The desktop I work on every day, largely written by me: a Material You control center, a macOS-style Quick Look for Dolphin, a Linux app for a mouse whose maker only supports Windows, top-bar widgets for AI usage limits, deploys and dev servers, and a patched dock that runs on every monitor.
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Plasma Desktop Toolkit
QML / Qt Quick · KDE Plasma 6 · KWin scripting
3 sections below
I run Fedora with KDE Plasma, and when a piece of it did not work the way I wanted, I wrote my own. It started as a macOS Tahoe look and turned into a set of real tools: Plasma widgets in QML, Python daemons on D-Bus, KWin scripts and a couple of hardware apps. Miss Minutes and JLab Buds grew out of the same habit and have their own pages.
Quick Settings is a control center in the style of ChromeOS and Android 16, sitting on both top bars. Its colours are full Material 3 schemes generated from one seed colour, computed in OKLCH, with six variants and an option to take the seed from the current wallpaper. It has tiles for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, volume, brightness, night light, Do Not Disturb, battery, screenshots and screen recording, phone controls through KDE Connect (ring, send a file, share the clipboard), and a tile that starts Miss Minutes listening. Two instances share one theme, so a change on one screen appears on the other.
Quick Look brings macOS's spacebar preview to Dolphin. A KWin script binds Ctrl+Space, reads the selected file, and asks a small PySide6 daemon over D-Bus to show it in a frameless card that opens instantly: images and GIFs, video and audio, PDFs, Markdown, syntax-highlighted code and folder grids, with arrow keys to step through the folder and Enter to open the file properly.
Kreo Mouse is a settings app for a gaming mouse whose web configurator does not support my model. I took the protocol from the Windows installer and found that the receiver ignores the normal HID write path. A write sent that way once left the buttons broken, so the app sends USB control transfers instead, detaching the kernel driver from one vendor interface only. It reads every setting back and retries what did not stick, since commands are relayed over 2.4 GHz. It has DPI stages, polling rate, remappable buttons with custom shortcuts, and a clickable drawing of the mouse.
The top bars carry my own widgets. AI Usage shows Claude, Codex and Antigravity limits as rings with a pace marker and warns at 80% and 95%. Vercel shows a deploy only while it is building or has failed. Dev Servers lists what is listening on my ports, Keep Awake holds a real power-management inhibition, and the system monitor opens into an Activity Monitor-style list of the busiest apps, with Quit and then Force Quit. The macOS dock widget is patched to run on every monitor, hide when a window overlaps it, and show cleaner window previews. There is also a custom boot splash and a KWin glass effect I build from source as an RPM after each KWin upgrade.
- Quick Settings: Material 3 control center, schemes generated from a seed in OKLCH, wallpaper colours
- KDE Connect phone tiles, screenshot and recording, focus mode and a Miss Minutes tile
- Quick Look for Dolphin: Ctrl+Space KWin script → PySide6 D-Bus daemon → instant previews
- Kreo Mouse: protocol from the Windows installer, USB control transfers, read-back and retry
- AI Usage widget: Claude, Codex and Antigravity limits as pace rings, with alerts at 80% / 95%
- Vercel deploys, dev servers, keep-awake and an Activity Monitor-style process popup
- Patched macOS dock: one per monitor, intellihide, rebuilt window previews
- Custom Plymouth boot splash; KWin glass effect built from source into an RPM
The section above says what this does. This one says why it is built the way it is — including the parts that did not come free.
- Generate full Material 3 tonal schemes from one seed colour, computed in OKLCHoverA fixed paletteRead the Plasma colour schemeBecause
Tone maps to perceived lightness, so text keeps its contrast whatever the hue. The seed can come from the wallpaper, and six variants change the character without breaking legibility.
What it costMy own colour code (material.js) to maintain, instead of a library.
- USB control transfers through usbfs, detaching the kernel driver from one vendor interface onlyoverKeep using hidraw writesRun the Windows app in a VMBecause
The receiver accepts control transfers reliably, the other interfaces keep working as a normal mouse and keyboard, and a udev rule grants access without root.
What it costThe mouse cannot report its own settings, so the app keeps the last applied state in a file and re-sends it.
- A resident PySide6 daemon on D-Bus, triggered by a KWin scriptoverStart a new process per previewA Dolphin plugin in C++Because
The window is already loaded, so a preview only swaps its contents. KWin scripts can bind a global shortcut and know which Dolphin window is focused.
What it costIt reads the selection through the clipboard, which Wayland restricts, so a right-click menu entry stays as a fallback.
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