[madmedicnl]

Plugin

• Id: madmedicnl/niri-workspaces
• New plugin
• Update to an existing plugin (version bumped in plugin.toml)

What it does

A bar widget for niri that draws the workspaces the way the built-in Focus Hint
style does — a dot for every workspace you are not on, an expanded pill with its
name for the one you are — plus one thing widget.workspaces cannot do: a
comma-separated list of workspace names that are not drawn at all.

That is for a shelf rather than a desk. A scratchpad (nscratch and similar)
parks windows on a workspace nobody switches to, and widget.workspaces has no
hidden_workspaces setting (noctalia msg config-set widget.workspaces.hidden_workspaces … is refused as an unknown setting), so
that shelf costs a pill, or a dot, that means nothing to the operator.

The workspace you are on is always drawn, even when it is on the list: an
operator on an invisible workspace with no way back is worse than a dot.

Left click a dot or the pill focuses that workspace, scrolling goes to the next
or previous one, hovering a dot shows its name. Colours are palette roles
(tertiary for dots, primary for the pill), so they follow the theme.

External dependencies

niri, used three ways and nothing else: niri msg --json workspaces (loaded
once and re-read every 60 s as a self-heal), niri msg --json event-stream (read
continuously for WorkspacesChanged and WorkspaceActivated), and niri msg action focus-workspace / focus-workspace-up / -down from clicks and scrolls.

No network calls, no files written, nothing persisted — workspace state lives in
memory. No environment is read beyond PATH.

Testing

Live in a niri 25.x session (single output):

• The scratch workspace stays out of the bar while a file manager and a control
  panel are parked on it, and appears as the pill the moment it is focused —
  then goes again.

• The pill follows workspace changes without a reload (event stream), and a
  restart of the shell repopulates from the snapshot.

• Settings toggled through Settings → Plugins (gear beside the plugin):
  hidden list edited, dot_size, dot_color and gap changed live.

• Clicking a dot focuses that workspace; scrolling over the widget steps
  through them.

• Tested on Niri

• Tested on Hyprland

• Tested on Sway

• Tested on another compositor:

• Noctalia version tested against: 5.4.1

• Plugin API level: 32

Screenshots / Videos

The card thumbnail.webp is composed by hand at 960×540 from the same bar
screenshot, because the thumbnail generator needs a browser I did not have in
this session — happy to regenerate it with the generator if you would rather
have its house style.

Checklist

• The directory name matches the part of id after the / in plugin.toml exactly.
• It ships plugin.toml, README.md, thumbnail.webp, and translations/en.json.
• README.md follows the README template, documents every entry id and dependency, and includes exact panel IPC commands and launcher prefixes where applicable.
• thumbnail.webp is present and relevant; for a new plugin I created it with the thumbnail generator, and for an update I regenerated it with the generator if the visual identity or user-facing appearance changed.
• version follows semver and is bumped in this PR; plugin_api is the oldest API level this plugin requires.
• Every non-English translation in this PR uses a locale supported by Noctalia core, and I can read, write, and understand that language well enough to review and maintain it (no unreviewed machine/LLM translations).
• I did not edit catalog.toml; CI generates it.
• This PR touches exactly one plugin directory.

Code review attestation

• The code is readable and not obfuscated, minified, or generated.
• Code identifiers and code comments are in English.
• It does not download and execute remote code.
• Every network call, filesystem write, and spawned process is something the description above accounts for.
• I have the right to publish this code under the license declared in plugin.toml.

[github-actions]

The description now contains the required template structure.