The island

The island is one object that changes shape. A black capsule in the middle of the bar rests on the time and becomes everything else: a glance under the pointer, the control centre, the launcher, the overview, a notification, a game. Each shape is the size of what is in it, with no title and no close button.

At rest, the glance, the control centre, the launcher, a notification.

At rest

The island rests on the time. Under the pointer it lights, and a click opens the control centre.

What is running sits either side of the time: a recording, what is using the microphone, the camera or the screen, a countdown, a track, a virtual machine and the workspace, in that order, two at most. A recording is always shown, and first; the rest are switched under Settings → Island → The island → Beside the time (see Settings). One running thing splits across both sides, its mark on the left and its figure on the right; two take a side each. What is running past those two is counted at the island’s end as a small +N, and every one of them is in the glance.

• A recording is a red dot and the minutes. A click on the dot stops it; under the pointer it squares off to say so.
• Privacy is a glyph for each of the microphone, the camera and the shared screen in use, in fixed orange, green and blue, and the program’s name on the other side of the time. It opens nothing, so the glance and a click work over it as they do over the time. On by default.
• A countdown is a ring that drains and the time left. A click opens its detail.
• A track is its artwork and a spectrum that follows the sound. A click opens the player.
• A virtual machine is its system’s mark and how long it has run, or how many run when there are several. A click opens the machines.
• The workspace is a mark and the number, or the name, of the workspace the screen shows, for a bar without the workspace strip. It is always there when switched on, so it comes last. A click opens the overview. Off by default.

The glance

Rest the pointer on the time and a glance opens at once; it closes a moment after the pointer leaves. It is always one face: a square at the near end, what is in it beside the square with its controls, and at the far end the time large with the day and the date under it.

• The face is the running thing with the most to press: the music first, then a countdown, a virtual machine, a recording, and what is using the microphone, the camera or the screen.
• Everything else running is a chip on a strip under the face: its mark, its name and a reading.
• The square is never an empty box: a cover fills it, and anything else is drawn large in it: the countdown’s ring, the recording’s dot, the machine’s or the weather’s mark.
• With nothing running, the face is the weather, when the weather is already on the bar or on the desktop, and otherwise five days of the week, today in the middle and lit, beside the time.

Face	Its controls
Music	Previous, play or pause, next; under the title, the line being sung
Countdown	Restart, pause or resume, cancel
Virtual machine	Open its window, pause or resume, shut down
Recording	Stop

The glance with a player: the cover, the track, its controls and the time.

The square and a chip do what that thing’s mark does at rest: the cover opens the lyrics, a countdown its detail, a machine the machines panel, and a recording’s dot stops it. The square, the chips and the controls are the only things on it to press; a click anywhere else opens the control centre. It does not open while a notification or a reading holds the island, or over a running thing’s mark. Turn it off with A glance on hover (see Settings).

Lyrics

The lyrics of whatever is playing come from lrclib.net, timed per line, with any player. The glance carries the line being sung under the track’s title, and the desktop has a widget that shows the words and nothing else.

Click the music, on the bar, in the glance or at rest, and once its lyrics are known it opens out round them: the cover large on one side with the track, the progress and the controls under it, and the lyrics on the other, the line being sung lit and held in the middle. A click on a line goes to that place in the song. Lyrics that are not timed are the whole text, to scroll, with nothing lit; a track lrclib does not know opens the plain player.

Every lookup tells lrclib.net what is playing, so one switch turns all of it off: Settings → Modules → Lyrics → Look them up. It is on by default, and nothing is looked up while nothing on screen shows lyrics.

What it becomes

Shape	Opens with
The control centre	SUPER A, or a click on the island
The launcher	SUPER Space
The clipboard history	SUPER V — the launcher in its clipboard mode
The overview	SUPER TAB
Wallpapers	SUPER T
Palettes	SUPER SHIFT T
System statistics	SUPER U
The session menu	SUPER X, CTRL ALT Delete, or the power button
The games	SUPER G
The pet	SUPER SHIFT P
The notes	SUPER S
The task board	SUPER K
Every key	SUPER H
Packages	SUPER I
Virtual machines	SUPER SHIFT M
Development servers	SUPER O
Camera effects	SUPER SHIFT W
Screen time	SUPER Y
A module’s detail	a click on its piece on the bar
The Wi-Fi and Bluetooth lists	their pieces on the bar, or the arrow on their control-centre tiles

These are the default keys. Every key belongs to a profile and can be changed in Settings → Keys; the full list is in the keybindings. Settings itself, SUPER ,, is the one panel that is not the island: it opens as a window.

The session menu is five tiles (Lock, Suspend, Log out, Restart, Shut down), moved through with the arrows or the pointer. Lock and Suspend run at once; the other three turn red and read Confirm on the first press, and run on the second.

The session menu.

Appearance, on SUPER + T.

System statistics, on SUPER + U.

The pet, on SUPER + SHIFT + P.

The overview, the capture surface, the dock's menu, system statistics and the pet.

Notes, a game, tasks, screen time, machines and servers.

Opening and closing

What opened a shape closes it: the same key, the same click, Escape, or a click anywhere off the island. Opening another shape replaces it. While a panel or a detail is open it holds the keyboard, and the pointer can cross the windows without taking it back.

Every module on the bar opens into the island.

Every piece on the bar opens into the island rather than into a popup of its own, one at a time. A click on the same piece closes it; a click on another swaps it. What each one shows is in the module catalogue.

When several things want the island at once, a panel you opened comes first, then a notification, then a passing reading, then the glance. A reading that arrives while a panel is open is dropped rather than shown late, and opening a panel sends a notification on screen away — it stays in the list.

Notifications

The shell is the notification daemon, and a notification arrives in the island as one row: the sender’s picture with the application’s mark on its corner, or the application’s icon from the icon set; the title, with the application and the time at its far end; and two lines of the body.

A notification with two buttons, in the island.

• Buttons the application sends sit at the end of the row, up to two, the first in the accent. More than two, or longer ones, share the width in a row underneath.
• A click runs the notification’s default action, or closes it when it has none. A right click always closes it. There is no close button.
• A notification with no timeout of its own stays as long as Island → Notifications → How long one stays says: two to fifteen seconds, five by default. One that asks for longer is held to fifteen. A critical one stays until you close it, and a newer ordinary one does not replace it.
• Every notification is kept, newest first, up to fifty: in the bell’s detail on the bar and in the control centre’s notification block. A click on a row runs its default action while the notification is still open. Under the pointer a row shows a close mark that removes it, and Clear empties the list.
• The list is kept across restarts and logins, in the shell’s state directory. A notification that asks not to be kept is shown and not stored. Inline replies are not shown.

Do not disturb keeps notifications off the island and still keeps them in the list; a critical one comes through anyway. The bell is crossed out while it is on, and it stays on across a restart. Switch it with the Focus tile in the control centre, or in Settings → Island → Notifications.

Note

If another notification daemon is running — mako, dunst, swaync — it holds the name first, and the island shows nothing. Stop it, and the shell takes over by itself.

Passing readings

What you change shows as one passing capsule: the volume, the brightness, and the charger plugged in or out, each as a symbol, a level bar and the reading. Holding a key gives one smooth reading rather than a flicker of them, and it falls away after under two seconds. With the volume or brightness detail open, its own slider shows the change instead.

The volume, passing.

The same capsule carries messages with no level: what a capture did, the colour picked, a recording starting and stopping, a new best in a game, a new egg for the pet, a profile switched, the window layout cycled, game mode on or off.

Asking for root

The shell is the password dialog. When a program asks for root through polkit, pkexec or any other, the island opens on the request: Authentication required and what the program wants, the lock screen’s pill for the password, and under it the action asked for, with Cancel and Authorize.

• A refused password shakes the pill and says That password didn’t work.
• While Caps Lock is on, the line under the pill says so.
• Closing the island any way, Escape included, answers no.
• It comes over a full-screen window as well.

Should the shell fail to take the role, the KDE password dialog does it instead until the next login.

The overview

SUPER TAB shows every workspace at once, five to a row, up to the number set under Settings → Bar → Workspaces → Workspaces available. Each cell is a scale model of the screen its workspace is on, scaled to fit: every window is drawn live, at its own place and size. The workspace you are on has a thin outline, and the one Enter goes to a thick one.

Do	And
Arrow keys, or move the pointer	move the outline; it wraps at the edges
Enter, or click a cell	bring that workspace to the screen the overview is on
Escape	close the overview
Click a window	focus it
Right-click a window	close it
Middle-click a window	float or tile it
Drag a window onto another cell	move it to that workspace; you stay where you are
Drag a window within its own cell	a floating window is put where it lands; a tiled one swaps with the tiled window under it

Settings

Under Settings → Island → The island, in The island, Clock and Beside the time:

Setting	What it does
Position	Floating below the top edge, or Notch, cut into it. The bezel is always cut in
A glance on hover	Off, only a click opens anything
Clock format	24-hour or 12-hour
Show the date, Show seconds	What the time carries
Beside the time	Privacy, Timer, Media, Virtual machines and Workspace, each on the island or not; see At rest

The style, which screens carry the bar and the island’s ground are on the Bar page, and the lyrics on Modules.

On a second screen

Every screen draws the whole bar, and one of them is live: the screen with the keyboard. The live bar opens panels and shows notifications; the others show the island at rest. The island moves only while it is shut, so an open panel holds it where it is. See Several screens.