OpenRiot v8.0.6: It Comes in Colors Everywhere
“The desktop was gray. The bar was gray. The notifications were gray, and they arrived late. Then somebody opened the config file and the whole street came in wearing colors. Don’t panic. The towel was in the palette all along.” – The OpenRiot Crew, v8.0.6
Release Overview
OpenRiot 8.0.6 repaints the desktop and passes a wrench under the hood. The palette tones down, the bar picks up a rounded, borderless, semi-transparent coat, the clock stops drifting when a window title grows, the right-hand icons agree on one size, the volume, microphone and brightness keys answer on the screen itself, and the lock screen stops eating fast keystrokes before they reach the password.
Think of it as forty-two small fixes wearing one good jacket.
Total changes: one palette, one bar, one OSD, one lock fix, and the small arguments in between.
A Coat of Many Colors
The canonical palette in config/colors.toml mutes the bright
accents into something that sits still at night. Every
template reads that file, so the change lands everywhere at
once: the bar, the workspace pills, rofi, helix, dunst.
The workspaces stop hardcoding their own weather. Focused,
dimmed and urgent states come from the palette, including a
new [accent] dim token, so the active workspace and the
window border finally share the same quiet green instead of
shouting at each other.
The night-light icon learned to testify. Amber when the room
is warm and ordinary, a colder blue-purple when the filter is
actually on. The crypto icon calmed down from siren yellow to
a muted tawny. The date no longer uses boulders for
punctuation: day, month and time are separated by the same
· the bar already uses.
A theme here is a file you own. Not a subscription you renew, not a palette the store can revoke. It lives on your disk and survives the next reboot, which is more than most colors can promise.
The Display Is the Message
openriot --osd draws the change where your eyes already are.
Volume, microphone and brightness render as a small themed
strip through osd_cat, then vanish. When X is not there, or
the helper is not installed, it falls back to the old toast
without complaint.
The pop-up was always somebody else’s service. This one is a rectangle we draw ourselves, in our colors, on our terms.
One Pixel of Breathing Room
The bar now meets the top of the screen with no dead strip
above it, no outline around it, and a semi-transparent
background so the wallpaper can still introduce itself. It
stops one pixel short of the windows below, and gaps top 1
reserves that breath. smart_gaps off keeps the breath even
on a workspace holding a single window.
A lone window keeps its border again. hide_edge_borders
none sees to that, so a full workspace no longer pretends to
be a full-screen app. The center block is pinned with
fixed-center, so the clock and weather sit still while the
workspace title argues with itself on the left.
The Lock Stops Eating Keys
i3lock requests the keyboard asynchronously, and a slow
notification call in front of it widened the window where
fast typing disappeared into the still-unlocked app. We move
xset r off ahead of the notification, fire that
notification without waiting for it, and let i3lock grab the
keys immediately. Type like a caffeinated raccoon. It lands.
It Fits Every Screen
The font markers in polybar.Setup pointed at sizes that
were never in the template, so half the bar ignored the
resolution. They now match size=18 and size=12. Every
right-hand icon renders at font-0, so status and utility
buttons finally agree on one size. The app menu and its
blowfish are gone; the workspaces start where the bar starts.
The height still steps by screen width: 22, 26, 28, 32.
🧾 Files Changed
| File | Change |
|---|---|
config/colors.toml |
Muted palette, [accent] dim |
config/polybar/config.ini.tmpl |
Rounded, borderless, |
| semi-transparent bar, colors, icon sizes | |
config/i3/config |
gaps top 1, smart_gaps off, |
hide_edge_borders none, dim border |
|
source/theme/colors.go |
AccentColors.Dim, alpha 0x99 |
source/polybar/polybar.go |
Theme-driven workspaces, |
| fixed font scaling, launcher glyph swap | |
source/osd/osd.go |
NEW on-screen display |
source/audio/volume.go |
Volume/mic OSD first |
source/display/display.go |
Brightness OSD first |
source/commands/commands.go |
--osd command |
source/nightlight/nightlight.go |
Blue-purple when ON |
source/lock/lock.go |
Repeat off before notify, fast typing |
install/packages.yaml |
xosd for the OSD |
🗣️ Final Words
“Somewhere over the config file the colors were always there, waiting for someone to stop drawing in gray. The toast is gone, the border is back, the clock holds still, and the room fits on any screen you put it on. Kick the tires. It comes in colors everywhere.” – The OpenRiot Crew, v8.0.6