rusty-dock

A Wayland dock for Linux. Built with Rust, cairo, and smithay-client-toolkit.

Requirements

• Wayland compositor (Hyprland, Sway, GNOME, KDE, etc.)
• ImageMagick (convert command)
• Cairo graphics library

Building

cargo build --release

Dependencies

Arch:

sudo pacman -S cairo imagemagick

Ubuntu/Debian:

sudo apt install libcairo2-dev imagemagick

Fedora:

sudo dnf install cairo-devel ImageMagick

Running

# Start the dock
./target/release/rusty-dock

# Open config
./target/release/rusty-dock --config

# Show help
./target/release/rusty-dock --help

Config CLI

# Export config to file
rusty-dock --export ~/my-config.json

# Import config from file
rusty-dock --import ~/my-config.json

Auto-start

Add to your compositor's config:

Hyprland (~/.config/hypr/hyprland.conf):

exec-once = ~/.cargo/bin/rusty-dock

Sway (~/.config/sway/config):

exec ~/.cargo/bin/rusty-dock

Configuration

Config file: ~/.config/rusty-dock/config.json

You can edit it by hand or use rusty-dock --config.

Options

Option	Type	Default	Description
icon_size	u32	48	Icon size in pixels
dock_height	u32	64	Dock panel height
icon_padding	u32	8	Padding around icons
border_radius	f64	16.0	Corner radius
background_opacity	f64	0.85	Background transparency
dock_margin	i32	10	Margin from screen edge
position	string	"bottom"	Dock position (top/bottom/left/right)
auto_hide	bool	true	Hide when not hovered
auto_hide_delay_ms	u64	500	Delay before hiding
smart_hide	bool	true	Only reveal on stationary cursor
smart_hide_trigger_delay_ms	u64	1000	Time cursor must stay at bottom
smart_hide_y_threshold	f64	6.0	Max Y movement to be "stationary"
enable_animations	bool	true	Enable animations
animation_duration_ms	u64	200	Animation duration
launch_bounce_duration_ms	u64	500	Bounce animation duration
icon_zoom_on_hover	f64	1.3	Zoom factor on hover
enable_bounce_on_launch	bool	true	Bounce when launching apps
show_app_names	bool	true	Show tooltips
show_active_indicators	bool	true	Show running app dots
active_indicator_style	string	"dot"	Style: dot/underline/border/glow
grayscale_inactive_icons	bool	false	Gray out inactive apps
folder_popup_columns	u32	3	Folder popup grid columns
folder_popup_icon_size	u32	48	Folder popup icon size
show_folder_miniatures	bool	true	Show mini icons in folders
debug	bool	false	Debug mode
show_smart_hide_zone	bool	false	Show trigger zone (debug)

Example config

{
  "icon_size": 56,
  "dock_height": 72,
  "icon_padding": 10,
  "border_radius": 12.0,
  "background_opacity": 0.9,
  "auto_hide": true,
  "smart_hide": true,
  "pinned_apps": [
    {
      "type": "app",
      "name": "Firefox",
      "icon": "firefox"
    },
    {
      "type": "app",
      "name": "Terminal",
      "icon": "utilities-terminal"
    },
    {
      "type": "spacer"
    },
    {
      "type": "folder",
      "name": "Games",
      "icon": "applications-games",
      "apps": [
        {"type": "app", "name": "Steam"},
        {"type": "app", "name": "Lutris"}
      ]
    }
  ]
}

App entry types

Simple app:

{"type": "app", "name": "Firefox", "icon": "firefox"}

App with custom exec:

{"type": "app", "name": "My App", "exec": "/path/to/app", "args": "--flag"}

App from desktop file:

{"type": "app", "name": "Firefox", "desktop_file": "/usr/share/applications/firefox.desktop"}

Custom icon path:

{"type": "app", "name": "My App", "icon": "app-icon", "custom_icon_path": "/home/user/icons/myapp.png"}

Spacer:

{"type": "spacer"}

Folder:

{
  "type": "folder",
  "name": "Utilities",
  "icon": "utilities-terminal",
  "show_miniatures": true,
  "apps": [
    {"type": "app", "name": "Terminal"},
    {"type": "app", "name": "File Manager"}
  ]
}

Planned features

High priority

• Right-click context menu (quit, reload config, edit)
• Clippy CI pipeline
• Better error handling (less unwrap())

see full list of planned features