Alienware Command Center Plugin for DMS

September 2, 2026 · View on GitHub

A plugin to control your Alienware laptop's thermal modes, fan boost, keyboard lighting and CPU turbo boost via the awcc CLI.

Screenshot

Features

  • Thermal mode selection: Quiet, Battery Saving, Balanced, Cool, Performance, G-Mode, Full Speed, Manual
  • Fan boost control: Independent CPU and GPU sliders (1–100%)
  • Keyboard lighting: Brightness slider, multiple effects (Spectrum, Rainbow, Static, Breathe, Wave, B&F), with an inline color picker for color-based effects
  • CPU Turbo Boost: Toggle on/off
  • Adapts to your hardware: the plugin reads awcc device-info on start and only shows the sections, thermal modes and lighting effects your machine reports. A laptop that does not advertise CPU Turbo, for instance, gets no Turbo section at all
  • Confirmation toast on the changes that reach the hardware — thermal mode, keyboard effect and turbo. Sliders are excluded, since dragging one would fire a stream of them
  • Auto-refresh: Polls current thermal mode at a configurable interval

Requirements

The awcc CLI must be installed and accessible. By default the plugin calls awcc from $PATH, but you can configure a custom binary path in settings.

Installation

mkdir -p ~/.config/DankMaterialShell/plugins/
git clone <repo-url> awcc

Usage

  1. Open DMS Settings Super + ,
  2. Go to the Plugins tab
  3. Enable the Alienware Command Center plugin
  4. Configure settings if needed (binary path, refresh interval)
  5. Add the awcc widget to your DankBar configuration

Configuration

Settings

  • AWCC Binary Path: Path to the awcc executable (default: awcc)
  • Refresh Interval: How often to poll the current thermal mode in seconds (default: 10, range: 1–60)

Widget Display

  • Bar pill: Bolt icon + current thermal mode name. On a vertical bar only the icon is drawn, since the bar is too narrow for the mode name.
  • Popup: a header card with the active mode and turbo state, then one card per section — thermal modes, fan boost sliders, keyboard lighting with its colour picker, and the turbo toggle. Each card's subtitle carries its current value. Sections your hardware does not report are omitted.

Files

  • plugin.json — Plugin manifest and metadata
  • AwccWidget.qml — Main widget component
  • AwccSettings.qml — Settings interface
  • README.md — This file

Permissions

This plugin requires:

  • settings_read — To read plugin configurations
  • settings_write — To save plugin configurations
  • process — To execute the awcc CLI commands

How it works

On start the plugin runs awcc device-info and reads the enabled features, thermal modes and lighting modes, which is what decides the sections and options shown. It then polls awcc qm on the configured interval to keep the active thermal mode in sync, and issues awcc <command> for each control you touch.

Slider drags are debounced, so dragging from 40 to 70 sends a single command on release rather than one per value.

Each widget instance owns its commands, keyed by screen and bar, so the widget placed on more than one bar or monitor drives the hardware from each instance without the two sharing a result. Work still in flight when a bar is reconfigured or the plugin is reloaded is discarded rather than applied to a torn-down widget.