Desktop Polish: DankMaterialShell and the Perfect Rofi Launcher

The Integration Problem

A Wayland desktop has many components:

• Compositor (Niri)
• Desktop shell (panel, system tray)
• App launcher
• Notifications
• Lock screen

Each is a separate project with its own design language. Making them feel unified requires intentional coordination.

DankMaterialShell: The Shell Layer

DankMaterialShell (DMS) is a Quickshell-based desktop shell. It provides:

• Top panel with workspaces, systray, clock
• Power menu
• App spotlight
• Clipboard history

Why DMS: It uses Material Design 3 tokens, which provides a coherent design language. It also works on both Hyprland and Niri—compositor agnostic.

IPC: The Control Pattern

DMS exposes functionality via IPC. This is the same pattern as Kitty’s remote control: the shell is a server, scripts are clients.

dms ipc call powermenu toggle    # Power menu
dms ipc call spotlight toggle    # App launcher
dms ipc call clipboard toggle    # Clipboard history
dms ipc call settings toggle     # Settings panel

The benefit: Compositor keybindings can trigger shell features without coupling.

// In niri config
Mod+X { spawn-sh "dms ipc call powermenu toggle"; }

The compositor doesn’t know about DMS internals. It just calls an IPC command. Tomorrow I could replace DMS with something else, and the keybinding still works if it exposes the same IPC.

Rofi: The Launcher Layer

DMS has a built-in launcher (spotlight), but I prefer Rofi for its flexibility and speed.

The challenge: Making Rofi visually match DMS.

Design Goals

1. Fullscreen grid — Like macOS Launchpad
2. Matching colors — Same palette as DMS (Catppuccin Mocha)
3. Selection highlight — Use Niri’s focus ring color for consistency

Color Coordination

I extracted colors from DMS’s theme and Niri’s focus ring:

The insight: Using Niri’s focus ring color for selection means the launcher’s selection matches window focus everywhere. Visual consistency without thinking.

* {
    font: "Hack Nerd Font 10";

    bg0: #1a1a1ae6;
    bg1: #313244;
    bg2: #45475a80;
    bg3: #45475a;
    bg4: #7fc8ffe6;  /* Niri focus-ring color */

    fg0: #cdd6f4;
    fg1: #a6adc8;

    background-color: transparent;
    text-color: @fg0;
}

window {
    fullscreen: true;
    padding: 1em;
    background-color: @bg0;
}

inputbar {
    background-color: @bg2;
    margin: 0px calc( 50% - 160px );
    padding: 8px 12px;
    border: 2px;
    border-radius: 12px;
    border-color: @bg3;
    children: [icon-search, entry];
}

icon-search {
    expand: false;
    filename: "search";
}

entry {
    placeholder: "Search apps...";
    placeholder-color: @fg1;
}

listview {
    margin: 48px calc( 50% - 560px );
    spacing: 32px;
    columns: 6;
    fixed-columns: true;
}

element {
    padding: 12px;
    orientation: vertical;
    border-radius: 12px;
}

element selected {
    background-color: @bg4;
}

element-icon {
    size: 64px;
    horizontal-align: 0.5;
}

element-text {
    horizontal-align: 0.5;
}

Arrow Key Navigation

By default, Rofi uses arrow keys for text cursor movement. For a grid, we want them to navigate the grid:

rofi -show drun -show-icons \
  -kb-move-char-back "" \
  -kb-move-char-forward "" \
  -kb-row-left "Left" \
  -kb-row-right "Right" \
  -theme ~/.config/rofi/themes/launchpad.rasi

The tradeoff: Text cursor movement moves to Ctrl+B/F. Acceptable for a launcher where you rarely need cursor positioning.

Niri Integration

Bind Rofi in Niri with the full options:

Mod+R hotkey-overlay-title="App Launcher" {
    spawn "rofi" "-show" "drun" "-show-icons"
          "-kb-move-char-back" ""
          "-kb-move-char-forward" ""
          "-kb-row-left" "Left"
          "-kb-row-right" "Right"
          "-theme" "~/.config/rofi/themes/launchpad.rasi";
}

The Consistency Pattern

Looking across all components:

The pattern: each component exposes its own IPC. Keybindings call IPC. Components are decoupled.

Other Shell Components

Notifications (SwayNC)

Mod+N { spawn-sh "swaync-client -t -sw"; }

Toggle notification center. SwayNC follows similar IPC patterns.

Lock Screen (Swaylock)

Super+Alt+L { spawn "swaylock"; }

Simple spawn. Swaylock handles everything internally.

Screenshots

Niri has built-in screenshot commands. For area selection, I use grim + slurp:

Print { screenshot; }
Shift+Print { spawn-sh "grim -g \"$(slurp)\" ~/Pictures/Screenshots/$(date +%Y%m%d_%H%M%S).png"; }

Design Decisions

Dependencies

The full stack requires:

# Shell
quickshell dankmaterialshell

# Launcher
rofi

# Notifications
swaync

# Lock
swaylock

# Screenshots
grim slurp wl-clipboard

# Fonts
ttf-hack-nerd

Testing Changes

Preview Rofi theme changes:

rofi -show drun -show-icons -theme ~/.config/rofi/themes/launchpad.rasi

Restart DMS after settings changes:

dms restart

Niri hot-reloads automatically.

Next in this series: My 2026 Linux Desktop: Niri + DankMaterialShell + Kitty