A dark, warm-charcoal Wayland desktop for Arch Linux, themed end to end from a single file.
The screenshots predate the current theme and are due to be retaken.
A whole desktop rather than a theme dropped on top of one. Compositor, bar, launcher, notifications, lock screen, terminals, shell and editor, built to look like they were decided together instead of collected. Hyprland is what it was built on, and Sway is the fallback, themed to match.
Nothing here is a framework or a wrapper. Every piece is an ordinary config file in its ordinary place, written in the format that program itself reads, which is what makes this worth reading rather than only installing. It also means you do not have to take all of it: lift the terminal colours, or the bar, or just the palette generator, and ignore the rest.
| Piece | Program | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Login | greetd + tuigreet | Suggested, not required. Any display manager finds both sessions |
| Compositor | Hyprland | Native Lua config, entry point .config/hypr/hyprland.lua |
| Compositor | Sway | The fallback, themed to match |
| Bar | Waybar | One description of the bar, shared by both compositors |
| Launcher | wofi | |
| Notifications | swaync | |
| Lock screen | swaylock | |
| Power menu | wlogout | |
| Clipboard | cliphist | History on Super+Shift+V |
| Idle | hypridle, swayidle | Lock at 15 min, screen off at 16, suspend at 30 |
| Terminals | Kitty, Ghostty, Alacritty, Foot | Identical palette, font and padding in all four |
| Shell | fish + starship | |
| Editor | Neovim | lazy.nvim, with a colorscheme written for this palette rather than a plugin |
| File managers | Dolphin, yazi | Graphical and terminal |
| System monitor | bottom | |
| Fetch | fastfetch, catnap | |
| Wallpaper | swaybg | A random image from your own directory |
| Applications | GTK 3, GTK 4, Qt and KDE | Themed by overriding the colours each toolkit already paints from |
Every colour starts in one file: scripts/theme/palette.json. Beside it,
roles.py says what each colour is for, naming a token rather than repeating a hex, so
one decision reaches GTK, Qt and the terminals instead of being typed once per toolkit. A
generator renders those into the format each program natively reads, and a checker proves
the generated files still match.
$EDITOR scripts/theme/palette.json # change a colour
python3 scripts/theme/generate_theme.py # push it into every app's own format
python3 scripts/theme/check_palette.py # check the generated files for driftChange one hex and the terminals, the bar, the launcher, Neovim, GTK applications and
KDE applications all move together. The generator is plain Python with no dependencies,
and the files it writes whole carry a GENERATED header, which the checker fails on if
you edit one by hand.
Four files stay hand-written, because colour in them is a per-file decision rather than
a palette value: fastfetch, the bar's module definitions, and the semantic layers of
Neovim and fish. Those do not follow on their own, which is why check_palette.py exists.
docs/design/THEMING.md has the table of which mechanism
carries colour where.
The design identity behind the palette is called Voidashi, and it is documented in
docs/design/.
git clone https://github.com/voidashi/.dotfiles.git ~/.dotfiles
cd ~/.dotfiles
./scripts/install-packages.sh install --dry-run # list the configured packages, install nothing
./scripts/install-packages.sh install # install them
./scripts/backup-configs.sh install --dry-run # list every path it would link
./scripts/backup-configs.sh install # symlink the configs into $HOME
./scripts/backup-configs.sh check # confirm every link landedRun both rehearsals first. install --dry-run prints every package it would fetch and
backup-configs.sh install --dry-run prints every path it would link, which is how you
see the size of this before any of it happens rather than reading scripts/packages.conf
cold.
The install step needs sudo, and an AUR helper is recommended: three of the packages
are AUR-only, and paru, yay or pikaur is used if one is present. They are
catnap, pfetch-rs and pipes.sh, all three cosmetic, so without a helper you lose
two alternate fetches and a screensaver and nothing else.
If you already run a display manager, drop greetd and greetd-tuigreet from
scripts/packages.conf before the second command. Two enabled display managers fight
over the same systemd alias. docs/SETUP.md step 6 has the whole
decision.
That installs and links everything, including the fonts in fonts/. It does not give you a way to reach the desktop:
nothing here enables a graphical login. If you already run a display manager it will
list Hyprland and Sway on the next boot and you can log out and back in. If you do not,
docs/SETUP.md step 6 sets up greetd, and Hyprland typed at a text
console works too.
Warning
backup-configs.sh install is the safe direction: it refuses to overwrite a real file
unless you pass --force, and backs up anything it replaces. Its sibling add runs the
other direction and moves files out of $HOME into the repo. You want install.
--dry-run is the rehearsal on both scripts, which is why it appears twice above: it
prints everything the command would do and changes nothing.
Changed your mind afterwards? ./scripts/backup-configs.sh uninstall removes the
symlinks and leaves your own files and the repo alone. docs/SETUP.md has the
details, including where --force put your originals.
Important
Clone wherever you like. install links the scripts/wm/ helpers into
~/.local/bin and the sample wallpaper into ~/.local/share/wallpapers/dotfiles, and
the configs name those two fixed locations by full path, so only Neovim's dashboard
still points at ~/.dotfiles.
If you installed before this change, run install again: the old absolute paths are
gone from the configs and the links replacing them do not exist until it runs.
A few more things need a look before this feels right on your machine. The monitor
layout in .config/hypr/conf/monitors.lua names specific outputs and one of them is a
laptop panel. This was built on a laptop throughout, so the bar carries battery and
backlight, the brightness keys expect a backlight device, fastfetch shows a battery,
and packages.conf declares supergfxctl for hybrid graphics. On a
desktop those come out empty and are removals rather than errors. Nothing here does
anything special for Nvidia either way. And if you already run KDE, kdeglobals
and kcminputrc are tracked, meaning they are entries of scripts/config_files.conf
and install will link them into $HOME, which is where Plasma applications read
their palette and cursor. A bare install leaves a file that already exists alone and says so, so it
does not retheme a running Plasma session; --force is the flag that would. And if you
want the themed prompt, fish has to become your login shell; nothing does that for you.
docs/SETUP.md covers each of these.
The package installer accepts names, so you can bring in only what you want:
./scripts/install-packages.sh install kitty fish starshipbackup-configs.sh takes paths the same way, and uninstall and check take them too,
so you can undo or audit exactly what you brought in:
./scripts/backup-configs.sh install ~/.config/kitty ~/.config/fishThey have to be entries of config_files.conf, which is the list of what this repo
manages. A single file inside a tracked directory is not one: the directory is linked
whole, and the script says which entry covers the path you gave it. Naming paths also
leaves the fonts alone, since fonts/ is not in that file and no argument can name it;
run install bare to get them.
--except is the other direction, for when you want everything but a few entries:
./scripts/backup-configs.sh install \
--except ~/.config/kdeglobals \
--except ~/.config/kcminputrcOne flag per path. Unlike naming paths, this still links fonts/, because asking for all
of it but two entries is still asking for the rest. Those two entries are the ones to
leave out if you already run KDE, and docs/SETUP.md says what to do
instead of linking them.
If you would rather not symlink anything, copy the directories you want out of .config/
by hand. Copy the whole directory rather than a single file, since a config often
includes a sibling. The Hyprland, Sway and Waybar ones then need one thing this repo
would otherwise have done: they call clipboard-picker.sh, power-menu.sh and
select-random-wallpaper.sh as $HOME/.local/bin/<name>, so put those three there or
edit the five lines that name them. Neovim's dashboard names ~/.dotfiles directly and wants editing if you
cloned elsewhere.
Copying a terminal that way gets you the colours but not the typeface, since all four ask for Iosevka Extended and no package provides it. The setup guide has the font step.
The colours themselves sit in one file per terminal, and the name differs: kitty's is
voidashi-colors.conf, foot's voidashi-colors.ini, ghostty's voidashi-colors with no
extension, and alacritty's is a level down at conf.d/voidashi-colors.toml. Those are
the files to copy again when the palette moves, because generate_theme.py writes only
inside the clone. A symlinked config is the clone and picks a new palette up for free; a
copy does not, and nothing tells you it went stale.
Full setup guide covers the long-form install, what to change for your hardware, the Iosevka font you have to fetch yourself, and what to do when something does not work.
The entry points, with Super as the modifier. Every row below is bound under both
compositors, with the one exception named after the table.
docs/KEYBINDS.md has the whole set, including the rows this
table leaves out and the handful of keys that do the same thing differently on each
side.
| Keys | Action |
|---|---|
Super + Return |
Terminal |
Super + R |
Launcher |
Super + E |
File manager, add Shift for yazi in a terminal |
Super + Q |
Close window, add Shift to kill it |
Super + F |
Fullscreen, Super + V to toggle floating |
Super + Shift + V |
Clipboard history |
Super + 1…9, 0 |
Switch workspace, ten of them, add Shift to move the window there |
Print |
Screenshot the output, Shift for a region, Super for the window |
Super + M |
Exit the compositor |
The power menu opens from the bar's power button. Closing the lid suspends the machine
and the screen locks on the way down, which comes from logind and the idle daemon
(hypridle or swayidle) rather than from a binding here.
One row above does not carry across. Super + Shift + Q, the SIGKILL for a hung
application, exists only under Hyprland: kill is sway's only verb for closing a
window, so there is nothing to bind it to. Three more Hyprland binds outside this table
have no sway counterpart, and sway keeps binds of its own for things Hyprland's layout
has no equivalent of. docs/KEYBINDS.md lists both directions and
.config/sway/config says why beside each.
.bashrc deliberately stock, so a shell that is not fish looks unthemed
.config/ the tracked configs, symlinked into place path by path
.local/share/color-schemes/Voidashi.colors
the palette as a KDE colour scheme, for a machine already on Plasma
docs/ everything written down, see docs/README.md
fonts/ three of the four faces; Iosevka you fetch yourself
scripts/
backup-configs.sh install, uninstall and audit the tracked dotfiles
install-packages.sh installs the packages listed in packages.conf
verify.sh runs every validator and prints what each returned
tests/ sandboxed tests for backup-configs.sh
theme/ palette.json, roles.py, the generator and the checker
wm/ helpers the compositors call while running
wallpapers/ one sample image, so a fresh clone has something to show
docs/README.md indexes everything and says who each document is
for. The three that matter most:
docs/SETUP.mdto install it and make it yours.docs/design/RICE-GUIDE.mdfor the palette, the ANSI table, and the rules about how colour gets used.docs/TODO.mdfor what is open, including the rough edges this desktop still has, and what is parked with the explanations already ruled out. Decisions already taken live indocs/TURNING-POINTS.mdinstead.
Issues and pull requests are welcome. This is a personal configuration rather than a framework, so the most useful contributions are bug reports, portability fixes, and telling me something is broken on a machine that is not mine.
MIT. See LICENSE.