GlassUI

A macOS-inspired desktop layer for KDE Plasma on Wayland. GlassUI bundles custom forks of the bar, dock, wallpaper engine, and launcher that work together as one cohesive stack.

Components

Waybar (Waybar-Fork)

The top menu bar — clock, system status, tray, and controls styled like macOS.

• Transparent bar with an optional menu bar scrim (dark gradient) for legibility on bright wallpapers
• Built-in Waybar Settings app (middle-click the bar) for layout and appearance
• Integrates with Better Blur DX for frosted-glass popups (volume HUD, app menus)
• Search icon opens GlassLight (not Rofi)

Crystal Dock (Crystal-Dock-Fork)

The bottom dock — pinned apps, running tasks, Downloads stack, and Trash.

• Parabolic icon zoom and floating glass pill
• App-specific right-click menus (window list, pin/unpin, desktop actions)
• Shift+right-click opens dock settings
• Smooth resize, slide-to-hide, and indicator glow animations
• Launched via crystal-dock.service before Plasma shell

Glasstop (Glasstop-Fork)

The desktop wallpaper layer — sits behind windows and replaces the default Plasma wallpaper.

• Static images, animated ASCII art, and ASCII Translated (full-image colored ASCII)
• Per-monitor wallpapers; multi-monitor setups get independent canvases
• Desktop icon layer and right-click desktop menu
• Glasstop Settings for wallpaper gallery, quality presets, and display options
• Starts first via glasstop.service so the desktop is ready before the dock and bar

GlassLight (GlassLight-Fork)

The Spotlight-style launcher — app search and launch.

• Dual-panel search UI with liquid-glass styling
• Open from the Waybar search icon, Crystal Dock Apps, or run glasslight
• Running a second instance while open toggles visibility (single-instance)
• Replaces the old Rofi-based launcher; Rofi is not part of this repo

Shared infrastructure

Startup order

At login, user systemd units start components in this order:

1. Glasstop — wallpaper / desktop layer
2. Crystal Dock — dock (before plasmashell where configured)
3. macos-components — Waybar menu bar

GlassLight is on demand (not a login service).

Quick install (Arch Linux)

./install-all.sh

This will:

1. Install missing build dependencies with pacman (requires sudo)
2. Build and install GlassLight, Waybar, Crystal Dock, and Glasstop
3. Install user systemd units and restart services

Options:

• --skip-deps — skip automatic pacman dependency install
• --no-restart — install without restarting services

After install:

systemctl --user status glasstop.service crystal-dock.service macos-components.service

Better Blur DX (recommended)

For compositor blur behind glass surfaces, install Better Blur DX and set Blur all except matching, then add these window classes to Force blur:

crystal-dock
glasstop
glasstop-icons
waybar
glasslight

Keep waybar-menu and waybar-hud out of exclusion lists so menus and volume popups blur correctly. See Waybar-Fork/README.md and Waybar-Fork/docs/troubleshooting.md for reference blur values.

Requirements

• OS: Arch Linux (install script targets pacman)
• Session: KDE Plasma 6 on Wayland
• Build: base-devel, CMake, Meson, Ninja, Qt 6, Layer Shell Qt, KF6 WindowSystem, and related libraries (installed automatically by install-all.sh)

Repository layout

GlassUI/
├── install-all.sh
├── scripts/
├── systemd/
├── configs/
├── common/
├── Waybar-Fork/
├── Crystal-Dock-Fork/
├── Glasstop-Fork/
└── GlassLight-Fork/

Each *-Fork/ directory contains that component’s source, install.sh, and component-specific configs.

Note: Waybar-Fork/subprojects/ only ships small .wrap files. Meson downloads cava and other fallbacks on the first build (~18 MB); those directories are listed in .gitignore and should not be committed.

Per-component install

To rebuild a single component:

cd Glasstop-Fork && ./install.sh && systemctl --user restart glasstop.service
cd Crystal-Dock-Fork && ./install.sh && systemctl --user restart crystal-dock.service
cd Waybar-Fork && ./install.sh
cd GlassLight-Fork && ./install.sh