omarchy-shell (Quickshell): let the battery indicator show "plugged" independently of "charging" — a distinction Waybar couldn't make

[abbood]

Context

The Quickshell rewrite (omarchy-shell, #5856) is rebuilding the bar from scratch. As of the current omarchy-shell branch the battery bar indicator doesn't exist yet — shell/plugins/services/battery/BatteryModel.js is an empty stub, there's no battery bar widget (SystemStats.qml doesn't render battery), and shell/plugins/services/battery/Service.qml only drives a single-threshold (10%) low-battery notification. So this is the ideal moment to flag a design consideration the old Waybar module physically couldn't express, so it doesn't get carried over by accident.

The problem the Waybar module had

Waybar's native battery module keys its icon off the raw status string only. When a laptop is plugged in but the battery is still net-draining — i.e. the apps draw more than the charger supplies (very common on the performance power-profile, or with an under-spec USB-C PD charger) — status reads Discharging, identical to being unplugged. Waybar can't tell those two apart in config, so the charging/bolt indicator disappears while the charger is still connected. Two upstream reports confirm the limitation: Alexays/Waybar#253, #3202.

The user impact is that a single glyph is forced to answer two independent questions and ends up answering neither reliably:

1. Is a charger physically connected? (If not, maybe the USB-C cable/port is the problem.)
2. Is input > output? (If plugged but still losing charge, maybe a stronger adapter is needed.)

Why Quickshell can fix this cleanly (and Waybar couldn't)

Quickshell.Services.UPower already exposes UPower.onBattery (line-power state) separately from the device state — and the omarchy-shell code already uses both (Service.qml, and shell/plugins/panels/power/Model.js reads onBattery + device.state independently). That's exactly the two signals needed. So the new bar indicator can encode both facts at once, which is trivial in QML but impossible in Waybar config:

• Charger connected → driven by !UPower.onBattery (line power present). Show a bolt/plug glyph whenever connected, regardless of net direction. (On many laptops this also matches a hardware charge LED, so it becomes a trustworthy "is it plugged?" signal.)
• Net direction → driven by device.state (Charging vs Discharging while !onBattery). Distinguish with colour/arrow: e.g. green ↑ = net charging, amber ↓ = plugged but draining (→ "bigger adapter"), no bolt = on battery.

Concretely: an indicator that shows the bolt on !onBattery and an arrow/colour on device.state gives users both answers at a glance.

Bonus edge case worth a defensive note: EC fuel-gauge desync

On some laptops (e.g. Huawei MateBook, NVT packs) a deep discharge to ~0% desyncs the EC fuel gauge: afterwards the charger is connected but status=Discharging and the percentage is stuck near 0 while the machine keeps running — the reading is simply wrong until a hard reboot power-cycles the EC (hardware detail: aymanbagabas/Huawei-WMI#117). Two small implications for the shell:

• Don't drive any automatic critical action (suspend/hibernate/shutdown) off percentage alone; UPower's ExpectBatteryRecalibration / CriticalPowerAction settings exist for exactly this. A lying 2% shouldn't be able to force a power event.
• The "plugged but Discharging" indicator above doubles as a useful tell for this state when it happens near 0%.

Offer

Happy to help with the QML for the bar indicator or a test case. I've built a working reference (a script-based version) that implements the onBattery-vs-state split described above, plus the tooltip that surfaces net watts and an estimated charger output — glad to share it if useful.

[abbood]

Opened a PR implementing this on the omarchy-shell branch: #6204.

It fixes the exact case described above — Panel.qml was passing root.discharging into the model's onBattery parameter, so a battery that's plugged in but net-draining (load > charger) rendered with the boltless on-battery icon. The PR passes the real UPower.onBattery instead, keeps the charging/bolt glyph when plugged-but-draining (tinted in the theme's urgent colour), and labels it "Draining on AC". Includes model tests. Happy to adjust wording/tint to taste.