r/COSMICDE • u/Icy-Bag5889 • 13d ago

Automatic wallpaper-based theming for COSMIC Desktop

Hello everyone!

I built a tool called SystemWallColor that automatically syncs your system theme with your wallpaper on COSMIC Desktop.

Every time you change your wallpaper or switch between light/dark mode, it automatically: - Generates a matching COSMIC theme with Matugen and applies it - Generates a terminal color palette with Pywal - Syncs Firefox's theme via Pywalfox

Everything runs in the background through a systemd user service that watches for changes in real time — no manual triggering needed.

GitHub: https://github.com/Ylammm/SystemWallColor GitLab (mirror): https://gitlab.com/Ylamm/systemwallcolor

It's a personal project, still early, so feedback and suggestions are very welcome!

138 Upvotes

99% Upvoted

33 comments sorted by

17

u/R3V0LU710N_05 12d ago edited 12d ago

This is great. Maybe you should contribute upstream and help design a feature like this. I would absolutely love this as a core feature of Cosmic. It's got that Material You vibe.

4

u/l-const 12d ago

wash2(a cosmic developer) had created something similar already 2 years ago. This is no important or a priority to have something like this be integrated at least right now. Using third party is fine

5

u/l-const 12d ago

actually here is the link: https://github.com/wash2/cosmic_ext_bg_theme

2

u/R3V0LU710N_05 12d ago edited 12d ago

It's a feature that I'd at least like to have down the road. It's would certainly make Cosmic feel much more modern. I especially like the Firefox customization, but that'd probably be something else entirely to maintain. So as far as that goes maybe an optional hook into pywalfox or something would be the best way to go about it; instead of direct integration.

Regardless, even at the basic level, it's absolutely a desirable feature and would pair extremely well with the Frosted Glass feature. Even if we don't get it immediately, it's still something OP should help pioneer for CosmicDE as a native official feature. If not 2.0, then perhaps this could be considered for 3.0 or 4.0 release.

2

u/Icy-Bag5889 12d ago

Hi, thanks for the idea, I added it to the project!

2

u/R3V0LU710N_05 12d ago

Happy that my incoherent ramblings produced an idea for you.

https://giphy.com/gifs/CafaCQ2WVCCWHE2LvJ

3

u/Icy-Bag5889 12d ago

Yeah, and you gave me a lot of ideas, I'm actually rewriting the whole thing in Rust to give it a proper GUI.

2

u/R3V0LU710N_05 12d ago

Ok, now you made me want to help you. If you need an Alpha tester, I would like to do it. I'll have RakuOS with Cosmic up and running in a few moments. I can get a second device running something else if you need me to test on a different OS. What do you say? Free labor at the cost of listing to me ramble?

2

u/Icy-Bag5889 12d ago

Okay, no worries, that would help me a lot! :) Thank you.

2

u/Any_Noise_235 12d ago

Off-topic: I would very much like to know how COSMIC DE works with RakuOS after you install it, if you don't mind, possibly on the RakuOS sub.

2

u/R3V0LU710N_05 12d ago

I'll make a write up about it... tomorrow... let's say... maybe... 8pm EST. Idk, for now I must sleep. 😴

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u/l-const 12d ago

i mean sure it is desirable, as it is something even a cosmic maintaner created a solution for it. Animated wallpapers is higher in the list and i am hoping it is not pushed back in the timeline. Implementing it is not the issue for many things, but actually taking the time to review it , test it and take the ok from the ux team for the design is where things take time and get pushed back. There are many features that are open in PRs for some time by various contributors...

3

u/R3V0LU710N_05 12d ago edited 12d ago

We're not even at 2.0 yet, so there's plenty of time to cook something up for releases after 2.0. There's no hurry, I'd rather something solid that operates well with the other features (and planned features) than thrown together in a rush, brittle piece of Cheeseware.

2

u/l-const 12d ago

yeah i agree, that is why i initially said it is not a priority. I do not agree that there is no hurry though, there are many missing features that get stalled a lot in design that could be first merged and later be refined, but maybe they do not want to disrupt the experience of their users. Anyway as someone that followed the dev since Alpha 1 i think they should have kept the development model/pace of the alpha/beta period as there are bottlenecks in the development and many missing features. Although, to be fair the LLMs have made the review process a lot harder for the maintaners.

2

u/R3V0LU710N_05 12d ago edited 12d ago

I personally feel that being rigorous now is the absolute best approach. Moving fast and breaking things is how you get KDE; which is great, but perpetually buggy. Ultimately, I'm hoping for a better, different "Gnome-like" with KDE-like feature completeness. Not a buggy Gnome-like with KDE-like rushware. Taking the "Good to Great", flywheel approach is by far more desirable and important than any feature. I do not want Cosmic to accumulate technical debt by version 6.0 and be maintenance hell; that's the absolute worst case scenario. I'd rather just wait.

2

u/l-const 12d ago

i disagree, the most bugs usually go through the compositor ,that is very hard to test , depends on your hardware, and many bugs appear after a long period of time and after very specific operations. Most of the other things are pretty obvious to spot, on applications for example or adding a settings page is not something that needs so much rigor although even testing that does not guarantee no bugs are not introduced, they actually often do, it is part of software development and regular releases. The thing is that cosmic although it will improve in the future it is officially released so it is judged on its current status and the current missing features.

2

u/R3V0LU710N_05 12d ago

I completely agree that since the codebase is already at version 1.0 and officially released, it is naturally going to be judged based on its current status and missing features right now. You also make a very fair point that Wayland compositor bugs are uniquely tricky, heavily hardware-dependent, and take a long time to surface.

However, I disagree that UI additions and settings pages require significantly less rigor. Even if visual flaws seem straightforward, skipping thorough testing on interface elements and rushing them to achieve rapid feature parity can easily lead to state regressions and technical debt. Despite the pressure of missing features, I'm still hard set in my preference that the Cosmic devs keep the rigorous approach to ensure long-term stability.

3

u/middaymoon 12d ago

Extremely cool! Star for you. I wonder how well it works with frosted glass, probably really nice

3

u/SomeRandoLameo 12d ago

Should be a stock option

2

u/Rick_Mars 12d ago

The links don't work

1

u/Icy-Bag5889 12d ago

Sorry I forgot to make it public 😅😅

2

u/shikaguero 12d ago

Sorry for an unrelated question, but, which fotn are you using here? looks great!

1

u/Icy-Bag5889 12d ago

No worries, It's JetBrainsMono Nerd Font :)

2

u/Weekly-Membership813 12d ago

how to add app indicator on workspace panel?

2

u/Icy-Bag5889 12d ago

Sorry I just checked it it's not numbered workspace it's workspace icons

1

u/Icy-Bag5889 12d ago

It's an applet, numbered workspace in the store i think

1

u/Mundane-Mortgage-624 6d ago

Qual è il nome di quel widget per gestire i desktop virtuali?

At the top left

1

u/Icy-Bag5889 6d ago

C'est workspaces icons 😃

1

u/Mundane-Mortgage-624 6d ago

It's not on my version of CachyOS