Niri Workspace Bar

A DankMaterialShell dankbar widget that shows the focused niri workspace as a pill segmented to match its column count, and opens a grouped switcher for every named workspace.

Where the built-in workspace switcher renders every workspace on the bar, this declutters to just the focused one — its name, and a small pill whose segment count equals the number of niri columns currently in that workspace. The full list moves into a dropdown you organize yourself.

What It Does

On the bar: the focused workspace's name, followed by a pill with one segment per column. The segment holding the active window is drawn at full strength; the rest are faded.

In the dropdown: every named workspace, arranged into groups you define, each row carrying the same column pill. Click a row to switch to it. A "New workspace" action at the bottom jumps to niri's trailing auto-empty workspace.

The focused workspace sits in its own group, marked with a dot and a bolder name. Listing it costs a row that does nothing when clicked, but it keeps every group at full height so the list holds its shape as you move around.

niri Only

Columns come from layout.pos_in_scrolling_layout, a niri scrollable-tiling concept, read from DMS's NiriService. It does nothing useful on other compositors.

Requirements

• DankMaterialShell ≥ 1.4.0
• niri

Install

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

Then in DMS: Settings → Plugins → Scan, enable Niri Workspace Bar, and add it to a bar section. You'll likely want to remove the built-in workspace switcher to avoid duplication.

Grouping Workspaces

niri has no concept of workspace groups — its config is a flat list of workspace "Name" {} declarations — so grouping lives entirely in this plugin's settings.

Open Settings → Plugin Management → Niri Workspace Bar, or click the gear in the dropdown header. There you can:

• Define groups by name, in the order they should render
• Rename a group with the pencil on its card
• Assign workspaces by dragging them from the pool onto a group
• Reorder within a group by dropping a workspace onto another one, landing it in front
• Reorder the groups with the arrows on each group card
• Unassign by dragging a workspace back to the pool

The pool lists the workspaces niri declares, read from config.kdl and every file it includes, so the names always match what you actually typed in your niri config.

Anything no group claims renders as a trailing "Ungrouped" group. With no groups configured that's every workspace the dropdown shows, and the group drops its title, so a fresh install shows one plain list.

Development

just drives the whole loop; run just for the list.

DMS loads plugins from ~/.config/DankMaterialShell/plugins/<id>, never from your clone. just develop start symlinks this tree over the installed copy and just status reports which one the bar is actually running. just doctor checks the invariants that fail silently at runtime.

There is no build step and no test suite: DMS reads the QML at load time, so verification means running it. just logs shows what the bar logged about the plugin — trust it over dms ipc call plugins list, which reports a plugin as loaded whether or not its widget is on your bar.

Scope

Working: the bar pill, the grouped switcher, and settings-defined grouping.

Ideas not yet committed to: per-column app icons, an icons-off toggle, and click-to-overview. Anything actually under consideration lives in the issue tracker.

About the Robot

Yes, an LLM helped write this. So did an editor, a compiler, a linter, autocomplete, and a number of other tools. It's just a tool. One that "talks" back, but still a tool. And it helps me salvage some of my weekend. It types faster than I do, reads faster than I do, and, much to my chagrin, knows more than I do.

Every line here was read, discussed, sometimes argued, and ultimately signed off by a human (me). I run this on my own bar all day and live with the result.

The AI doesn't get the credit and it doesn't get the blame. If something here is broken, sloppy, or wrong, that's 100% on me and I welcome the feedback. A bug report or a PR is always appreciated.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.