# 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. > [!IMPORTANT] > Noctalia v5 is currently in Beta. While the core features and architecture are stabilizing, you may still encounter occasional configuration or behavior adjustments as we prepare for the final release.

## 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](https://noctalia.dev/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, Triad, 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, file management, removable-drive mounting, printers management and screen mirroring/casting belong to the compositor, dedicated desktop applications, or system services. Display/login greeter support lives in the separate [Noctalia Greeter](https://github.com/noctalia-dev/noctalia-greeter) project. Noctalia may integrate with those pieces when useful, but it does not replace them. The plugin system is available for user-installed extensions. Features that are useful to some users but not essential to the core shell can live there: extra bar widgets, launcher providers, desktop widgets, panels, shortcuts, background services, compositor-specific extras, hardware-specific controls, and third-party service integrations. ## Dependencies ### Arch ```sh sudo pacman -S meson gcc just \ wayland wayland-protocols \ libglvnd freetype2 fontconfig \ cairo pango harfbuzz \ libxkbcommon glib2 \ libsecret libsodium \ sdbus-cpp libpipewire wireplumber polkit \ pam curl libwebp libjxl libsndfile librsvg \ libqalculate libxml2 \ md4c tomlplusplus libical \ nlohmann-json stb \ jemalloc ``` ### Fedora ```sh sudo dnf install meson gcc-c++ just \ wayland-devel wayland-protocols-devel \ libEGL-devel mesa-libGLES-devel \ freetype-devel fontconfig-devel \ cairo-devel pango-devel harfbuzz-devel \ libxkbcommon-devel glib2-devel \ libsecret-devel libsodium-devel \ sdbus-cpp-devel pipewire-devel wireplumber-devel \ pam-devel polkit-devel libcurl-devel libwebp-devel libjxl-devel libsndfile-devel librsvg2-devel \ libqalculate-devel libxml2-devel \ md4c-devel tomlplusplus-devel libical-devel \ json-devel stb_image_resize2-devel stb_image_write-devel \ jemalloc-devel ``` ### openSUSE Tumbleweed / Slowroll ```sh sudo zypper install meson gcc-c++ just \ wayland-devel wayland-protocols-devel \ Mesa-libEGL-devel Mesa-libGLESv2-devel \ freetype2-devel fontconfig-devel \ cairo-devel pango-devel harfbuzz-devel \ libxkbcommon-devel glib2-devel \ libsecret-devel libsodium-devel \ sdbus-cpp-devel pipewire-devel wireplumber-devel \ pam-devel polkit-devel libcurl-devel libwebp-devel libjxl-devel libsndfile-devel librsvg-devel \ libqalculate-devel libxml2-devel \ md4c-devel tomlplusplus-devel libical-devel \ nlohmann_json-devel stb-devel \ jemalloc-devel ``` ### Debian / Ubuntu ```sh sudo apt install meson g++ just \ libwayland-dev wayland-protocols \ libegl-dev libgles-dev \ libfreetype-dev libfontconfig-dev \ libcairo2-dev libpango1.0-dev libharfbuzz-dev \ libxkbcommon-dev libglib2.0-dev \ libsecret-1-dev libsodium-dev \ libsdbus-c++-dev libpipewire-0.3-dev libwireplumber-0.5-dev \ libpam0g-dev libpolkit-agent-1-dev libpolkit-gobject-1-dev \ libcurl4-openssl-dev libwebp-dev libjxl-dev libsndfile1-dev librsvg2-dev \ libqalculate-dev libxml2-dev \ libmd4c-dev libtomlplusplus-dev libical-dev \ nlohmann-json3-dev libstb-dev \ libjemalloc-dev ``` ### Void Linux ```sh sudo xbps-install meson ninja pkg-config git \ wayland-devel wayland-protocols libepoxy-devel \ MesaLib-devel libglvnd-devel cairo-devel \ pango-devel fontconfig-devel freetype-devel \ harfbuzz-devel libxkbcommon-devel pipewire-devel wireplumber-devel \ libsecret-devel libsodium-devel \ libcurl-devel pam-devel libwebp-devel libjxl-devel libsndfile-devel \ basu-devel sdbus-c++-devel \ libmd4c-devel tomlplusplus-devel libical-devel \ json-c++ stb \ polkit-devel librsvg-devel libqalculate-devel libxml2-devel jemalloc-devel ``` Vendored dependencies, with no system package needed: `Wuffs`, `Luau`, `fzy`, and Material Color Utilities. System packages required beyond the Wayland/GL stack: `libwebp` handles WebP decoding and thumbnail encoding, `libjxl` handles JPEG XL decoding, `libsndfile` decodes shell sound effects (WAV, FLAC, Ogg/Vorbis, Opus, MP3, and AIFF), and Wuffs handles the other supported raster image formats. `libqalculate` powers the launcher calculator (arithmetic, unit and currency conversion). Polkit agent support requires development files that provide the `polkit-agent-1` and `polkit-gobject-1` pkg-config modules. Some distros ship these in the runtime `polkit` package, while split-package distros use names such as `polkit-devel`, `polkit-dev`, or `libpolkit-agent-1-dev` / `libpolkit-gobject-1-dev`. Pipewire libraries/headers are sufficient to build Noctalia, but there is also a runtime requirement for the pipewire daemon. Noctalia will abort startup if it can't connect to the daemon. If your distro splits the pipewire libraries and daemon into separate packages, make sure you have both installed. `upower` is an optional dependency used for battery and power device integration. `ddcutil` is an optional dependency used for controlling monitor brightness. Credential and encrypted-state persistence requires a Secret Service provider at runtime, such as GNOME Keyring, KWallet, or KeePassXC. `libsecret` is the client library and does not provide the session service by itself. Noctalia continues to run when no provider is available, but features requiring durable secrets cannot persist them. CalDAV accounts may instead read their password from one explicitly configured regular file, which supports secret provisioners such as agenix and sops-nix without installing a Secret Service provider. Google refresh tokens and other writable credentials still require Secret Service. Encrypted state, including clipboard history and the calendar event cache, may instead read one storage master key from an explicitly configured file. `jemalloc` is recommended but optional. It reduces memory fragmentation in long-running sessions, and on glibc systems it is used automatically when detected. Use Meson's `-Djemalloc=enabled` or `-Djemalloc=disabled` option to require or disable it explicitly. Sanitizer runtime packages are only needed for ASan/UBSan builds configured with `just configure asan`. The sources are built as C++23, which requires GCC 13+ or Clang 16+. Current rolling and recent stable distros (Arch, Fedora 38+, Debian 13, Ubuntu 24.04+) ship a new enough compiler by default. On Debian 12 "bookworm" install `g++-13` and point Meson at it (e.g. `CXX=g++-13 just configure`). ## Building and installing Requires [just](https://github.com/casey/just) and [meson](https://mesonbuild.com/). #### Release build ```sh # Optimized release build in build-release/ just configure release just build release # Install the selected build mode. This does not build or reconfigure. sudo just install release ``` Release builds are portable by default. For a machine-local build, enable native CPU optimizations after configuring: ```sh meson configure build-release -Dnative_optimizations=true just build release ``` Pass a prefix to `configure` to install somewhere other than `/usr/local`: ```sh just configure release "$HOME/.local" just build release just install release ``` To remove files installed from a build directory, run `just uninstall release`. The `install` and `uninstall` recipes require an explicit build mode so debug builds are not installed by accident. #### Debug build ```sh # Debug build in build-debug/ for local development and troubleshooting. just configure just build # Test your local debug build with just run ``` Unit tests are not compiled by `just build`, which targets only the Noctalia executable. Build and run them explicitly with `just test` (use `just test release` to force them on for a release build). Direct Meson users can control test target generation with the `-Dtests=enabled|disabled|auto` option. Production sources compile once into an internal static library shared by the shell and test executables. Meson installs the binary and shipped assets using the normal prefix layout: ```text /usr/local/bin/noctalia /usr/local/share/noctalia/assets/... ``` Noctalia needs the shipped `assets/` tree at runtime. Copying only the `noctalia` binary is not enough. Firefox theming uses the built-in template `post_action = "firefox-theme"` (same pattern as `kde-color-scheme`) plus the [Pywalfox](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/pywalfox/) browser extension. Manual host helpers: `noctalia firefox-theme --help`. Portable bundle layouts are also supported: ```text bundle/ noctalia assets/ ``` ```text bundle/ bin/noctalia share/noctalia/assets/ ``` See [CONTRIBUTING.md](CONTRIBUTING.md#runtime-assets) for the full runtime asset lookup order. ## Configuration A ready-to-use starting config with all defaults is at [example.toml](example.toml). The full configuration reference lives in the [documentation site](https://docs.noctalia.dev/v5/). ## Contributing Developer notes, architecture overview, code style, project layout, and debugging commands live in [CONTRIBUTING.md](CONTRIBUTING.md). Bug reports, fixes, documentation updates, themes, and configuration examples are welcome. For general help and design discussion, join the community on [Discord](https://discord.noctalia.dev). ## Credits Thank you to the [contributors](https://github.com/noctalia-dev/noctalia/graphs/contributors) and community members who test Noctalia, report issues, share configurations, and help shape the project. ## Donations Donations are appreciated but completely optional.

## License MIT License. See [LICENSE](LICENSE) for details. ## Packaging Distro packaging notes (description, deps, install layout, Meson options) live in [PACKAGING.md](PACKAGING.md). ## Star History