Wf-Shell 0.11.0
G'day! Today we are announcing the release of wf-shell 0.11.0 .
There has been a lot of change since our last release, most notably our rework to use GTK4. While the port to GTK4 was a large portion of this release, it is by no means the entire update.
Lock screen
We have added a lock screen in the form of our newly minted wf-locker. It has password unlock (via PAM), fingerprint unlock (via fprintd) and PIN unlock. Alongside unlock methods it has weather, media player integration, clock and network status. You can try it out with wf-locker --now ! #324
Screen share
We now ship a window-picker for streaming! Whenever any app requests a streamed window or screen the user is presented with a picker to choose which is streamed. This requires @soreau's copy-capture plugin and XDPW (likely to be in your package manager!) to do the actual streaming. #396
Panel - Mixer
A full audio mixer widget, allowing selection of different inputs, outputs, and per app volumes. #307
Panel - Weather
Utilising the same service as wf-locker we now have a panel widget to show local weather! #329
Dock & Panel - More versatile hotspots
Panel and dock now can auto-show an auto-hidden panel or dock by approaching from the opposing edge of an adjacent display
Panel - Language layout switcher
When used on Wayfire, allow the user to see the current keyboard layout and cycle between them #301
Panel - Workspace switcher
Quick visualisation and switching of workspaces. #339
Dock - Multiple layers
Open windows can now be shown in multiple rows
Panel - Brightness control
A widget to change the backlight or brightness of displays. Supports laptop and tablet screens. Also supports desktop monitors provided the support is compiled in #327
Panel - Live window previews
Window list now optionally can show live previews of windows on mouse-over. Required @soreau's copy-capture #483
Background - Many new background images
We collected the very best artworks from our volunteers and community. We held a contest to choose a new background image, and when @EliteAMDGamer won the contest they graciously allowed others to share the spotlight! So we now have a default directory of images which are cycled through. Naturally users may choose their own preference. #383
Panel - Opt-in displays
Added a display allow-list. By default uses '*' to allow any and all plugged in displays, but can be used to allow the panel to only show for specific displays #356
Panel - Expanded network management
Allows switching between Wireless Access Points, enabling or disabling specific devices and connecting to known VPNs. #333
Panel - Gesture Handling
We have made the panel much more accessible to touch device users by adding alternative actions to long-press on touch devices, which map to right-click or middle-click for traditional mouse user. #321
Credits
This milestone would not have been possible without the relentless support of the community. First I'd like to thank @ammen99 for giving me the chance to help, for his foundation upon which we've built and his support every time I've asked. I'd like to thank @soreau for always having time to fix up around me and bringing so many good ideas to fruition. Thanks to @AKArien for their vision for new features and so much hard work. Thanks all of you especially for so often turning my passing comments into pull requests before I've fully finished the thought.
Deprecations and removal
dock/dock_height has been deprecated in favour of dock/minimal_height
dock/edge_offset and panel/edge_offset have been deprecated in favour of edge_hotspot_size
panel/network_status has been removed
panel/tray_smooth_scrolling_threshold has been removed
panel/launchers_size no longer controls the Menu icon size, that is now panel/menu_icon_size.
We strongly advise looking through the new example config, as there are quite a lot of new options.
Questions, Building & Debugging
As always, if you need to ask for help or support feel free to open a bug report here, or talk to us in https://matrix.to/#/#wf-shell:matrix.org
