Mandara: the phoenix rising from a Mediterranean wave beside the wordmark. A beautiful, fast desktop shell for Wayland, tuned for responsive frames.

A beautiful, fast Linux desktop built with care for its resources.
Design-first, spring-animated and written entirely in Rust.
Your desktop, in your own words: optional local AI control through natural language.
Historical release samples built frames in about 0.1 ms; see the performance guide for the setup and current limits.

Install Mandara

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100% Rust Wayland native GPU rendered MangoWM, Niri, Hyprland, Umbriel, Sway, River Classic, KWin 81 plugins plus WebAssembly 20 languages
Resource measurements and current limits Historical VRAM measurement under 210 MiB; current use may differ Measured idle CPU

Mandara Shell desktop over sculpted glass ribbons: the edge-frame bar with rounded screen corners and the song playing, a headline clock, a to-do list taped on torn paper, two sticky notes (Weekend plans and Ideas), a month calendar, the agenda of upcoming events and the dock

Install · Website · Documentation · Studio · Plugins · Commands · What's new

--- **Mandara Shell** is a native Linux Wayland desktop shell, written in Rust on [GPUI](https://github.com/zed-industries/zed). It's everything around your windows: the bar, a dynamic island, a dock, a launcher, a sidebar, notifications, wallpapers, desktop widgets, the lock screen and the login screen, plus a settings app that changes all of it live. It runs on **MangoWM, Niri, Hyprland, Umbriel, Sway, River Classic and KWin**, and it's one small, fast program you install with one command. Maintenance flags missing icon themes and links to the icon settings. Studio keeps bar arrangements in their own saved profiles, and screenshots can capture every display at once. Native KWin support uses Plasma's own window, clipboard and screenshot interfaces. Icons describe each tool’s function; sparkle symbols are reserved for AI features. It's made to feel good to use. Panels pour out of the bar on real spring physics, colours follow your wallpaper and your music, and the whole desktop stays responsive throughout your day. With optional local AI control, type `!switch to dark mode` in the launcher, review the action and press Enter. Your words stay on your computer; inference runs off the UI thread and its model worker exits when finished or closed. [Meet the AI Shell Agent](docs/command-agent.md). Every plugin panel also has a camera button: copy what you see to the clipboard with a click, including floating and third-party panels. [Panel images](docs/panel-images.md). ## One shell, many desktops Pick a bar style, a wallpaper and a few desktop widgets, and Mandara turns into a different desktop. Each of these takes a minute in Studio, and every widget can be moved, resized and restyled right on the desktop. Write notes and edit tasks directly in their widgets, too.
A music desktop: floating glass-pill bar, a turning vinyl record with the album art and controls, a pocket player, a dot-matrix clock and a flowing wave visualizer over glossy ribbons in sunset colours
Music corner: glass pills, a turning record, a pocket player and a live wave visualizer.		 A night desktop: the notch bar, an analog clock on a scalloped cookie dial, tonight's moon, the sun's arc with the time to sunrise and a dotted weather disc under the northern lights
Night sky: the notch bar, a cookie-dial clock, the moon, the sun's arc and the weather.		 A light desktop: the island bar, a quote from Ferdowsi's Shahnameh, a to-do list on a soft card, the focus timer and the month calendar over a pastel mesh of rose and lilac, in light mode
Daylight: light mode, the island bar, a quote, your to-dos, the focus timer and the month.
## At a glance | | | |---|---| | **What** | A complete Wayland desktop shell: bar, island, dock, launcher, sidebar, notifications, OSDs, wallpapers, desktop widgets, lock screen, login manager, settings app | | **Compositors** | MangoWM, Niri, Hyprland, Umbriel, Sway, River Classic (0.3) and KWin, with native drivers; your own config gets one include line at most, nothing more | | **Built with** | 100 % Rust, one binary (`mandara`), GPU-rendered with GPUI and wgpu | | **Resources** | [Resource measurements and current limits](docs/performance.md); the 100 MiB startup and operation target remains open | | **Settings** | `~/.config/mandara/config.toml`, edited live by Mandara Studio (`mandara studio`), with [thirteen colour launcher icons](docs/configuration.md#launcher-button-artwork) | | **Automation** | `mandara msg ` with JSON replies; `mandara commands --json` lists them all | | **Plugins** | 81 built in; third-party plugins in Rust, compiled to sandboxed WebAssembly | | **Widgets** | Mechanical, word and binary clocks, calendar cards and weather dials; passive widgets can also decorate Mandara Login and the native lock screen | | **Languages** | 20, including right-to-left Arabic, Persian and Urdu | | **License** | GPL-3.0-or-later | ## What sets Mandara apart Mandara is built for one job: being the complete desktop for **MangoWM, Niri, Hyprland, Umbriel, Sway, River Classic and KWin**. These are the strengths it was designed around, each one measured or shipped today: 1. **Seven compositors, each first-class.** It speaks every compositor's own IPC natively: MangoWM's and River's tag bitmasks (view, toggle-view, tag moves), Niri's scrolling columns, Hyprland's, Umbriel's and Sway's workspaces, and KWin's native Plasma window and virtual-desktop protocols. It reads each compositor's version and writes its exact config dialect, down to Hyprland 0.57's Lua config. 2. **It never breaks your compositor config.** It adds one include line (none on River or KWin); River settings use its native protocol, while KWin settings stay in Plasma System Settings. For the other compositors, everything else goes into its own drop-in files. Every change is checked by the compositor's own validator (`mango -p`, `niri validate`, `Hyprland --verify-config`, `umbriel config validate`, `sway --validate`) and rolled back if it objects. 3. **A whole desktop in one native binary.** Bar, dynamic island, dock, launcher, side bars and sidebar, notification center, on-screen displays, wallpaper engine, desktop widgets, clipboard manager, screenshots, screen recording, offline OCR, polkit agent, lock screen, login manager and a settings app: one Rust program, no QML, JavaScript, Python or shell glue. 4. **Measure the whole desktop.** Resource use depends on your display, driver and active widgets; the 100 MiB startup and operation target remains open. Plugin views reuse clipboard layouts, media gesture state and network history. Image previews decode in bounded workers and release their caches after closing. Earlier frame builds measured around 0.1 ms; historical results and their exact setup are recorded alongside current limitations. [How it's measured](docs/performance.md) 5. **Real motion.** Analytical spring physics that can be interrupted mid-flight, and OKLCH colour blending, so every morph, slide and theme change stays smooth. 6. **Every setting live, in a real app.** Mandara Studio has 30 pages; drag a slider and the bar follows as you drag. Nothing needs a config file unless you want one. 7. **A colour engine, not a colour picker.** Material You (HCT) palettes from your wallpaper, hand-tuned themes, and opt-in theming of Ghostty, GTK 3/4, Qt 5/6, Kvantum, Zed, kitty, foot, Alacritty, btop, Cava, tmux, Zellij and Spicetify. [App setup](docs/app-themes.md). [Motion controls](docs/motion.md) include spring presets, a live preview and per-surface speeds, with optional system accessibility preferences. 8. **Your desktop, your look.** Six bar styles on any edge, side bars that join the top bar into one frame, one-click Looks, dozens of desktop widgets placed per monitor, and three launcher looks. Attached launchers follow compact bars, with a placement map in Studio. 9. **Safe, rich extensions.** 81 plugins built in. Third-party plugins are Rust compiled to sandboxed WebAssembly: a crashing plugin is switched off and the shell keeps running. Qur’an, Hadith and Jannah can also [copy complete reading cards as images](docs/plugins.md#jannah-quran-hadith-and-prayer-times). 10. **Scriptable end to end.** Almost everything the interface does is a `mandara msg` command with JSON replies, so scripts and AI agents can drive and inspect the whole desktop. [How](docs/agent-ready.md) 11. **Installs and updates itself, safely.** One command sets it up on Arch, Debian/Ubuntu, Fedora, openSUSE, Void, Alpine, Gentoo and Solus, takes over an existing setup without losing it, and updates arrive as small, signed binary patches from Studio → About → Update now. NixOS gets a flake with NixOS and Home Manager modules, updated through the flake. The Updates panel updates your whole system too, AUR packages included, with live progress and Mandara's own password dialog, and manages NixOS generations. [How](docs/apps-and-updates.md#system-updates) 12. **Made for everyone.** 20 interface languages, right-to-left Arabic, Persian and Urdu included, and fonts chosen for every script it shows. ## Why you'll like it - **It's light.** Plugins load data when needed, and hidden panels stop their refresh work. [Measurements and setup](docs/performance.md) - **It looks the way you want.** Six bar styles, eight presets that reshape the bar completely (a framed bar with a rail of scalloped buttons, a dock of squircle tiles, a flower rail, rows of connected tiles, a monitoring status line, three floating docks, a notch hanging from the top, a top bar joined to a rail), side bars of icons and pills that join the top bar into one frame, one-click Looks, desktop widgets, a hundred dials for corners, glass and motion, and themes made from your wallpaper. [Your desktop](docs/desktop.md) - **Everything is a click away in Studio.** 30 pages of settings, all live: drag a slider and the bar follows as you drag. [Mandara Studio](docs/studio.md) - **It does a lot out of the box.** A media island with lyrics, a sound mixer per app, screenshots and screen recording, copying text from the screen, a launcher with three looks (a list, an icon grid or a centred Spotlight-style search bar), a clipboard that sorts what you copy, a drag-and-drop app installer, night light, and 81 built-in plugins. [Everything else](docs/more-features.md) - **It welcomes you in.** A matching lock screen and login screen with your own wallpaper, and ready-made looks for both. [Lock screen and login](docs/lock-and-login.md) - **It speaks your language.** Twenty languages, with Arabic, Persian and Urdu laid out right to left. [Languages](docs/languages.md) - **It plays well with scripts and AI agents.** Nearly everything the interface does is also a command with JSON replies. [Automation](docs/agent-ready.md) ## A look around
Media island
Media: colours from the album art, a live spectrum and synced lyrics.		 Sound panel with per-app volume
Sound: choose speakers and microphones, then adjust each app’s volume.
Weather
Weather: an animated sky, hourly and five-day forecasts.		 The notification center: notifications grouped by app (Mail with Reply and Archive actions, Corniche Radio, Calendar), do not disturb and clear
Notifications: grouped by app, with do not disturb.
### Bar styles Eight presets reshape the whole bar in one click: pick one in **Studio → Bars → Presets**, or run `mandara msg bar style `. Every style shows the icon of the app on each workspace and tag button. Each side bar can take one of its own (`mandara msg side-bar style right `).
The Expressive bar style: a tall bottom bar inside a thin frame round the screen, joined to a rail on the left, with round accent buttons, tonal tiles and scalloped badges
Expressive (expressive): round buttons and tonal tiles in a framed bar, with a scalloped rail.		 The Tile dock bar style: one floating island of large squircle tiles at the bottom of the screen
Tile dock (tile-dock): one floating island of large squircle tiles.
The Rail bar style: a wide rail on the left edge with flower-shaped buttons and tiles, inside a thin screen frame
Rail (rail): a wide left rail of flower buttons in a screen frame.		 The Segmented bar style: no bar, just rows of connected tiles under the top edge
Segmented (segmented): no bar, just rows of connected tiles.
The System monitor bar style: a slim bar along the bottom of the screen where every reading sits on a square stat block in a monospace font, with CPU and memory rings, network rates and app icons on the workspace buttons
System monitor (system-monitor): a slim bottom status line of stat blocks, meters and rates.		 The Stanley Bridge bar style: three floating docks of squircle tiles spanning the bottom of the screen, with app icons on the workspace tiles
Stanley Bridge (stanley-bridge): three floating docks of squircle tiles along the bottom.
The Pharos Beam bar style: a half-width notch hanging from the top edge, with scalloped accent buttons, tonal tiles and app icons on the workspace buttons
Pharos Beam (pharos-beam): a notch of scalloped buttons and tonal tiles hanging from the top.		 The Raml Tram bar style: a top bar joined to a rail down the left edge, with flower-shaped buttons and app icons on the workspace buttons
Raml Tram (raml-tram): a top bar joined to a left rail of flower buttons.
A Segmented top bar of connected tiles beside a right side bar styled as a Tile dock, with squircle tiles
Side bars take a style of their own: here a Tile dock rail beside a Segmented bar.

The six Looks, each on a wallpaper of its own: Corniche Dusk (glass pills and a headline clock over a rose sunset), Pharos Ink (a hairline bar over ink contours), Montaza Crimson (an Arabic clock over a red and amber glow), Qaitbay Forest (a giant stacked clock over green hills), Anfushi Wave (a glowing wave over layered sea) and Night Frame (a side bar framing the northern lights), in dark mode or light mode to match your page
Six Looks, one click each: the bar, widgets, colours and fonts change together.

Mandara Login in its Mandara design: a big clock, the avatar and a glass password field floating over glossy cyan, violet and pink ribbons, with the Mandara emblem above the keyboard pill
Mandara Login, the login screen: the Mandara design		 Mandara Login in its Midnight card design: a quiet clock over one outlined card with the user, password and session, in midnight navy and citrine over violet and coral dusk waves
…its Midnight card design		 Mandara Login in its Material You design: a big stacked clock with the hours in pink, and a tonal card with the scalloped avatar, a filled password field, a round sign-in button and a session chip, in colours taken from coral, gold and magenta ribbons
…its Material You design
Mandara Login in its Ghostline design: on graphite with ice-white hairlines, a bracketed wireframe sign-in panel on the left with live readouts of the keyboard layout, uptime and time zone and a terminal password line of segmented cells, and on the right a thin stacked clock beside a ruler of the day
…Ghostline, sign-in on the left in a wireframe panel		 Mandara Login in its Chrome Halo design: on deep ink with soft holographic light, a light clock inside a luminous ring of iridescent arcs on the left, and on the right a machined double-bezel sign-in module with a glowing field and a gold pill button
…Chrome Halo, a ring of light and a machined module on the right		 Mandara Login in its Meridian design: no boxes, the name and the typed characters set on one hairline across a calm field at the golden height, small words for the session, power and date at its ends, over enormous faint numerals
…and Meridian, everything on one line, light or dark
The lock screen in its Mandara design over blurred coral, violet and gold ribbons: the date, a big clock, the avatar and the glass password field
The lock screen, made to match: the Mandara design		 The lock screen in its Material You design over blurred blue and teal ribbons: the date, a big stacked clock, and a tonal card with the scalloped avatar, a filled password field and a round button
…and its Material You design

Studio: the login screen designer with a live preview of the Chrome Halo look, the Try it buttons and the six Looks: Mandara, Midnight card, Material You, Ghostline, Chrome Halo and Meridian
Mandara Studio: every setting, live, with previews like this login screen designer.

## Desktop widgets Dress up your desktop with dozens of widgets: clocks of every kind, calendars with your events, the sky, the weather, what's playing, a to-do list you tick right there, quick toggles, a desk cat and more. Each one can sit on a glass or solid plate, take a shape (a circle, a scalloped cookie, a flower, torn paper…) and wear a frame like washi tape or a polaroid. Pick Western or Eastern Arabic digits, the Gregorian or Hijri calendar and the language of the day names. Widgets come from plugins, so you turn on only the ones you want, and plugins can add their own. The opt-in [Qur'an reader](docs/plugins.md#jannah-quran-hadith-and-prayer-times) also offers Yasser Al-Dossary, Abdulrashid Sufi and Abdul Basit Abdul Samad. [Desktop widgets](docs/desktop.md#desktop-widgets)
Desktop widgets: a cookie analog clock, a quote, a month calendar, a taped to-do list on torn paper, a sticky note, the focus timer and upcoming events
Your day: tick tasks, start the timer, see what's next.		 Music widgets: a turning record, a pocket player, a cover cut to a flower, a side pill, an LED meter, a dot-matrix clock and the desk cat
What's playing, painted six ways, with the desk cat bobbing along.
A sky dashboard over the sea at golden hour: the sun's arc with sunrise and sunset rising over the horizon, a clock, a weather disc, the next hours as a temperature curve, tonight's moon and a day-and-night globe
The sky: the sun's arc, the moon, the globe and the weather, as one dashboard.		 Widgets in Arabic over desert dunes: a dot-matrix clock in Eastern Arabic digits with the Gregorian and Hijri dates, an orbit clock, a Hijri month, the weather in words, a countdown and a date tile on a scalloped plate
Your language: Eastern Arabic digits and the Hijri calendar.
## Install One command, from any shell: ```bash sh -c 'f=$(mktemp) && trap "rm -f -- \"\$f\"" 0 && curl --proto =https -fL https://thehamdiz.github.io/mandara/install.sh -o "$f" && sh "$f" "$@"' sh ``` The download shows its size and progress, confirms the release signature and archive checksum, then opens Mandara's installer with an arrow-key setup menu. Compositor, login and other options go straight to `mandara install`. Append them after the final `sh`, for example `--compositor kwin --no-greeter`; see the [installation guide](docs/install.md). If the installer adds Mandara to PATH, open a new terminal before using its commands. Studio is also available from your application menu. The installer sets up what your distribution needs, and hooks into your compositor without touching your own config files (no compositor yet? it offers to install one). It works on Arch, Debian and Ubuntu, Fedora, openSUSE, Void, Alpine, Gentoo and Solus. Updates arrive by small binary patch: Studio → About → **Update now**. On **image-based systems** (Bazzite, Silverblue, Kinoite, Bluefin, Aurora, Aeon, Kalpa, Vanilla OS), the same command puts Mandara in your home folder and adds only the system packages the image lacks, in one `rpm-ostree`, `transactional-update` or `abroot` transaction after asking. It says when a reboot is needed; after it, Mandara Login is one click away in Studio → Login screen. On SteamOS it installs into your home folder only ([Immutable systems](docs/install.md#immutable-systems)). On **FreeBSD 14+** (14.4 and newer, 15 included; amd64), the same command installs the FreeBSD build; without curl, use the base system's `fetch` ([FreeBSD install](docs/install.md#freebsd)). On **NixOS**, Mandara is a flake: try it with `nix run github:theHamdiz/mandara`, or add it to your system with `programs.mandara.enable = true;` (a NixOS module and a Home Manager module come with it). NixOS users update through their flake, not Studio's *Update now*: in your configuration flake directory, run `nix flake update mandara`, then `sudo nixos-rebuild switch --flake .` (or `home-manager switch --flake .`). Use your input name if it differs from `mandara`. → **[Install guide](docs/install.md)**: Arch packages, NixOS, FreeBSD, immutable systems, other options, coming from another setup. ## Common questions **Does Mandara change my compositor config?** Only by one include line. Everything else goes to `~/.config/mandara/generated/`, and each change is checked by the compositor's own validator and rolled back if it objects. **How do I update?** Studio → About → **Update now**. Updates are small, signed binary patches. **Can I script it or let an AI agent drive it?** Yes. Nearly every action is a `mandara msg` command with a JSON reply, and scripts can push live progress to the bar. **Can I write my own plugins?** Yes, in Rust, compiled to a sandboxed WebAssembly component. They hot-reload while you work and can be shared through the GitHub marketplace. Community listings follow maintained [store moderation rules](PLUGINS.md#store-moderation), updated independently of Mandara releases. [Writing plugins](PLUGINS.md) More answers in the **[FAQ](docs/faq.md)**. ## Learn more - **[Documentation](docs/README.md)**: every feature, one topic per page - **[FAQ](docs/faq.md)**: short answers to common questions - **[Using Mandara](docs/usage.md)**: commands and default shortcuts - **[Plugins](docs/plugins.md)** and **[writing your own](PLUGINS.md)** - **[Why Mandara](docs/why-mandara.md)**: how it compares with other shells - **[Building from source](docs/building.md)**, with locked dependencies, and **[contributing](AGENTS.md)** ## Star history

Mandara Shell's GitHub stars over time

## Supporting Mandara Mandara is free, open source and always will be. If it makes your desktop a little nicer and you'd like to say thanks, you can chip in toward the AI credits and developer time that go into it: [![Buy me a coffee on Ko-fi](https://img.shields.io/badge/Ko--fi-Buy%20me%20a%20coffee-FF5E5B?logo=ko-fi&logoColor=white)](https://ko-fi.com/thehamdiz) It's entirely optional. Using Mandara, telling a friend, writing a plugin or reporting a bug helps just as much. Thank you! ## Local shell commands Enable **Studio → AI Shell Agent**, download the required models, then type `!dark mode` in any launcher look. Review the exact command and press Enter. Inference runs offline on your CPU and unloads after use or cancellation. See [the guide](docs/command-agent.md) for setup and model sizes. ## License Mandara Shell is free software under the **GNU General Public License, version 3 or later** ([LICENSE.md](LICENSE.md), notice in [COPYRIGHT.md](COPYRIGHT.md)). Vendored code keeps the license in its folder, and fonts and models downloaded on demand keep their own: OFL for Google Fonts, Apache-2.0 for the PaddleOCR models and the Depth Anything V2 Small depth model. Optional FunctionGemma weights use the [Gemma terms](https://ai.google.dev/gemma/terms).