Settings Application

Aqueous Settings is a native Noctalia v5 plugin. Add its Aqueous widget to a bar, then click the widget to open a theme-native flyout. The plugin edits the same TOML files as the compositor; it is not a second configuration system.

Install or enable the plugin

The normal Aqueous package installs the plugin and its aqueous-config Zig helper. Fresh Noctalia profiles are seeded with the source, enabled plugin, and bar widget. Existing profiles receive a one-time registration attempt without overwriting their bars or re-enabling a plugin the user later disables.

To register a standalone installation manually:

noctalia msg plugins source add aqueous path /usr/share/aqueous/noctalia-plugins
noctalia msg plugins enable aqueous/settings

Then add Aqueous Settings from Noctalia’s bar widget picker. You can also open the panel directly:

noctalia msg panel-toggle aqueous/settings:panel

Available pages

Overview

The overview shows the resolved configuration paths, whether each file is writable, helper/schema information, and a live workspace layout selector. The selector queries aqueousctl for a chosen output and can change that output’s active workspace layout immediately without editing TOML.

Appearance

Typed controls cover:

Global blur quality, noise, contrast, brightness, and vibrancy.
Stable or focus-sensitive opacity.
Workspace transition enablement and rate.
Static struts and maximize/fullscreen compatibility behavior.
Desktop font family and point size.

Typography is stored in ~/.config/aqueous/appearance.toml and synchronized to Noctalia, GSettings, GTK 3, GTK 4, and qt5ct/qt6ct when those adapters are installed or configured. Each target reports available, active, and synced state. KDE/Plasma-specific configuration is intentionally not changed.

Layouts

The layouts page exposes all ten layouts, global gaps/borders/master settings, four layout slots, scrolling and recursive-layout options, and the complete stacking policy. Legacy float, floating, and stack values are presented as one canonical Stacking choice.

Stacking controls include placement policy, cascade offset, fine/coarse move steps, resize step, snap gap and threshold, edge resistance, and top-edge maximize. The named snap-layout editor can create as many as eight layouts with sixteen zones apiece, choose the default, edit stable layout and zone IDs, names, padding, and normalized geometry, and apply half/third/quarter presets. It can migrate legacy zones a through d into a named layout and create custom bindings for a layout, zone, or layout cycle. The legacy A-D coordinate editor remains available for existing configurations.

Named zones are strictly stacking-only. Dragging a stacking-owned window to an output edge shows the active layout’s zones; releasing over the selected zone commits it. Keyboard zone actions follow the same ownership check, so they do nothing in tiled, scrolling, Game Mode, or composable layouts—even when the focused window is a persistent floating overlay.

If several legacy stacking option sections coexist, the panel warns rather than silently choosing one. An explicit normalization operation merges known and unknown entries into [layout.options.stacking] and removes the aliases. Ordinary typed edits continue to update the effective existing alias in place.

Input

Typed controls cover focus-follows-pointer, focus-new-windows, freeform raising and delay, XKB layout/variant/options, keyboard repeat, legacy global pointer speed, and mouse/touchpad libinput settings.

Displays

The display canvas combines configured [[output]] entries with Noctalia’s connected outputs. Monitor cards use a common scale, reflect their relative logical resolution, and remain visible when configured but offline. Drag a card before, after, above, or below another display; select normal or flipped rotation; or enter exact logical X/Y coordinates.

Dragging creates a draft only. Apply writes position/transform overrides to the matching outputs.toml entry. Other display settings continue to inherit from wm.toml until explicitly changed. General display-policy fields include startup/reload application and fallback profile.

Rules

The ordered window-rule editor can add, duplicate, move, update, and delete rules. It covers identity and content-type matchers, layout/output/workspace, floating/state policy, stack layer, focus/task-list hints, placement and size, opacity/blur, client-buffer scaling, HDR expansion, and overlay preference.

When content type is the only matcher, the editor disables placement fields to make the compositor’s safety rule obvious. Aqueous treats every rule containing content_type as visual-only, so placement values combined with it are ignored. Rules require at least one matcher, and typed values are validated before writing. Game Mode companion and fallback layout settings are available on the same page.

Keybinds

Every built-in action is listed, including currently unbound stacking actions. A field accepts one chord or comma-separated chords. Custom entries expose both chord and verb and can be created or deleted. Snap-layout shortcuts produce the correct builtin:snap_zone:<layout>/<zone>, builtin:set_snap_layout:<layout>, or builtin:cycle_snap_layout form and fall back to the legacy builtin:snap_zone:a preset when no named layout exists. The page also edits launcher, terminal, screenshot, and lock commands.

Advanced

The raw editors expose the complete effective wm.toml, outputs.toml, layout.toml, input.toml, rules.toml, and plugin-owned appearance.toml. Use this page for composable regions, output profiles, gestures, managed commands, workspace mappings, layer rules, or any newer option not yet given a typed control.

Safe editing model

The helper resolves the same environment, XDG, and sidecar paths as Aqueous. A system file under /etc/xdg is shown as inherited; Apply creates a user override instead of modifying it.
Edits remain drafts until Apply. Validate performs the same schema and structural checks without writing.
Each request carries the generation that was loaded. If another program changes a file, stale Apply is rejected and your draft remains available.
Existing comments, ordering, whitespace, and unknown keys survive typed changes. Raw files receive structural validation and the compositor’s 1 MiB size limit.
Multi-file changes are copied to the plugin’s persistent backup directory, then written with atomic replacement. Aqueous’s normal hot reload applies the result; the plugin never restarts the compositor.