Aphotic 2.0.7

Aphotic 2.0.7 is a UI overhaul. A new bar skin, Signal line, carries one look across every surface of the shell: the bar, notch, popouts, Command Center, Settings, launcher, notifications, OSD, session menu, switcher, AI chat, wallpaper picker, lock screen and login greeter. Every surface also opens and closes on the same motion. Pick it in Settings > Bar > Signal line. The login screen moves to the Aphotic greeter too. This release also builds more of the shell only while you use it, and gives plugins a versioned runtime API.

The Signal overhaul

• Signal line bar. A slim, near-black bar with a hairline along its inner edge. The hairline lights under the active workspace and under your pointer. Workspaces are dots that stretch into a capsule when active.
• Notch and popouts grow out of the bar. The notch hangs from the bar in the bar's own tone and curves into it. Popouts scale out of the bar edge, and switching between them slides the new content in from the direction you moved.
• One open and close motion. Surfaces scale and fade in with a slight overshoot, close faster than they open, and cascade their lists in. The session menu, OSD, keybinds sheet, switcher and notifications all use it.
• Command Center as a frosted bento. The dashboard opens over a dimmed, blurred desktop. Today, weather, calendar, media, timer and controls sit in matching cards. An accent bar glides under the active tab, and the mouse wheel steps through tabs.
• Settings with depth. The rail groups categories under Look, Desktop, Input, Services and System. Theme cards preview each theme's wallpaper and ring the active one.
• Launcher from the bottom edge. Under Signal line, the launcher rises as a sheet from the bottom of the screen. Other skins keep the centred launcher.
• Everything else follows. Notifications, OSD sliders (now with their value), session tiles, the keybinds sheet, the workspace surface and switcher, AI chat, Flow, and the wallpaper picker all take the same cards, hairlines and tinted chips.

Login and lock

• The Aphotic greeter is your login screen. Installing or updating switches the login screen from sddm to the Aphotic greeter (greetd). sddm stays installed, and aphotic displaymanager switch sddm --confirm-tested puts it back; later updates respect that choice. ./install.sh --keep-sddm skips the switch, Omarchy keeps its own login, and the switch only happens once the greeter and start-hyprland are in place. Minimal installs now get greetd too.
• The greeter and lock screen match. Both show your wallpaper blurred under a large clock, with a glass password card. Locking and signing in look like one screen.
• Kinder login retries. After a wrong password the greeter says so, keeps your username, and asks for the password again. Keys you type while greetd is busy land in the field.
• Restart and shut down sit on the greeter, and the lock screen reacts as you type and shakes on a wrong password.
• The greeter compositor reads a Lua config and drops the options Hyprland 0.56 removed, so no config-error banner covers the login screen.

Lighter at idle

• Built only while open. The package installer and notch plugin tiles now exist only while they are on screen.
• Every repeating timer reports. aphotic runtime lists live and idle timers and their wakeups per minute, and aphotic perf snapshot records them.
• No hidden animation. The Performance tab's network sparkline stops while Command Center is closed, and the last always-on layer shadows are gone.

Plugins and runtime

• Versioned plugin API. A manifest's [api] section names the calls a plugin uses. Disabling or removing a plugin revokes them on the spot. aphotic plugin api lists the contract.
• One surface controller. Aphotic decides which surfaces can share the screen, so one primary surface opens at a time and a prompt that needs an answer keeps the keyboard.
• Runtime context. aphotic context set focus|dev|game|present tells the shell what you are doing. Game and present unmount plugin overlays such as pets.
• Contention you can see. When a resource needs attention, the bar and notch show it, and a notification offers to open Flow.

Also

• The package installer lists official packages before AUR results.
• The VPN pane expands ~ paths and shows why a connect failed.
• The llama-swap stats poller no longer reloads a model you unloaded.
• Agent tracking reads v2 hook records alongside v1.
• ./uninstall.sh is executable again, and it puts sddm back when it removes the greeter.