rudo

A small, elegant dock for Wayland.

rudo keeps your desktop clean with pinned apps, live window tracking, gentle autohide, and easy configuration. It feels right at home on niri, but plays nicely with other Wayland compositors that support the right protocols.

Features

• Wayland-first: Built with GTK4 and layer-shell.
• Smart tracking: Persistent pinned apps and live running windows.
• Quality of life: Launch feedback (no more double-click spam), optional hover-to-reveal autohide, and manual CLI toggles (--toggle, --show, --hide).
• Customizable: CSS theming, live-reloading JSON settings, and multi-monitor support.
• Power menu: Configurable menu for custom actions, system commands, and destructive confirmations.

Compositor Support

• niri: The best experience, utilizing NIRI_SOCKET.
• Other Wayland compositors: Works well via wlr-foreign-toplevel-management.

Both backends fully support window tracking, activation, and closing.

Installation & Running

Arch Linux (AUR): The easiest way. This grabs the pre-built binary, so no compilation is needed.

yay -S rudo-bin # or paru -S rudo-bin

From Source: You'll need gtk4, gtk4-layer-shell, and pkgconf (e.g., sudo pacman -S gtk4-layer-shell pkgconf gtk4).

cargo run --release
# or if you use just:
just run

Running rudo multiple times won't spawn duplicate docks; it just reuses the existing one. You can easily bind visibility controls to your compositor's hotkeys:

rudo --toggle
rudo --show
rudo --hide

Configuration

Rudo stores its config in ~/.config/rudo/:

• pins.json: Your pinned apps.
• settings.json: Behavior and layout.
• style.css: Visual CSS overrides (loaded on startup, no rebuild needed).

Here’s a look at settings.json:

{
  "autohide": { "enabled": true, "delay_secs": 3 },
  "show_pin_button": true,
  "icon_size": 24,
  "position": "bottom",
  "outputs": "first",
  "window_scope": "all",
  "animation_duration_ms": 220,
  "menu": {
    "enabled": false,
    "icon": "system-lock-screen-symbolic",
    "position": "end",
    "items": [
      {"label": "Lock", "icon": "system-lock-screen-symbolic", "command": "swaylock -f", "confirm": false},
      {"label": "Shutdown", "icon": "system-shutdown-symbolic", "command": "systemctl poweroff", "confirm": true}
    ]
  }
}

• position: "bottom", "top", "left", or "right".
• outputs: "first" (one dock) or "all" (one dock per monitor).
• window_scope: "all" (default: windows from every monitor) or "current_monitor" (only windows on each dock's monitor). Pins stay visible everywhere; running indicators and window actions use the filtered list.
• menu: Add custom actions or a power menu. Set "confirm": true for destructive commands so you don't accidentally reboot!

Settings and monitor changes apply automatically while Rudo is running. Per-monitor filtering uses Niri workspace/output information or Wayland toplevel output membership. Windows spanning multiple outputs appear on each matching dock. If a window's output or the dock's monitor cannot be identified, Rudo keeps those windows visible rather than hiding them; older compositors without output names may therefore show a global list.

App Recognition

Rudo matches running windows to desktop entries using desktop IDs, StartupWMClass, Flatpak IDs, and executable names.

If an app (like Obsidian or a generic Electron app) shows up as a blank/generic icon:

1. Make sure it has a proper .desktop file in your application menu. AppImages usually need one in ~/.local/share/applications/.
2. Check the app's actual window ID (e.g., niri msg windows in Niri).
3. Add StartupWMClass=the_actual_id to its .desktop file.

Rudo doesn't guess apps from window titles, so you might need to explicitly tell it how to recognize apps that share generic IDs.

Autostart (niri)

Using systemd (Recommended for AUR):

systemctl --user enable --now rudo.service

(If installed manually, copy the binary and rudo.service to their proper /usr/local/bin and ~/.config/systemd/user/ locations first, then run systemctl --user daemon-reload).

Using niri config: Alternatively, just spawn it directly in your niri config:

// ~/.config/niri/config.kdl
spawn-at-startup "rudo"

binds {
    Mod+D { spawn "rudo" "--toggle"; }
}

Note: If you use the systemd service, remove any spawn-at-startup "rudo" lines from your niri config to avoid duplicates.

Development & Status

just fmt
just check
cargo test --all-targets

CI handles formatting, strict Clippy lints, and tests (which use temp desktop entries and don't need a live GUI).

rudo is intentionally small and focused. The codebase is kept clean so it's easy to hack on and extend as new dock features are added.