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A high-performance, deeply customizable Wayland shell built with Quickshell.

Less is more.

Screenshots

     

  

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Installation

curl -sL https://github.com/Leriart/NothingLess/raw/main/install.sh | sh

Or clone manually:

git clone https://github.com/Leriart/NothingLess.git ~/.local/src/nothingless
sudo ln -s ~/.local/src/nothingless/cli.sh /usr/local/bin/nothingless
sudo ln -s ~/.local/src/nothingless/scripts/nothing-fps /usr/local/bin/nothing-fps
sudo ln -s ~/.local/src/nothingless/scripts/nothingless-resize /usr/local/bin/nothingless-resize
nothingless

Compositor integration

nothingless install hyprland           # Auto-detect
nothingless install hyprland --conf    # Force config file mode (default)
nothingless install hyprland --lua     # Force Lua mode (Hyprland >= 0.48)
nothingless remove hyprland            # Remove config

On first boot, exec-once = nothingless launches the shell, which starts the axctl daemon internally. All compositor settings are managed live via axctl and persisted to ~/.local/share/nothingless/.

Wireless screen sharing (Mirai)

NothingLess uses Mirai for Miracast screen sharing. The install.sh script pulls Mirai automatically. If you installed manually, run the upstream installer once:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/leriart/Mirai/main/install.sh | sh

Optional runtime deps by distro:

• Arch — pacman -S miraclecast gnome-network-displays wpa_supplicant avahi gst-plugins-bad
• Fedora — dnf install miraclecast gnome-network-displays wpa_supplicant avahi gstreamer1-plugins-bad-free
• NixOS — already provided by the NothingLess flake.

Once Mirai is installed, open the Screen Sharing panel in the dashboard. The first time you press Start it will ask for a password (it runs the daemon as root for Wi-Fi P2P). After that, the panel mirrors Mirai's state and exposes scan / cast / sink-mode controls.

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Features

Desktop & Layout

• Free Layout — Windows-like floating desktop with intelligent edge snap and keyboard-driven tiling helpers.
• Dynamic Island — unified notch + bar that hosts the launcher, dashboard, notifications, media controls, system metrics and power menu.
• Dynamic Bar — static, extended or island modes with per-monitor position, size and widget groups.
• Integrated Dock — app dock that can be standalone or merged into the bar.
• Overview — Mission Control-style workspace manager with live window previews and drag-and-drop moving.
• Rounded Corners & Frame Glow — screen-corner overlay and compositor-synced border accents.
• Multi-Monitor Variants — independent shell layers per screen, each with its own bar/notch/dock config.

Configuration & Personalization

• Settings Dashboard — searchable visual config panel with 200+ toggleable options across 11 sections.
• 14 Config Domains — bar, dock, notch, theme, AI, compositor, binds, monitors, wallpapers, and more, persisted as reactive JSON.
• 12+ Presets — Dot Matrix, Nothing, Pure Monochrome, Minimal, GNOME, Liquid Glass, and others.
• Dynamic Theming — Material You colors extracted from wallpapers via matugen; auto-generates GTK, Kitty, Qt6ct, Pywal and Discord configs.
• Ndot Typography — dot-matrix typeface and monochrome-with-red-accents design language.
• Hardware-Accelerated Video Wallpapers — QtMultimedia + FFmpeg with per-monitor support and audio ducking.
• M3 Animations — Material 3, Windows Classic, macOS, Aqua and other animation profiles via Anim.qml with global speed scaling.

Monitors & Display

• Monitor Configuration GUI — arrangement canvas, resolution/refresh modes, scale, transform, VRR, HDR, enable/disable and primary selection (nwg-displays-level feature set).
• Per-Monitor Overrides — bar/notch/dock position per screen via monitors.json.
• Night Light — wlsunset integration with smooth temperature transitions.
• Brightness & DDC — laptop and external monitor brightness control.

Wireless & Sharing

• Screen Sharing via Mirai — the Linux equivalent of Windows Win + K. Discover Miracast sinks (TVs, dongles, other PCs) and cast a chosen monitor to them; or turn this machine into a Miracast display that phones, tablets, and other desktops can mirror to. Backed by miraclecast (sink mode, requires root) and gnome-network-displays (source mode, via the XDG Desktop Portal). All discovery, streaming, and rendering is handled by the Mirai daemon — NothingLess's role is a thin QML control surface and an overlay that shows the current session state.
• mDNS / Avahi discovery — Mirai uses Avahi to advertise this machine and find nearby Miracast peers. When avahi is running, the panel's sink list is populated automatically after a scan.

Performance & Power

• FPS Monitoring — patched MangoHud + libambfps.so writing to shared memory, displayed in the notch metrics overlay.
• Game Mode — snapshot/restore compositor settings, pause video wallpaper, suppress notifications, switch animation profile.
• Focus Mode — zero gaps + DND + caffeine, snapshot/restore on toggle.
• Power Profiles — power-profiles-daemon integration with cycle, status in bar and auto-switch to power-saver on low battery.
• Charge Limit — battery charge limit via TLP (sudo) or direct sysfs write; auto-detected backend.

Productivity Tools

• App Launcher — fuzzy application search with multi-tab categories.
• Persistent Clipboard — searchable history with categories, favorites, QR/URL previews.
• Notes Editor — rich text notes with file tree and search.
• Todo Board — priority, due dates and reminders.
• Tmux Manager — session and window control.
• Calculator, Translator & OCR — quick math, translation and screen text extraction.
• Screenshots & Screen Recording — region/window/screen capture and recording via grim/slurp and gpu-screen-recorder/wf-recorder.

Media, Network & AI

• AI Assistant Sidebar — multi-provider chat (OpenAI, Gemini, Anthropic, Mistral, Groq, Ollama, DeepSeek, MiniMax) with tool calling, MCP/agent support and streaming.
• MPRIS Controller — media controls for players in bar, notch and dashboard.
• Weather Service — location-based forecast with day/night detection.
• Network & Bluetooth — Wi-Fi scan/connect, Bluetooth pairing and audio device mixer.
• Notifications — D-Bus notification server with persistence, history and DND mode.

Compositor Integration (Hyprland)

• Axctl Bridge — dedicated Go daemon for Hyprland IPC; handles window focus, workspace dispatch, monitor events and config persistence.
• 130+ Compositor Settings — live-applied gaps, decoration, blur, shadows, animations and keybinds from the NothingLess GUI.
• Snapshot/Restore — instant rollback for game/focus mode and config experiments.
• Lockscreen — secure WlSessionLock + PAM authentication.

Under the Hood

• 62 reactive singleton services for system state, compositor IPC, media, AI and hardware.
• 41 backend scripts in Python and Bash for monitoring, image processing, clipboard and external tool wrappers.
• Nix flake with package, dev shell and NixOS module.
• Distribution-aware installer for Arch, Fedora and NixOS.

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FPS Monitoring

NothingLess includes two FPS backends that write to /dev/shm/nothingless_fps, displayed in real time in the notch metrics overlay.

nothing-fps (recommended)

Uses a patched MangoHud + libambfps.so fallback. Works with Vulkan and OpenGL games.

# Terminal
nothing-fps ./my-game
nothing-fps --visible vkcube          # show FPS overlay too

# Steam — launch options for any game
nothing-fps %command%

# Lutris / Heroic / Bottles
nothing-fps <game command>

Enable the notch metrics display:

nothingless run toggle-metrics

Or set showMetrics: true in ~/.config/nothingless/config/notch.json.

How it works:

nothing-fps %command%
  → LD_PRELOAD=libMangoHud_shim.so:libambfps.so
  → MANGOHUD_CONFIG=fps_only,background_alpha=0,...  (invisible overlay, shm output)
  → game runs → FPS written to /dev/shm/nothingless_fps
  → SystemResources.fpsWatcher reads via tail -F
  → Notch displays real-time FPS

ambfps-launcher (lightweight alternative)

Uses only libambfps.so (no MangoHud dependency). Lighter weight but Vulkan-only.

ambfps-launcher ./my-game
ambfps-launcher %command%             # Steam

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Commands

nothingless                            # Start the shell
nothingless reload                     # Reload the shell
nothingless quit                       # Quit the shell
nothingless lock                       # Activate lockscreen
nothingless update                     # Update NothingLess
nothingless run <module>               # Run a module (launcher, dashboard, overview, etc.)
nothingless run toggle-metrics         # Toggle FPS/CPU/GPU metrics in notch
nothingless run gamemode               # Toggle game mode
nothingless run focusmode              # Toggle focus mode
nothingless run caffeine               # Toggle caffeine (idle inhibit)
nothingless run dnd                    # Toggle do-not-disturb
nothingless profile <saver|balanced|performance>  # Set power profile
nothingless cycle-profile              # Cycle to next power profile
nothingless charge-limit [on|off|50-100]           # Battery charge limit
nothingless brightness <0-100>         # Set brightness
nothingless screen on|off              # Display power control
nothingless suspend                    # Suspend system
nothingless install hyprland [--lua]   # Install compositor integration
nothingless remove hyprland            # Remove compositor integration

Standalone companion commands:

nothing-fps [--visible] <command>      # Launch game with FPS monitoring
nothing-fps --help                     # Show FPS launcher help
nothingless-resize                     # Window resizing tool

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Default Keybinds

Synced from ~/.config/nothingless/binds.json to Hyprland by sync-hyprland.py and axctl. Modify any of them in the NothingLess Binds settings panel or by editing binds.json directly.

Shell Modules

Keybind	Action
SUPER	Open launcher (release)
SUPER + D	Toggle dashboard
SUPER + A	Toggle AI assistant
SUPER + V	Toggle clipboard
SUPER + .	Emoji picker
SUPER + N	Toggle notes
SUPER + T	Tmux manager
SUPER + ,	Wallpaper picker

System

Keybind	Action
SUPER + L	Lock screen
SUPER + S	Tools menu
SUPER + TAB	Overview (Mission Control)
SUPER + ESC	Power menu
SUPER + SHIFT + C	Open NothingLess settings
SUPER + SHIFT + A	Color picker / lens
SUPER + SHIFT + S	Screenshot
SUPER + SHIFT + R	Screen record
SUPER + ALT + B	Reload shell
SUPER + CTRL + ALT + B	Quit shell
SUPER + SHIFT + M	Toggle notch metrics (FPS/CPU/GPU)
SUPER + SHIFT + BACKSPACE	Toggle game mode
SUPER + SHIFT + F	Toggle focus mode
SUPER + SHIFT + N	Toggle do-not-disturb
SUPER + PAUSE	Toggle caffeine (idle inhibit)
SUPER + SHIFT + B	Cycle power profile

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Testing

# Test FPS pipeline (3 terminals)
# Terminal 1 — watch shared memory
watch -n0.5 cat /dev/shm/nothingless_fps

# Terminal 2 — launch vkcube with FPS monitoring
nothing-fps vkcube

# Terminal 3 — verify libraries loaded
cat /proc/$(pidof vkcube)/maps | grep -E "libMangoHud|libambfps"

Expected output in Terminal 1:

fps=1440.5
pid=12345
frames=1234
source=mangohud

If you see source=nothingless-preload, the libambfps.so fallback is active (Vulkan hooks). If you see nothing, ensure:

• Libraries exist at ~/.local/lib/libMangoHud_shim.so and ~/.local/lib/libambfps.so
• Notch metrics are enabled (nothingless run toggle-metrics)
• Rebuild patched MangoHud: ./scripts/mangohud-patch/build-mangohud.sh

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Credits

• Leriart — NothingLess developer and maintainer
• Zack (@zackytodearena) — logo & animation design
• outfoxxed — creator of Quickshell
• Axenide — original Ambxst creator, whose work this project was forked from

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License

• NothingLess modifications are provided under the same license as the upstream.
• Ambxst and the Ambxst logo are trademarks of Adriano Tisera (Axenide).
• See LICENSE and TRADEMARK.md for details.