tlp-power-profile

A Dank Material Shell plugin that replaces the built-in battery / power-profile widget with one backed by TLP instead of power-profiles-daemon.

The widget shows battery state and exposes TLP's power modes (tlp ac / tlp bat) and charge thresholds (tlp setcharge) — features power-profiles-daemon does not provide.

• Distro-agnostic — runs anywhere DMS + TLP do (Arch, Fedora, NixOS, Debian, …).
• Compositor-agnostic — runs anywhere DMS does (hyprland, niri, …).
• Three default power profiles, fully editable in DMS settings (rename, reicon, add, remove).
• Configurable privilege escalation: pkexec (default), sudo -n, or none.
• Battery charge thresholds with start/stop sliders + Apply button.

Screenshots

Popout in the bar — battery info, profile switcher, current TLP mode.

Settings — General + Power profiles — poll interval, privilege mode, editable profile list.

Settings — Charge thresholds — start/stop sliders + Apply button, hidden on machines without a battery.

Install

NixOS users: skip this section and jump to NixOS below — the flake handles steps 2 and 3 declaratively.

1. Symlink the plugin into DMS

git clone https://github.com/<you>/tlp-power-profile.git
ln -s "$PWD/tlp-power-profile" ~/.config/DankMaterialShell/plugins/tlp-power-profile

In DMS: Settings → Plugins → Scan for Plugins → enable TLP Power Profile → add to the DankBar widget list.

2. Install the helper script (optional)

The default Performance profile invokes a helper that layers cpufreq-governor / EPP / turbo / platform_profile overrides on top of tlp ac. If you don't need that overlay, you can change the Performance profile's command to plain tlp ac in settings and skip this step.

sudo install -m 0755 helper/tlp-power-profile-helper /usr/local/bin/tlp-power-profile-helper

3. Grant password-less access to tlp

TLP requires root for every state change. To avoid a password prompt on every click, set up one of the two routes below — pkexec is what the plugin uses by default.

Route A: polkit + pkexec (recommended)

Create /etc/polkit-1/rules.d/49-tlp-power-profile.rules:

polkit.addRule(function(action, subject) {
    if (action.id !== "org.freedesktop.policykit.exec") return;
    var path = action.lookup("program");
    if ((path === "/usr/bin/tlp" || path === "/usr/sbin/tlp" ||
         path === "/usr/local/bin/tlp-power-profile-helper") &&
        subject.isInGroup("power")) {
        return polkit.Result.YES;
    }
});

Then add your user to the power group:

sudo groupadd -f power
sudo gpasswd -a "$USER" power
# log out + back in so the new group membership takes effect

Adjust the binary paths to match your distro (which tlp).

Route B: sudoers

Create /etc/sudoers.d/tlp-power-profile (always edit via visudo -f to catch syntax errors):

%wheel ALL=(root) NOPASSWD: /usr/bin/tlp, /usr/local/bin/tlp-power-profile-helper

Replace %wheel with your distro's sudoers group (%sudo on Debian/Ubuntu) and adjust binary paths.

Then in DMS Settings → Plugins → TLP Power Profile, switch Privilege mode to sudo -n.

Route C: none

If you're running the DMS session as root, or you've granted file capabilities to tlp some other way, set Privilege mode to None (raw) and the plugin will invoke commands without any prefix.

NixOS

The repo ships a flake that exposes:

• packages.<system>.tlp-power-profile-helper — the helper script, wrapped so tlp is on PATH even under pkexec.
• packages.<system>.tlp-power-profile-plugin — the QML assets, installed under share/DankMaterialShell/plugins/tlp-power-profile.
• nixosModules.default — installs the helper, creates the power group, and drops the polkit rule so members of that group can invoke tlp and the helper without a password.

Flake setup

Add this repo as an input and import the module:

{
  inputs.tlp-power-profile.url = "github:peturh/tlp-power-profile";

  outputs = { self, nixpkgs, tlp-power-profile, ... }: {
    nixosConfigurations.<host> = nixpkgs.lib.nixosSystem {
      system = "x86_64-linux";
      modules = [
        tlp-power-profile.nixosModules.default
        ({ ... }: {
          services.tlpPowerProfile.enable = true;
          # Optional — defaults shown:
          # services.tlpPowerProfile.powerGroup = "power";
          # services.tlpPowerProfile.enableTlp  = true;   # turns on services.tlp

          # Add your user to the group that's allowed pkexec-without-password
          users.users.<you>.extraGroups = [ "power" ];
        })
      ];
    };
  };
}

Rebuild (sudo nixos-rebuild switch --flake .#<host>) and the helper appears at /run/current-system/sw/bin/tlp-power-profile-helper, with tlp and the helper both reachable via pkexec without a password prompt.

Plugin QML files

DMS reads plugins from ~/.config/DankMaterialShell/plugins/, which is per-user state — NixOS doesn't manage that path directly. Pick one of:

# Option A — clone + symlink (matches the dev workflow, easy to hack on)
git clone https://github.com/<you>/tlp-power-profile.git ~/src/tlp-power-profile
ln -s ~/src/tlp-power-profile ~/.config/DankMaterialShell/plugins/tlp-power-profile

# Option B — symlink the flake's plugin output (reproducible, read-only)
nix build github:<you>/tlp-power-profile#tlp-power-profile-plugin -o ~/.tlp-power-profile-result
ln -s ~/.tlp-power-profile-result/share/DankMaterialShell/plugins/tlp-power-profile \
      ~/.config/DankMaterialShell/plugins/tlp-power-profile

With home-manager, the equivalent of Option B is:

xdg.configFile."DankMaterialShell/plugins/tlp-power-profile".source =
  "${tlp-power-profile.packages.${pkgs.system}.tlp-power-profile-plugin}/share/DankMaterialShell/plugins/tlp-power-profile";

Then in DMS: Settings → Plugins → Scan for Plugins → enable TLP Power Profile → add to the DankBar.

Configuration

All settings live in DMS Settings → Plugins → TLP Power Profile:

• Poll interval — how often tlp-stat is read (default 5000ms).
• Privilege mode — pkexec, sudo -n, or none.
• Power profiles — full list editor: icon, label, command. Add/remove freely. The active profile's icon shows in the bar pill; the popout exposes one button per profile.
• Battery name — empty = use TLP's config defaults. Auto-detected name shown as placeholder.
• Charge thresholds — start/stop sliders + Apply button. Hidden on machines without a battery. Constraint: stop > start + 3.

Default profiles

Profile	Command
Power Save	tlp bat
Balanced	tlp ac
Performance	tlp-power-profile-helper performance

If you skip the helper script install, change Performance to tlp ac (or any command of your choice).

Troubleshooting

• Plugin doesn't show up after symlink: dms ipc call plugins list to confirm DMS sees it; dms ipc call plugins status tlpPowerProfile for load errors.
• "TLP call failed — check privilege setup" toast: privilege escalation is rejected. Run the profile's command manually in a terminal (pkexec tlp ac) to see the real error.
• Profile button click does nothing: open a terminal, watch journalctl -f --user, click the button — QML errors surface there.
• Charge thresholds slider snaps back: TLP may be re-applying configured defaults at the next AC plug event. To make changes permanent, set START_CHARGE_THRESH_BAT* / STOP_CHARGE_THRESH_BAT* in /etc/tlp.conf.

Development

There is no build / lint / test toolchain — QML is loaded at runtime by DMS.

# After file edits, hot-reload without restarting DMS:
dms ipc call plugins reload tlpPowerProfile

# If you change plugin.json or add/remove files:
dms restart