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-shell 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-shell v4.4.0+, which added the non_exclusive display mode for the topbar (and I think also the bar showBar and bar hideBar IPC commands). On earlier versions, you will need to use the always display mode and use the bar toggle IPC command instead, it will not be pleasing visually, as windows will resize to accomodate the topbar.

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 also need to make sure that the noctalia-shell package used by noctoggle is the same as the one used by your system. This is important when you are overriding the noctalia-shell package in your system configuration to add e.g. calendar support. In that case, you either need to perform your overrides as an overlay, or you need to pass the same overriden package to config.services.noctoggle.noctaliaPackage as well. Otherwise you will get an error along the lines of

No running instances for "/nix/store/[...]-noctalia-shell-[...]/share/noctalia-shell/shell.qml"

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-shell ipc call bar showBar)
• HIDE_CMD / services.noctoggle.hideCommand: Command to run when trigger is released (default: noctalia-shell ipc call bar hideBar)
• 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).