wf-shell is a repository which contains various components that can be used to build a fully functional desktop based around wayfire:
- wf-panel, with widgets with various functionalities you would expect a desktop to have on quick access
- wf-dock, to show opened windows, navigate to them, and (un)collapse them
- wf-locker, a stylish and feature-full screen locker
- wf-background, a simple background that can cycle through images
The wf-shell components use a common config file located (by default) at XDG_CONFIG_HOME/wf-shell.ini (so, most often resolves to ~/.config/wf-shell.ini, which is a fallback),
and the configuration is hot reloaded when the configuration file changes.
An example configuration can be found in the file wf-shell.ini.example, alongside with comments what each option does.
For an exhaustive breakdown of every option, check out the github wiki
The GUI WCM can edit the configuration and show descriptions for the options.
Style and theme can be altered with CSS. Find here examples of styles that can be applied to customise the looks. A full tree of the css classes is available here.
wf-shell depends on the wayland and wayfire protocol and libraries, gtkmm4, wf-config, pam, dbusmenu-gtk, openssl, epoxy, xkbregistry and inotify.
gtk4-layer-shell and wf-json are built as subprojects if they are not found.
Certain features are optionally built :
- panel wp-mixer widget, built if pipewire and wireplumber libraries are found
- panel/locker pulseaudio volume widgets, built if libpulse is found
- live previews for window-list widget, built if gbm and libdrm are found
- panel/locker weather widgets, built only if specified
For the following distributions, these are the names of the packages you will need :
| Distribution | Packages |
|---|---|
| Ubuntu | git gcc pkgconf meson ninja-build wayfire wayfire-dev libgtk4-layer-shell-dev libgtk4-session-lock-dev libgtkmm-4.0-dev libgirepository1.0-dev valac libssl-dev libdbusmenu-glib-dev libyyjson-dev libinotifytools0-dev libepoxy-dev libpam0g-dev libaudit-dev libxkbregistry-dev libpipewire-0.3-dev libwireplumber-0.5-dev libgbm-dev libdrm-dev libddcutil-dev |
| Void | git gcc pkgconf meson ninja wayfire-devel gtkmm4-devel gobject-introspection libgirepository-devel vala libdbusmenu-glib-devel openssl-devel pam-devel libepoxy-devel yyjson libxkbregistry pipewire-devel wireplumber-devel libgbm-devel libdrm-devel ddcutil ddcutil-devel |
| Alpine | git g++ binutils pkgconf meson ninja musl-dev gtkmm4-dev vala gobject-introspection-dev ddcutil pulseaudio-dev pipewire-dev wireplumber-dev libdbusmenu-glib-dev alsa-lib-dev yyjson-dev linux-pam-dev util-linux-login openssl-dev wayland-protocols wayfire-dev gtk4-layer-shell-dev |
To build and install, like any meson project:
git clone https://github.com/WayfireWM/wf-shell && cd wf-shell
meson build --prefix=/usr --buildtype=release
ninja -C build
sudo ninja -C build install
Past default look:
