos in resources/screensaver/logos/ reference that mark to
identify the desktop environment this software extends. Trademarked
ASCII logos for unrelated brands (Framework, Pop!_OS) were removed in
v0.15.0; see docs/LICENSING.md for the audit
trail.
If you are System76 and would like the project name, bundled logos, or any of the integration language adjusted, please open an issue.
Copyright © 2025-2026 Jonathan Freed
This project is licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0 only (GPL-3.0-only). See LICENSE for the full license text.
By submitting a pull request, you agree to license your contribution under GPL-3.0-only.