wanderlay

Click-through, always-on-top text overlay for GNOME Wayland. A Rust reimplementation of koverlay.

Dependencies

• GTK4
• gtk4-layer-shell
• A Wayland compositor supporting zwlr_layer_shell_v1 (GNOME 47+)

On Arch Linux:

sudo pacman -S gtk4-layer-shell

Build

cargo build --release

Usage

wanderlay                         # show on primary monitor
wanderlay --screen-index 1        # show on second monitor
wanderlay --hidden                # start hidden (toggle via D-Bus)
wanderlay --x11                   # use XWayland backend (works on GNOME)

D-Bus control

dbus-send --session --type=method_call \
  --dest=org.wanderlay.Control \
  /org/wanderlay/Control \
  org.wanderlay.Control.Toggle

Methods: Toggle, Show, Hide.

Configuration

~/.config/wanderlay/config.toml (override with WANDERLAY_CONFIG env var):

text = "hello\nworld"
fontFamily = "monospace"
fontSize = 28
textColor = "#FFFFFF"
bold = true
panelOpacity = 0.35
position = "top-right"
marginTop = 16
marginRight = 16
marginBottom = 16
marginLeft = 16

Use textFile = "~/path/to/file.txt" to load text from a file instead.

Position options: top-left, top-right, bottom-left, bottom-right, custom (with x/y).

Changes are applied live without restarting.

License

GPL-3.0-only. See LICENSE for the full text.