OpenRiot v7.9.66 — The Control Room
“The construct had six rooms and no hallway. Volume was a key. Brightness was another key. The tunnel had its own switch. The battery only spoke when you clicked it. The night light lived behind a chord and the sync hid in a menu nobody opened. Six doors, no map. So we built a hallway and put one door at the end of it. The Turing Police would call it a ‘unified control surface’ and file a memo about it. We call it a room where the whole machine stands in front of you, one keystroke away.” — The OpenRiot Crew, v7.9.66
Release Overview
The Control Center is one keyboard-driven panel that holds six
sections of the system: audio, display, network, power, privacy,
and system. Arrow keys move, enter acts, +/- adjust. No more
memorizing which key turns down the volume or which chord toggles
the tunnel. It ships Beta — the construct keeps adding rooms.
While wiring it, we caught the bar lying about HDMI and brightness. Both are fixed.
Total changes: --control-center command, a polybar icon, a
launcher entry, a keybinding, and two display-truth fixes.
🎛️ The Six Rooms
The Control Center is a TUI, the same keyboard-first form as
--nmtui and --disk. It opens floating and centered, sized to
what it holds.
| Section | Controls |
|---|---|
| Audio | Volume bar, mute |
| Display | Brightness, HDMI toggle, resolution |
| Network | WiFi, Ethernet, WireGuard |
| Power | Battery, suspend, reboot, shutdown, lock |
| Privacy | Night light, stealth, Proton sync |
| System | Updates, screen recording, screenshot |
↑/↓ walk the items, ←/→ walk the sections, enter acts,
+/- adjust volume or brightness. Three ways in:
Super + Ctrl + Space- the faders icon on the bar
- Control Center in the launcher
Every action is the same code the bar and the menus already ran — the Control Center just gathers the switches into one room instead of leaving them scattered across the sprawl.
🕯️ The Bar Was Lying
Two indicators were telling stories that weren’t true, and we found them while wiring the panel.
The HDMI icon said “not connected” while the monitor was lit. The bar was asking i3 which outputs were active, and i3 had quietly dropped HDMI-1 from its list even though xrandr was still driving it at 1920x1080. The construct now asks xrandr directly — the source that tells the truth about what is plugged in and what is lit.
The brightness read zero while the screen was plainly on. The
backlight tool answers in decimals, 5.001805, and the old code
only understood whole numbers, so it threw the answer away and
reported nothing. That is fixed at the root, and the brightness
keys and the Control Center now share one honest reading.
🗺️ One More Door
Proton Mail moved into the Office menu, where it belongs next to the word processor and the spreadsheet. The Control Center took the bottom slot in the launcher, under Utilities, wearing the faders icon on the bar. The beta panel is documented in the README with its sections and keys.
🧾 Files Changed
| File | Change |
|---|---|
source/control/model.go |
NEW — Control Center model, |
| sections, keymap | |
source/control/view.go |
NEW — sidebar + panel layout |
source/control/update.go |
NEW — key handling, fetches |
source/control/backend.go |
NEW — control backends |
source/control/control.go |
NEW — TUI entry point |
source/commands/commands.go |
--control-center command |
source/display/display.go |
GetBrightness/SetBrightness/ |
AdjustBrightness; decimal parsing fix |
|
source/display/hdmi.go |
HDMIStatus() reads xrandr |
source/network/network.go |
IsEthernetConnected() accessor |
source/screenrec/screenrec.go |
IsRecording() accessor |
config/i3/keybindings.conf |
Super + Ctrl + Space binding |
config/i3/config |
Control Center window rule |
config/polybar/config.ini.tmpl |
control-panel module |
config/rofi/apps.txt |
Control Center launcher entry |
config/rofi/office.txt |
Proton Mail moved to Office |
README.md |
Control Center section |
assets/control_center.webp |
NEW — panel screenshot |
🗣️ Final Words
“Six doors became one. The machine is not a pile of switches to be memorized; it is a room you can stand in. The Turing Police will keep writing memos about ‘settings consolidation’ while we keep pressing one key and watching six things change. The construct grows another room and the hallway stays clean.” — The OpenRiot Crew, v7.9.66