Dropdown Menu

A DankMaterialShell (DMS) bar plugin that adds a configurable button to the bar which opens a dropdown menu of actions, plugin toggles, popouts, and DMS IPC commands.

Status: beta (v0.7.0)

Screenshots

Features

• One bar button → a menu of anything. Build a dropdown of mixed item types:
  • Custom Action — run any shell command.
  • Plugin — toggle/open a plugin, Open its popout (works even if the widget isn't on a bar — see below), or run one of its detected IPC actions.
  • IPC Command — pick any live dms ipc target + function (discovered on demand from your running shell).
• On-demand popouts & actions — "popout" items open the target widget's real popout, and a plugin's IPC actions fire, without that widget taking up bar space. The dropdown instantiates the plugin off-bar so its popout and IpcHandler work, anchored under the dropdown button. Put a widget behind the menu instead of on the bar.
• Smart action defaults — a widget plugin defaults to opening its popout; daemons and built-in panels default to toggle/open (the action that actually makes sense for each).
• Per-plugin action detection — opt into scanning a selected plugin for IpcHandler actions and offer them directly (e.g. a Pomodoro plugin exposes Start Work, Reset, …).
• Quick Add chips for common DMS panels (Control Center, Notifications, Clipboard, …) — one click to add, with live "already added" highlighting.
• Smart plugin list — only shows plugins you can actually drive from the menu, and flags ones that are not enabled or not on a bar.
• Full Material icon picker (searchable, all ~4000 symbols) for the button and each item.
• Display modes — show icon, text, or both, per bar pill and per item.
• Multiple dropdowns via variants — each is a separate bar widget.
• Sub-menus — group items into nested, collapsible groups. A sub-menu row expands in place (accordion) with its children indented below, and the popout grows to fit. Edit a group by drilling into it (breadcrumb + back) and reuse the same add/reorder/remove controls. One level of nesting; off-bar popout/IPC hosting works for items inside groups too.
• Drag-to-reorder items by a handle, click-to-edit, and remove; collapsible editor.

Requirements

• DankMaterialShell (quickshell-based) with the plugin system.
• dms CLI on PATH (used for IPC actions).

Install

From the DMS plugin registry (once published)

dms plugins install dropdownMenu

Manual

Clone into your DMS plugins directory:

git clone https://github.com/rdannenbring/dropdown-menu.git \
  ~/.config/DankMaterialShell/plugins/dropdownMenu

Then enable it in DMS Settings → Plugins, configure a dropdown, and add it to your bar via Bar Settings → Add Widget.

Usage

1. Enable the plugin in Settings → Plugins and open its settings.
2. Create a dropdown, then click it to edit.
3. Add items (Custom Action / Plugin / IPC Command / Sub-menu); use Quick Add for common panels. Click a Sub-menu row to drill in and add items inside it.
4. Set the bar pill's icon, label, and display mode.
5. Bar Settings → Add Widget to place the dropdown on your bar.

Clicking the dropdown on the bar opens/closes its menu.

Permissions

settings_read, settings_write, process (to run shell/IPC commands).

How it works

Each dropdown is a DMS plugin variant, so multiple dropdowns are independent bar widgets. The bar pill is a PluginComponent; the menu is its popout.

Files

• DropdownWidget.qml — the bar pill + popout; dispatches item clicks.
• DropdownItem.qml — a single menu row.
• DropdownSettings.qml — the editor (variants, items, IPC discovery, validation).
• DropdownIconPicker.qml — searchable Material-symbol picker.

Item model (stored in variant data)

• action — { command }, run via Process (sh -c).
• plugin — { pluginId }, toggled via PluginService.togglePlugin or a built-in PopoutService toggle.
• popout — { widgetId }, opened on demand: the dropdown instantiates the target plugin's widget off-bar (hidden, zero-size, non-interactive, inside its own bar pill, with full bar context injected) and calls the widget's own triggerPopout(), so the popout opens anchored under the dropdown button without the widget being placed on a bar. If a copy is on a bar, it falls back to BarWidgetService.triggerWidgetPopout. The off-bar instance runs in the background (timers/fetches) so its popout has data ready.
• IPC actions are stored as action items whose command is dms ipc <target> <fn> [args] — reusing the action execution path.
• submenu — { label, icon, items: [...] }, a nested group of same-shape items rendered as an inline accordion (one level). The off-bar popout/IPC hosting recurses into items, so nested popout/IPC entries work too.

Discovery (opt-in)

• Listing IPC targets/functions runs dms ipc --help against the running shell — triggered only when you click Load IPC targets / Detect IPC actions, never automatically. It enumerates every live IpcHandler, which can crash the shell if a plugin registers an un-wireable handler (an upstream quickshell wireDef bug), so the common flows — Custom Action, toggle/open, popout, Sub-menu — never invoke it. Already know the command? Add it as a Custom Action (dms ipc <target> <fn>) to skip discovery.
• Per-plugin actions: the selected plugin's QML is grepped for IpcHandler { target: "…" } and intersected with the live target list, so only working actions are offered.

License

MIT