DankMaterialShell is a desktop shell for Wayland compositors built with Quickshell and Go, optimized for niri, Hyprland, Sway, MangoWC, labwc, and MiracleWM.
The tool replaces the typical collection of separate Wayland utilities—waybar, swaylock, swayidle, mako, fuzzel, and polkit—with a unified desktop environment. It combines a shell interface and backend services in a single monorepo, providing dynamic theming driven by wallpaper-based color schemes, real-time system monitoring with CPU and GPU metrics, a Spotlight-style application launcher with file search and emoji support, a control center for network and audio settings, a notification center with grouping and rich text, media player controls, session management with lock screen and idle detection, and a plugin system for extensibility.
Adoption suits developers and users running supported Wayland compositors who want a cohesive desktop experience without assembling multiple tools. The project works best with niri, Hyprland, Sway, MangoWC, labwc, Scroll, and Miracle WM, offering full workspace switching and monitor management on these compositors, while other Wayland environments receive reduced functionality. Installation is available through a single command on Arch, Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu, openSUSE, and Gentoo. The plugin system maintains a lock file tracking exact Git commits of installed plugins, enabling reproducible setups across machines.
Development shows consistent activity with regular updates to core functionality and compositor support. The project maintains comprehensive documentation including installation guides, compositor configuration instructions, and CLI/IPC documentation. Active development of related tooling—including matugen for theming, dgop for system monitoring, dsearch for file search, and dank-greeter for login—indicates ongoing investment in the ecosystem. The monorepo structure suggests coordinated development of shell and backend services rather than fragmented maintenance.
