noctoggle

noctoggle-demo.mp4

noctoggle is a simple utility that shows the Noctalia Shell topbar while a configurable key is held down, and hides it again when the key is released.

Usage

NixOS

Add noctoggle to your flake.nix inputs:

{
  inputs.noctoggle.url = "github:Swarsel/noctoggle";
}

Then, inside a module:

{ inputs, ... }:
{
  imports = [ inputs.noctoggle.nixosModules.default ];
  services.noctoggle.enable = true;
}

Non-NixOS

1. Build it: cargo build --release
2. Setup the service:

[Unit]
Description=noctoggle – automatic noctalia topbar toggle
After=graphical-session.target
PartOf=graphical-session.target

[Service]
ExecStart=<noctoggle path>
Restart=on-failure
RestartSec=2

[Install]
WantedBy=graphical-session.target

Configuration

To use this out of the box, you will need noctalia v5+, which uses the noctalia msg bar-show and noctalia msg bar-hide IPC commands together with reserve_space = false on the bar. On noctalia-shell v4 (the quickshell-based version), override the show/hide commands with the old syntax (noctalia-shell ipc call bar showBar / hideBar) and use the non_exclusive display mode.

noctoggle works by monitoring input devices via evdev, which requires read access to /dev/input/event*. For that, you will need to add your user to the input group.

You can customize the commands executed on key press/release and the trigger keys via environment variables or NixOS options.

• SHOW_CMD / services.noctoggle.showCommand: Command to run when trigger is pressed (default: noctalia msg bar-show)
• HIDE_CMD / services.noctoggle.hideCommand: Command to run when trigger is released (default: noctalia msg bar-hide)
• TRIGGER_KEYS / services.noctoggle.triggerKeys: Comma-separated list (env) or list of strings (Nix) of keys that trigger the toggle (default: KEY_LEFTMETA,KEY_RIGHTMETA). You can also use raw key codes, e.g. 0x30 or 48.

Note

If you are using tools like wev to find keycodes, be aware that Wayland/X keycodes are shifted by 8 from the kernel keycodes (which are used by noctoggle); e.g. wev reports key 179 for XF86Tools, the actual kernel keycode you should use in noctoggle then is 171 (KEY_CONFIG).