The Top Bar

The bar across the top of your screen tells you where you are and how the machine is doing: workspaces on the left, the clock in the middle, and status on the right. Most segments do something when you click them, and hovering over one shows a tooltip with more detail.

The bar is part of the Marchyo shell, along with its panels, notifications, and launcher. With marchyo.shell.enable = false there is no top bar.

Hiding the bar

Press Super + Shift + Space to hide the bar, and press it again to bring it back. This hides the bar on every monitor at once. You can also do it from a terminal with marchyo shell bar (toggle), marchyo shell bar off, or marchyo shell bar on.

The shell bar

By default the shell bar is a slightly translucent strip that spans the full width, flush with the screen edges and the windows below it. For a rounded pill with a small gap to the screen edges, set marchyo.theme.appearance.floatingBar = true. For solid surfaces instead of the see-through glass look, set marchyo.theme.appearance.surfaceAlpha = 1.0.

For a segmented look, where each group of segments gets its own two-tone background with rounded joins between groups, set marchyo.shell.settings.bar.style = "segmented" and rebuild. Everything stays in the same place; only the backgrounds change, and they follow your theme. Set it back to "flat" (or remove the line) for the plain bar.

Each monitor gets its own bar. Some segments only show up when they have something to say. A recording indicator, for example, appears only while a recording runs, and the bar closes up the gap when a segment is hidden.

Left and centre

The centre of the bar has three sections. The clock sits in center, at the exact middle of the bar. centerBegin grows leftwards from the clock and centerEnd rightwards, and both start empty. A widget that appears or changes size there never moves the clock.

marchyo is a label marking the start of the bar.
Workspaces always shows 1 to 5, plus any other workspace in use on that monitor. The one you’re on is highlighted, workspaces with windows are brighter than empty ones, and clicking a number switches to it.
Active window shows the title of the focused window. If a long title is cut off, hover over it to read the whole thing.
Clock shows something like Mon 5 Oct · 14:30. Click it to switch to the long form with the ISO week number, 5 October W41 2026, and click again to switch back.

Right side, from left to right

Tray: a small · appears when apps have tray icons. Click it to show or hide the icons that are not pinned (see below). Left-click an icon to activate its app, right-click for its menu, and hover for its tooltip.
Media: appears while a music or video player is running, showing the track title. Click to play or pause, right-click to skip to the next track, and scroll to go forward or back. The tooltip shows artist and title.

The next six segments form the Indicators cluster, one group between two rules. Each one hides until it has something to show.

Screen recording: a red icon while a recording runs. Click it to stop.
Reminders: a count, in the accent colour, while reminders you set with marchyo reminder are waiting. Hover to see how many are pending.
Dictation: a microphone glyph when dictation is on, red while recording and in the accent colour while transcribing. Click to start or stop recording. The tooltip shows the current state, and warns you if the dictation service stops answering.
Caffeine: a mug that’s lit while the screen is kept awake. Click it to keep the machine awake, and click again to let it sleep. It also lights up on its own while a video plays, and the tooltip then names the player.
Notifications: a bell, with a count of unread notifications. Click to turn do not disturb on or off. Right-click to open your notification history.
Theme: a sun or moon, matching the current theme. Click to cycle to the next theme. The tooltip names the one you’re on.
Keyboard layout: a short code such as us. Click to switch to the next layout, and hover for the full layout name.
Bluetooth: shows how many devices are connected, or a crossed-out icon when Bluetooth is off. Click to open the Bluetooth manager. The tooltip lists connected devices.
Network: Wi-Fi signal strength, a cable icon for wired, or a crossed-out icon when you’re offline. Click to open the Network panel. The tooltip shows the network name, your address, and the interface.
Camera in use: an amber webcam that appears whenever an app is using a camera. Hover to see which apps.
Microphone in use: an amber microphone that appears whenever an app is recording from your mic. Hover to see which apps. Click to open the Audio panel.
Volume: the output volume. Scroll to change it in steps of 5%, up to 150%. Right-click to mute or unmute. Click to open the Audio panel. The tooltip shows the output device and level.
CPU: current CPU usage. Click to open the Monitor panel.
Power profile: an icon for power saver, balanced, or performance. Click to cycle through them. The tooltip names the profile.
Peripherals: appears when a wireless mouse, keyboard, or headset reports its battery, showing the lowest charge. It turns amber when a device runs low and red when it’s nearly empty. Hover to see every device.
Battery: the charge level, coloured from red through amber to green. It shows a charging icon while charging and a plug when you’re on power but not charging. Click to open the Power panel. The tooltip shows the power draw, for example 4.2W↓ 87%.
Control Center: the last segment on the right. Click to open the Control Center.

Panels

Several segments open a panel under the bar. Only one panel is open at a time, and clicking anywhere outside it closes it. Each panel also has a button to the full tool when you need more.

In the Display panel, Tab reaches a layout tile and selects its display, Shift with the arrow keys moves the tile one step, and R rotates it.

A panel you open with a key chord or marchyo shell open <panel> takes keyboard focus: Esc closes it, Up, Down and Tab move between its controls, and Enter or Space activates the focused one. The mouse highlight is ignored while you use the keyboard and returns when the pointer moves. For a look at every control, run marchyo shell gallery or press Super + Ctrl + Alt + G.

Bluetooth (Super + Ctrl + B): the adapter power switch, a scan switch, and every known device. Connected devices come first with their battery level. Enter on a device disconnects it, connects a paired one, or pairs a new one. Scanning stops when the panel closes. The full manager is Super + Ctrl + Shift + B.
Speed test (Super + Ctrl + Alt + P): latency, download and upload against Cloudflare (about 125 MB moved), and a 512 MiB disk write and read in ~/.cache/marchyo. Each test runs when you start it.
Dropbox (Super + Ctrl + Alt + D): the sync state from dropbox status and a switch for the daemon. It needs the dropbox command on your PATH.
Audio (volume segment or Super + Shift + V): volume up, down, and mute, a choice of output device, per-app volume, and which apps are using the microphone.
Network (network segment or Super + Shift + N): connection status, network name and signal, a switch for the Wi-Fi radio, and a Share (QR) button that shows a code other devices can scan to join your Wi-Fi.
Power (battery segment or Super + Shift + B): battery details, the power profile, and a button to the power menu.
Monitor (CPU segment or Super + Shift + M): CPU, memory, disk, and temperature, with a button to btop.
Notification history (right-click the bell): notifications you’ve received. Opening it marks them as read.

The Control Center

The Control Center is a quick-settings panel: sliders for volume and microphone, and tiles for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Tailscale, do not disturb, caffeine, night light, and the power profile. Click a tile to flip it. Tiles with an arrow open the matching panel for more detail, with a back button to return. Tiles for hardware you don’t have are left out.

Open it with Super + Shift + Q or the Control Center segment at the right end of the bar.

Below the tiles, the Appearance section changes how the desktop looks without a rebuild: window gaps, the bar position (top or bottom), the bar background (opaque, glassy or clear) and reduce motion, which makes shell transitions instant. The Themes… and Wallpapers… buttons open the pickers described next. The same switches are available as marchyo theme gaps, marchyo theme bar-position, marchyo theme bar-background and marchyo toggle reduce-motion.

Theme and wallpaper pickers

Super + Ctrl + T opens the theme picker and Super + Ctrl + Shift + W the wallpaper picker. Both show a grid with a large preview of the selected item. Type to filter, use the arrow keys to move, press Enter to apply the selection and Esc to close. The panel stays open after you apply, so you can try several. Click a tile to apply it. A theme without a preview image shows a plain tile with its name.

Wallpaper thumbnails are cached in ~/.cache/marchyo/thumbs. Until a thumbnail exists, the picker shows the full image. Wallpapers come from the active theme, the bundled set and ~/Pictures/Wallpapers.

In the launcher, type >font to switch the terminal or interface font. Start with mono or ui to list one kind, for example >font ui inter.

Rearranging the bar

You can choose which segments appear in each part of the bar, and in what order. Each section you set replaces that section of the default layout, and sections you leave out keep their defaults. For example, a slimmer right side that keeps the Control Center at the end:

marchyo.shell.settings.bar.layout.right = [
  { id = "marchyo.network"; }
  { id = "marchyo.audio"; }
  { id = "marchyo.battery"; }
  { id = "marchyo.separator"; }
  { id = "marchyo.controlCenter"; }
];

Rebuild, and the bar picks up the new layout without restarting. A few more segments are available but not shown by default: marchyo.nightLight (click to turn night light on or off), marchyo.tailscale (your Tailscale connection, click for details), marchyo.weather (current conditions, click for a forecast panel) and marchyo.lockKeys (shows CAPS / NUM while Caps Lock or Num Lock is on). Three indicators stay hidden until needed: marchyo.update (the flake pins a newer nixpkgs than the running system), marchyo.disk (the Nix store filesystem is nearly full) and marchyo.health (marchyo doctor reports a failing check). The full list of segment names is in the shell configuration reference.

Rearranging the bar live

marchyo bar edits the layout without a rebuild. The edits are kept in ~/.local/state/marchyo/shell/bar-layout.json, the shell applies them over the layout from your configuration, and they survive rebuilds.

marchyo bar put marchyo.cpu centerBegin      # move or add a segment (--at N picks the place)
marchyo bar move marchyo.cpu left            # shift it one place along its section
marchyo bar remove marchyo.media             # take a segment off the bar
marchyo bar set centerEnd marchyo.dnd marchyo.caffeine
marchyo bar list                             # the recorded edits
marchyo bar reset                            # back to the configured layout
marchyo bar background glassy                # opaque | glassy | clear
marchyo bar position bottom                  # top | bottom

Double-click an empty spot on the bar to step through the backgrounds.

The tray drawer

By default every tray icon sits behind the · button. To keep some icons on the bar and fold the rest, list them by tray id or title in the tray’s settings:

marchyo.shell.settings.bar.layout.right = [
  { id = "marchyo.tray"; settings.pinned = [ "nm-applet" "Steam" ]; }
];