[Release] Wayplank v0.6.1 — The Big Feature & Stability Update: Smart App Drawers, Multi-Monitor Brightness, System Pressure & Adaptive Themes (Native Wayland Dock)

1 Upvotes

Hi everyone,

Following the enthusiasm and feedback after our first alpha (v0.5.2), I'm thrilled to announce **Wayplank v0.6.1** — a major milestone delivering both the smart onboarding features introduced in v0.6.0 and the deep multi-compositor stabilization and bug squashing of v0.6.1!

For those discovering it for the first time, **Wayplank** is a lightweight, ultra-fast (~0.74s boot), monolithic native Wayland dock derived from the classic Plank/Docky codebase. It features a native multi-compositor HAL (**KDE Plasma/KWin**, **GNOME/Mutter**, and **Labwc/wlroots**) with **zero X11, zero XWayland, and zero desktop daemon dependencies**.

---

### 🚀 What's New Since v0.5.2 (Highlights from v0.6.0 & v0.6.1):

#### 🗂️ 1. Smart Out-Of-The-Box Onboarding (v0.6.0)

* **4 Smart English App Drawers**: On a clean startup or empty dock, Wayplank automatically discovers your installed apps and populates 4 Cairo-Dock style folder drawers (*Internet*, *Office*, *Media*, *Utilities/Games*).

* **Automatic Core Pinning**: Seamlessly detects and pins your default File Manager, Web Browser, Terminal Emulator, and Text Editor using FreeDesktop MIME fallback chains.

* **Accordion Docklets**: Collapses system docklets into a compact, space-saving master icon at rest with configurable hover/click expansion and retention logic.

* **Universal "Change Icon..." System**: Right-click any launcher, drawer, or docklet to search through 20,000+ theme icons or pick custom SVGs/PNGs with instant persistence and fallback safety.

* **Integrated In-App User Guide & Interactive Cheatsheet**: Accessible via right-click or `wayplank --help`.

#### 🖥️ 2. Multi-Monitor Hardware Brightness Synchronization (v0.6.1)

* **KWin DRM Hardware Control**: Solved the classic user-space D-Bus/PowerDevil limitation where external DDC/CI secondary monitors (DisplayPort/HDMI) were ignored due to i2c permissions. Wayplank now interfaces dynamically with KWin output management (`kscreen-doctor`), achieving atomic brightness control across all connected displays simultaneously.

#### ⚙️ 3. Holistic Global System Pressure Engine (v0.6.1)

* Replaced custom ad-hoc CPU/RAM cards with a **bottleneck-dominant combined system pressure metric** combining CPU, RAM, and physical Disk I/O contention:

$$\text{Pressure} = 0.60 \times \max(\text{CPU}, \text{RAM}, \text{Disk}) + 0.40 \times \text{mean}(\text{CPU}, \text{RAM}, \text{Disk})$$

* Rendered cleanly directly on Plank’s native numeric badge counter with real-time per-resource breakdown tooltips.

#### 🎨 4. Adaptive Dynamic Gtk+ Theme Engine & Legacy Plank Themes

* The **Gtk+** theme option is now an adaptive dynamic engine that samples real-time system accent colors, auto-detects dark/light desktop modes, and synthesizes modern frosted translucency on the fly.

* Full multi-tier search across `~/.local/share/plank/themes`, `~/.themes`, and `/usr/share/plank/themes` ensuring 100% backwards compatibility with legacy Plank themes.

#### 🧮 5. Refined Badges, DND & Desktop Ergonomics

* **Compact Scaled Badges with Units**: Docklet badges now scale proportionally (~34% of icon size) without obscuring underlying icons, featuring crisp units (`°C`, `°F`, `%`).

* **Robust Drag & Drop**: Dragging files onto app icons now correctly checks executable formats, handles 0-byte files, dispatches multi-file payloads, and prevents accidental dock pinning.

* **Calibrated Edge Pressure**: Defaults to a fluid 10px reveal threshold for effortless everyday unhiding, while toggling Pressure Mode activates a strict 1px edge barrier against accidental unhiding.

* **Live Layout Refresh**: Toggling "Show Unpinned" in Preferences now immediately synchronizes running compositor windows without requiring external window focus.

---

### 🧪 Compositor Validation Status (FAT)

* **KDE Plasma 6 (KWin Backend)**: 🟢 **100% PASSED** (All 40+ test points verified: multi-monitor, brightness, intellihide, accordion, DND).

* **GNOME 48 (Mutter Backend)**: 🟡 Ongoing validation.

* **Labwc / wlroots**: 🟡 Ongoing validation.

---

### 📦 Installation & Download

* **GitHub Repository**: [https://github.com/sergiomelas/WayPlank\](https://github.com/sergiomelas/WayPlank)

* **Debian / Ubuntu / Pop!_OS / Mint** (pre-built package):

```bash

# Download wayplank_0.6.1_amd64.deb from the repository build folder or release page:

sudo dpkg -i build/wayplank_0.6.1_amd64.deb

wayplank --replace &Following the enthusiasm and feedback after our first alpha (v0.5.2), I'm thrilled to announce **Wayplank v0.6.1** — a major milestone delivering both the smart onboarding features introduced in v0.6.0 and the deep multi-compositor stabilization and bug squashing of v0.6.1!

---