ewe-settings

The settings app for ewe — an Arch-only Hyprland desktop. Tauri v2 + Svelte 5. Formerly hypr-shell-settings; the package provides/replaces the old name and ships a hypr-settings compatibility symlink.

Why it is a separate process

The shell itself is Quickshell/QML, and everything that has to be a Wayland layer-shell surface — the bar, dock, notifications, OSD, lock screen — stays there, because Tauri cannot create layer-shell surfaces at all.

Settings is the one piece that does not need to be a layer surface: it is an ordinary window. Moving it out keeps a large, rarely-open UI out of the shell process, where a QML error takes the whole desktop down with it.

How it talks to the shell

It does not. It writes the same files the shell already reads, then asks the shell to re-read them:

Settings  ──writes──>  ~/.config/quickshell/user-theme.json
          ──pokes───>  qs ipc call settings reload

That is the contract, and it has three useful properties: there is still one source of truth, a change survives a shell restart for free, and the existing Google Drive sync needs no changes — those files are exactly what it already backs up.

Writes are atomic (temp file + rename) and merge rather than replace, since the shell writes this file too. The shell side merges for the same reason.

The IPC verbs this app depends on (reload, ping, version) live in ewe's Settings.qml. They are public API in both directions: renaming one breaks an installed binary.

If the shell is not running, writes still succeed — they simply take effect at the next login. Nothing here requires the shell to be up.

Privileges

None. Every file it touches is already owned by the user, so unlike Komble there is no polkit helper and no setuid anything.

Version

The footer shows ewe's version, not this app's. Settings is part of the desktop rather than a product with its own release cycle, and a second number would only raise the question of which one is real. It is read from the repo checkout, falling back to what the running shell reports.

The checkout is found via $EWE_REPO (or the legacy $HYPR_SHELL_REPO), then ~/.local/share/ewe (a get.sh install), then ~/hypr-shell (a developer clone).

Build

npm install
npm run tauri dev

Packaging is a PKGBUILD — Arch only, built on Arch:

makepkg -si

Two things in that PKGBUILD are load-bearing and were each a real bug:

• options=(!lto) — LTO breaks linking against the system webkit stack.
• npm run tauri build -- --no-bundle, never a bare cargo build --release. tauri-build decides dev-vs-production at compile time; a plain cargo build stays in dev mode and bakes devUrl (localhost) into the binary, so the installed app opens to "Could not connect to localhost".

Licence

MIT. See LICENSE.