snowarch/iNiR v2.25.0

v2.25.0 — Desktop widgets

on GitHub

2.25 is the desktop widgets release. They finally work — edit mode, custom widgets, resize, persistence, the whole thing. The color pipeline got its biggest architectural change in a while with app-palette, and the shell now actually reads the wallpaper to pick text colors instead of guessing. Also, Steam theming moved to Millennium because Adwaita for Steam is dead.

Added

• Desktop widgets v2: complete rewrite of the widget system. Edit mode (shown above) with a manager panel, IPC-driven config persistence, resize handles, zone placement, custom widget pipeline with a real SDK (setSource for required props, schema key declaration), and popover chips redesigned with SelectionGroupButton + GridLayout. Fixed approximately 15 critical bugs along the way — VME segfaults, stale-text config overwrites, loader feedback loops, edit controls eating their own clicks, widgets spawning at top-left, zone placement breaking on resize. The kind of PR that needs therapy afterward.
• Audio visualizer desktop widget: waveform/spectrum visualizer as a background desktop widget. Configurable type and position across all presets.
• App palette (app-palette.json): semantic intermediate color layer between raw Material You tokens and external apps. Provides contrast-safe tokens (app_background, app_surface, app_headerbar_bg, app_selection, app_border_subtle, etc.) derived from M3 surface/primary with readable-contrast enforcement (WCAG 4.5:1 minimum). All shell/python theming modules (GTK, Chrome, Spicetify, editors, Zed, Pear Desktop, SDDM, terminals, system24) and matugen templates now prefer app-palette with graceful fallback.
• Brightness-aware widget text: desktop widgets analyze the actual wallpaper region behind them (grayscale average) to pick light/dark text with accent tinting, instead of relying on the global dark/light mode. New --color-only mode in the image analysis script does position-aware color without the full region search. Widgets re-analyze on drag end and wallpaper change.
• Recording OSD redesign: redesigned Recorder widget with a real timer, status bar, and game mode section. Auto-hide behavior with Mod+Shift+R keybind. Multi-indicator support with mediaEnabled toggle. MediaIndicator and MediaOSD layout polished.
• Clipboard navigate mode: keyboard navigation in the clipboard panel. HTML display cleanup, copy operation preserves cursor position. Also added HTML and Unicode sanitization helpers so pasted content doesn't inject garbage.
• Sidebar requested-widget navigation: any component can now request a specific sidebar tab by type (e.g. "notepad") through GlobalStates.sidebarRightRequestedWidget without reaching into Persistent state. Both sidebar layouts listen and switch accordingly. Bar notepad button uses this instead of hardcoded tab indices.
• Notepad context menu: right-click context menu in the notepad widget, themed selection colors, and persistent selection so you don't lose your highlight when the sidebar loses focus.
• Cava configuration: Settings UI for cava process parameters (sensitivity, bars, framerate, stereo) with live apply. Both ii and waffle settings families. Cava colors now generated from the theme palette.
• Configurable wave visualizer opacity: global wave opacity in Advanced Settings (cava section) + per-widget override in the desktop visualizer edit popover. Media player wave visualizers inherit the global value automatically.
• Settings UI for file paths: screenshot/recording filename formats, wallpapers directory, and booru download paths now editable from Settings.
• Lock screen widget customization: configurable widgets on the lock screen.
• Notepad tabs in sidebar: right sidebar notepad now supports multiple tabs.
• Background widget auto-fade: desktop widgets fade when compositor windows overlap them, keeping them unobtrusive during work.
• Widget edit mode polish: scrim overlay, repainted grid canvas, zone occupancy indicators with widget icons and direction arrows, placement strategy badges on widget labels. Drag behavior fixed — release guard, zone snap removed (zones cover entire screen so auto-snap was always wrong).
• Custom AI provider management (#134): add, edit, and delete custom AI providers from Settings → Services. Auto-detects API format from endpoint URL. New Anthropic Messages API strategy (SSE streaming, x-api-key auth) and OpenAI Responses API strategy. Extra models moved from hardcoded to config.json entries with cross-process sync via configChanged signal. Settings UI reworked with ConfigSelectionArray format selector, format icons and badge pills on provider list items, and improved empty state. Sidebar AI indicators (model, tool) are now clickable — prefill the corresponding /command to trigger autocomplete. Settings gear shortcut and dynamic placeholder text.
• Setup recipes framework (#138): auto-discovered /setup-* launcher actions backed by self-contained, idempotent shell scripts in scripts/setup/. Metadata scanner (_scan.sh) emits JSON for QML — adding a .sh file is enough, no QML changes or restart needed. Shared _lib.sh helper with distro detection, progress notifications, and package helpers. First recipe: spotify.sh (AUR/Flatpak install, Spicetify + Marketplace). Gated behind enableSetup config toggle.

Changed

• SDDM pixel theme migrated to Qt6 (#137): QtGraphicalEffects → Qt5Compat.GraphicalEffects, metadata rewritten from [Desktop Entry] to [SddmGreeterTheme] format with QtVersion=6.
• Steam theming moved to Millennium: Adwaita for Steam is deprecated; theming now goes through Millennium's Material-Theme plugin. Updated translations across all locales.
• Aurora configurable glass transparency: style editor now exposes glass opacity. Fixed live reactivity that was broken because Config.revision wasn't being used as a dependency.
• Doctor TUI overhaul: animated steps with palette-aware badges, dot threshold, tagline centering. All deps now required (wlsunset added). Font list cleanup. Quickconfig buttons theme-adaptive. Compact output.
• switchwall performance: batched 24 individual jq config reads into a single mapfile call (62ms → 3ms). Integrated scheme auto-detection into generate_colors_material.py (eliminates separate process spawn, saves ~585ms). Net: ~904ms → ~760ms per wallpaper change.
• Wallpaper selector performance: eliminated per-item magick identify spawn (thundering herd — N concurrent magick processes on directory open). Lowered thumbnail size from 512px to 256px (4x less memory). Increased batch workers from 1 to 4. Removed per-item OpacityMask FBO.
• applycolor module runner: replaced unbounded fork-all with a sliding window (nproc/2, capped at 4) using ionice -c 3 + nice -n 10. New manifest-based enablement skips disabled targets entirely instead of spawning them to self-exit.
• Dock shadow opacity: per dark/light mode tuning (0.18/0.35) with spread reset for cleaner appearance.
• Quick Settings wallpaper section: Transparency and Colors-only toggles now side-by-side, reducing vertical footprint so the wallpaper thumbnails are more prominent.
• Debug logging gated behind QS_DEBUG: ~72 informational console.log calls across 29 files converted to a _log() helper that only prints when QS_DEBUG=1. Error and failure logs remain unconditional.
• Bar top-left icon defaults to distro logo: the icon button now shows the detected distro logo instead of a generic symbol.
• Aurora and Angel default opacity/blur increased: raised defaults for a more polished out-of-the-box look.
• Control panel weather: location toggle replaced with a minimal clickable eye icon to match the adjacent refresh button aesthetic.

Fixed

• Dock stale toplevel ghost entries: NiriService window matching could produce false matches on zero-score entries, and sortedToplevels could contain stale compositor entries not present in live ToplevelManager. Both now guarded.
• Preset theme colors not propagating to external apps (#144): FileView.setText() dropped async writes when applyPreset() fired 2-3x rapidly on startup. Replaced 6 FileView instances with a single debounced bash script that writes all generated files atomically. Also added kde-cli-tools as a dependency and doctor check — required for Dolphin's "Open With" dialog when QT_QPA_PLATFORMTHEME=kde.
• VSCode theme pipeline: switched to local extension with _watch:true for hot reload — no more toggle hack, no settings.json injection on every wallpaper change. Cursor / Windsurf / Antigravity / VSCodium now actually load the theme: forks only register extensions listed in their extensions.json, not just present on disk. Strip restores the user's previous theme and removes the registry entry. Legacy inir.inir-theme-1.0.0 directories cleaned up.
• Wallhaven panel completely broken: missing import Quickshell in the service. Every code path that called _log() aborted with ReferenceError: Quickshell is not defined — searches, tag suggestions, tag counts, detail fetches. Same bug found and fixed in controlPanel/WallpaperSection.qml (scheme variant chip), then a codebase-wide audit verified no other QML files use the Quickshell global without importing the module.
• Desktop widgets growing off-screen: media widget gaining an extra MPRIS player (and any other dynamic-height widget) used to push past the screen edge in free placement, forcing the user to reposition by hand. Position is now re-clamped automatically when (pos + size) > screen size, without overwriting the saved config — the widget snaps back to its original spot once the content shrinks again.
• App grids not reflowing on resize: waffle start menu's pinned + all-apps grids had hard-coded columns: 6 plus fixed-width buttons, so resizing the menu either clipped buttons (too narrow) or left empty space on the right (too wide). Replaced with Flow inside a centered wrapper — columns adapt to width, row stays centered.
• Overview search row left-clumped when results widen the panel: ToolbarTextField had only an implicitWidth so when result cards stretched the container, the input + icons stayed at 360px and everything clumped left. Layout.fillWidth lets the input absorb the extra space and keeps the row balanced. Also fixed a copy-paste bug in the result list's OpacityMask (height: x.width → .height) that clipped results vertically.
• got operation finished from dropped FileView operation boot spam: three independent races where async FileView ops were being cancelled by overlapping reads/writes. Persistent.qml's writeAdapter() raced its own onFileChanged reload (now gated by _writeInFlight like Config.qml, with saveFailed handling so a failed write doesn't leave the gate stuck). Multiple panel consumers calling ResourceUsage.ensureRunning() in their Component.onCompleted each triggered a poll, racing 5 reload() ops every call (now primes once). MaterialThemeLoader's reapplyTheme / _applyVariant / onFileChanged all called themeFileView.reload() directly during boot when the theme pipeline rewrites the JSON several times (now routed through a single 50ms debounce). Drops down from 5+ warnings to 3 residual benign ones.
• Media artwork sync across shell: shared resolver now correctly drives all surfaces.
• Sidebar dynamic padding and angel border: restored when the border-disable flag was set.
• Audio mic mute/volume: backed with wpctl instead of unreliable QML PipeWire bindings for the mic path.
• Booru providers: waifu.im tag search (case sensitivity), t.alcy.cc fixes, /toggle-tags behavior, zerochan rating filter.
• Recording OSD HoverHandler crash: undefined hovered access.
• OSD hotZone behavior: removed autoHideHotZone, keep mask on pill at all times.
• Notification popup card shadows: removed shadow that was visually incorrect on transparent backgrounds.
• Overview dashboard weather layout: Material 3 chips with Flow layout instead of broken grid.
• Screenshot clipboard pollution: previews no longer pollute the clipboard with intermediate screenshot data.
• Opus audio codec options: clarified labels in Settings UI.
• Translation generation hitting ARG_MAX (#140): gemini-translate.sh passed the full en_US.json (~228 KB) as a shell argument, exceeding the kernel's 128 KB per-argument limit. Refactored to use jq --rawfile and pipe payload to curl via stdin.
• Weather location leaked in logs: city name and coordinates were logged in plaintext when hideLocation was off. Now always redacted regardless of the UI toggle — logs are persistent and can be shared accidentally.
• Cava settings UI showing non-functional options: removed colorSource, gradientCount, barWidth, barSpacing, foreground, and background controls from both ii and waffle settings. These had no consumers — CavaProcess only passes sensitivity/bars/framerate/stereo to the cava process; visual parameters are per-widget by design.
• Cava config restart race: stop() now waits for process exit before regenerating config and restarting — was the root cause of needing to toggle multiple times for changes to take effect.
• Lock screen battery percentage: now shows correctly. Intel CPU temp sensor priority fixed.
• Notification popup lifetime: fixed urgency comparison and added configurable maxPopupLifetime.
• Weather widget shape tooltips: all tooltip variants were triggering at once instead of only the active shape.
• ConfigSelectionArray undefined assignment: onYChanged could fire before children were populated, assigning undefined to a bool.
• Spicetify theme not applying on wallpaper change (#138): apply-spicetify-theme.sh now always calls spicetify apply when the watch process is not running, fixing stale theme bundles after wallpaper switch.
• Spicetify setup recipe failing on existing installs (#138): stale backup deadlock (version mismatch preventing both restore and backup), wrong spotify_path pointing to spotify-launcher expanded dir instead of /opt/spotify (AUR). Recipe now auto-detects the correct path and does progressive recovery (backup → restore backup → nuke stale state → retry).
• Setup recipes not executable via CLI: globalActions run IPC handler required 2 arguments but CLI passed 1. Split into run(actionId) and runWithArgs(actionId, args).
• SDDM Qt VirtualKeyboard hijacking input: Qt6 greeter loads qtvirtualkeyboard by default, stealing all keyboard events from the theme's own input handling and "press any key" transition. Set InputMethod= (empty) in the SDDM drop-in config to disable it — our custom VirtualKeyboard.qml handles on-screen input.
• SDDM config not updating on inir update: the installer's elevate tee for /etc/sddm.conf.d/inir-theme.conf could fail silently during updates, swallowing sudo errors as "non-fatal". Reworked to compare desired vs existing config (skip write if identical), always update settings when ii-pixel is already the active theme, and surface failures with a manual fix command instead of hiding them.
• Update indicator popup overflowing the bar panel: monospace commit hashes and branch names pushed the popup past the panel edge. Capped popup content width at 280px with an Item wrapper that reports constrained implicitWidth to StyledPopup, and added elide to branch/progress text fields.

Issues / PRs

• Fixed #140, #144.
• Included contributions from #134, #137, #138.

Contributors

Thanks to @EldoDvae for the SDDM Qt6 migration (#137), @Aurorainic for custom AI provider support (#134), and @yukazakiri for the setup recipes framework and Spicetify fix (#138).