Mandara Shell is a native Linux Wayland desktop shell for MangoWM, Niri, Hyprland, Umbriel, Sway, River and KWin, written in Rust on GPUI. These pages cover everything about it, one topic per page. New here? Start with Install, then Usage. Quick answers are in the FAQ.
For a visual tour, try the Look previews on the website.
| Page | What’s in it |
|---|---|
| Install | The short download command with progress and signature checks, installer options, Arch packages, all seven compositors, coming from another setup, versioning |
| Usage | Starting Mandara, everyday commands, default shortcuts, where settings live |
| Mandara Studio | The settings app: a tour, every page, keyboard shortcuts and deep links |
| FAQ | Short answers: compositors, install, updates, memory, plugins, scripting, languages |
| Page | What’s in it |
|---|---|
| Your desktop | Bar styles, the main menu, Looks, desktop widgets and their shapes, sound, keyboard shortcut cards |
| Dock and launcher | The macOS-style dock, stacks, and the fuzzy launcher |
| Sidebar, notes and notifications | Sidebar tabs, to-do lists, Markdown notes, the notification center |
| Motion | Spring presets, live preview, accessibility and per-surface playback |
| Panel images | Copy a visible plugin panel to the clipboard |
| App themes | Opt-in palette exports, activation steps and restoring app files |
| Wallpapers | The wallpaper picker and engine, and the wallpaper generator |
| Apps and updates | Drag-and-drop app installer, the uninstaller, binary-patch updates |
| Lock screen and Mandara Login | The lock screen and the login screen (full login guide) |
| Everything else | Screenshots and recording, OCR, night light, displays, networks and much more |
| Color science | Material You palettes, OKLCH tweening and app theming |
| Languages | Twenty interface languages, right-to-left Arabic, Persian and Urdu |
| Page | What’s in it |
|---|---|
| Plugins | The built-in plugins, the plugin system and the marketplace (authoring guide) |
| Scripting, automation and agents | Driving Mandara from scripts and AI agents, hooks and skills |
| Commands | The command tour, grouped by area |
| Configuration | Every setting, by Studio page |
| Performance | Memory, video memory and CPU, and how they’re kept low |
| Why Mandara | How Mandara compares with Caelestia, Noctalia and Dux |
| Page | What’s in it |
|---|---|
| Building from source | Build commands, allocator options, the crates, the build fingerprint |
| Development tools | The demo sandbox, resource checks, build artefacts |
| Releasing | Versioning, signed releases, the changelog |
| AGENTS.md | The repository map and the rules, for people and coding agents |
Connected plugins: translation, paired phones, feeds and Home Assistant.
Local shell commands: offline natural language control, model downloads and the Studio test bench.