de-omarchy takes the Omarchy experience — the bar, launcher, theming, notifications, lock screen, screensaver — and installs it as a self-contained desktop layer on top of your existing system. No ISO, no bootloader, no new display manager, no mirrors touched. Everything it adds is additive, marked, and reversible.

Your system stays yours. Your bindings win. Uninstalling puts everything back exactly as it was.

At a glance

Installation

git clone https://github.com/swadhinbiswas/de-omarchy.git ~/de-omarchy
cd ~/de-omarchy

./scripts/diff-preview.sh    # dry run — see exactly what would change
./install.sh                 # targeted backup first, then apply
hyprctl reload               # or log out and back in

[!TIP] Already installed and re-running later? The installer preserves your current theme, skips packages you already have, and refreshes the runtime — then tells you to run omarchy-restart-shell.

What the installer does, in order:

1. Backs up every file it could touch (plus .ssh, zsh stack, starship) to ~/.de-omarchy-backups/<timestamp>/
2. Installs missing UI packages only — never upgrades what you have
3. Deploys the runtime to /usr/share/de-omarchy
4. Installs four additive hooks — symlinks into ~/.config/hypr/ and ~/.config/zshrc.d/, pointing at runtime copies, never at your git checkout
5. Appends one clearly-marked block to hyprland.lua (pre-change copy saved beside it)
6. Initializes state and applies a default theme on first install only

Idempotent. Safe to re-run any time.

[!IMPORTANT] The safety contract

Never touched: pacman.conf, mirrors, repos, kernel, bootloader, display-manager binaries and PAM stack, monitors layout, .zshrc, .zshenv, starship.toml, kitty.conf, SSH keys. Nothing in $HOME is deleted or overwritten.

Added: the runtime dir, the four symlinks, the marked Hyprland block, /etc/environment.d/10-de-omarchy.conf, a PAM stanza for the lock screen, /usr/bin symlinks for a dozen commands — and, when SDDM is already installed, an Omarchy login theme plus its own drop-in config (remove it to fall back to your previous login screen).

To undo completely:

./uninstall.sh    # then restore anything else from ~/.de-omarchy-backups/<timestamp>/

Keybindings

Your existing bindings win — de-omarchy only claims keys that are free.

The full map — including preserved host bindings and every conflict decision — lives in keybindings/KEYMAP.md.

The CLI

One router, ~440 self-documenting commands. Every command carries machine-readable metadata (# omarchy:summary=…), so --help, menus, and AI agents all read the same source of truth.

$ omarchy --help                  # grouped, searchable command index
$ omarchy theme list              # 22 themes
$ omarchy theme set catppuccin    # live switch
$ omarchy bar style list          # the 10 bar presets
$ omarchy bar style set glass     # repaint the bar
$ omarchy plugins marketplace     # browse the community catalog
$ omarchy plugins install <name>  # install a plugin headlessly
$ omarchy shell toggle omarchy.audio   # IPC into the running shell

Plugins

Plugins are Quickshell components with a manifest.json; kinds are bar-widget, panel, or service. First-party plugins ship inside the runtime and load automatically. User-installed ones live in ~/.config/omarchy/plugins/ and merge in at scan time — anything under the reserved omarchy.* namespace always resolves to the first-party version.

Open Plugin Library (SUPER+SHIFT+I) for a GUI over the bundled catalog plus the omarchyplugins.com marketplace.

Themes

Each theme is one file — themes/<name>/colors.toml. Templates consume its variables and render into your terminal, GTK, and shell configs at switch time. Making a theme is making one TOML file:

cp -r themes/rose-pine themes/my-theme && $EDITOR themes/my-theme/colors.toml
omarchy theme set my-theme

Screensaver

The real Omarchy screensaver: your branding art rendered by terminal-text-effects at 120 fps, a random effect each idle, cursor hidden, exits on any input. Provided by python-terminaltexteffects (AUR) — installed automatically; without it the screensaver degrades gracefully to static art rather than failing.

Architecture

~/de-omarchy (source, yours)         /usr/share/de-omarchy            your session
┌──────────────────────────┐  rsync   ┌──────────────────────┐   symlinks  ┌─────────────────┐
│ bin/      shell/  themes/│ ───────▶ │ OMARCHY_PATH (root)  │ ──────────▶ │ ~/.config/hypr/ │
│ default/  config/ docs/  │          │                      │             │ ~/.config/zshrc.d/
└──────────────────────────┘          └──────────────────────┘             └─────────────────┘
        edit here                     the desktop runs HERE                override slot

Three layers, one direction of truth:

• Source repo — where you edit. Never referenced at runtime.
• Runtime (OMARCHY_PATH) — the authoritative copy every process reads: Hyprland Lua modules, the Quickshell shell, all omarchy-* commands, plugin manifests.
• Live config — ~/.config/hypr/deo-*.lua are override slots: plain symlinks you may replace with your own files. Modules resolve ~/.local/state/ → ~/.config/ → $OMARCHY_PATH/, so user state beats fork defaults beats nothing.

Because the runtime is authoritative, deleting or breaking the source checkout cannot hurt a running desktop.

Development loop

To try unreleased UI without touching the installation, run it straight from the checkout — e.g. quickshell -p ~/de-omarchy/plugin-library.

Repository layout

de-omarchy/
├── install.sh / uninstall.sh    deploy / fully revert the layer
├── bin/                         ~440 omarchy-* commands; router: bin/omarchy
├── shell/                       Quickshell desktop: Commons/, Ui/, plugins/
│   └── plugins/                 bar/, panels/, services/, notification-center/, …
├── default/                     deployed defaults: hypr/ (Lua), themed/ (tpl), agents/skills/
├── config/                      live-config hooks: hypr/, omarchy/shell.json, pam/, zshrc.d/
├── themes/                      22 × colors.toml
├── registry.json                plugin catalog shown in the Plugin Library
├── monitor-manager/             standalone visual monitor arrangement app
├── plugin-library/              standalone Plugin Library window
├── keybindings/                 KEYMAP.md + cheat-sheet window source
├── docs/ manual/ agents/        vendored references (51-chapter manual included)
└── audit/PARITY-AUDIT.md        fork-vs-upstream audit trail

Documentation

The full Omarchy Manual ships vendored — 51 chapters covering navigation, theming, plugins, updates, troubleshooting, and more. Start at manual/01-welcome-to-omarchy.md. Fork-specific deltas live in docs/FORK-NOTES.md; where the two disagree, FORK-NOTES wins.

Community

Questions, screenshots, theme shares, and help live on the de-omarchy Discord — usually faster than an issue for "how do I…" questions. Bug reports and feature requests belong on the issue tracker; templates are provided for bugs, installation problems, and features. Anything that reproduces in upstream Omarchy itself should go upstream instead.

Before committing, run scripts/scan-secrets.sh — it's wired up as a pre-commit hook and blocks secrets or personal paths from entering history.