Arch Updater

Check pacman, AUR and Flatpak for updates from the bar, with an estimated download size and an Arch news heads-up before you upgrade. Runs the update in a terminal window.

Plugin

Field	Value
ID	yuuto/arch-updater
Entries	Bar widget: widget; panel: panel; service: service; launcher: launcher
Launcher Prefix	/arch

Requirements

• pacman-contrib on PATH (for checkupdates), required.
• pacman, sh, sudo, awk, sed, test and uname, required — base tools from any standard Arch install, used to run and parse the pacman check, build the download size estimate, check the running kernel, and run the plain-pacman upgrade.
• yay or paru on PATH, optional, for the AUR check and update. Auto-detected by default, see the AUR helper setting.
• flatpak, optional, for the Flatpak check and update.
• xdg-open, optional, to open a package page or the Arch news page.
• A terminal emulator for the update run: Noctalia's own detection ($TERMINAL, then ghostty, kitty, alacritty, wezterm, foot, konsole, gnome-terminal, ptyxis, xterm), or the one named in the Terminal setting.

Everything except pacman-contrib, pacman, sh, sudo, awk, sed, test and uname is optional. A missing optional tool is skipped, not treated as an error.

Usage

Add the widget bar widget from Noctalia's widget picker. Left click opens the panel, right click checks for updates now, middle click opens the widget's own settings. You can also open the panel directly or bind it in your compositor:

noctalia msg panel-toggle yuuto/arch-updater:panel

The panel groups pending packages by source (Pacman, AUR, Flatpak). Click a source row to expand it into its packages. Each package row has a copy button (name and versions) and an open button (its page on archlinux.org, the AUR, or Flathub). Check Updates queries all sources, Update opens a terminal running the upgrade, Dismiss keeps the numbers but returns the bar glyph to its resting colour.

Type /arch in the launcher for quick actions (check, update, open news), or /arch <text> to fuzzy-search the packages from the last check. Activating a result opens that package's page.

Extras

Not in the v4 plugin:

• Arch Linux news. The news feed is checked periodically. An unread post is flagged in the panel and the bar tooltip, with a button that opens the news page and marks it read. Arch news is where manual-intervention steps get announced, so it's worth seeing before a big upgrade.
• Reboot recommendation. Detected from whether the running kernel's /usr/lib/modules/<version> directory still exists, so it works for any kernel flavour (linux, linux-lts, linux-zen, linux-cachyos, ...) without naming one. Shown in the panel and the bar tooltip, and colours the bar glyph independently of the pending count.
• Estimated download size for the pending pacman packages (pacman -Si), shown before you commit to Update.
• An ignore list that's actually enforced. v4 only let you rewrite the raw check/update commands. Here, packages in Ignore packages are filtered out of both the count and the update run (--ignore), on top of pacman.conf's own IgnorePkg.
• Auto-detected AUR helper, with yay/paru/a custom command/off as explicit overrides.
• A generic package-page link (archlinux.org/packages, aur.archlinux.org, flathub.org) instead of hardcoded per-repo mirror URLs, so it stays correct across Arch-based distros.

Settings

Setting	Type	Default	Description
aur_helper	select	auto	Which AUR helper to use: auto-detect (yay, then paru), yay, paru, a custom command, or off.
aur_check_cmd	string	(empty)	Custom AUR check command, only used when aur_helper is custom. Must print name oldver -> newver per line.
flatpak_enabled	bool	true	Also check and update Flatpak. Skipped automatically when flatpak isn't installed.
ignore_packages	string_list	(empty)	Package names excluded from the count and passed as --ignore on update.
auto_check_hours	int	0	Check automatically every N hours. 0 never checks on its own.
notify_on_updates	bool	true	Send a desktop notification when a check finds packages to upgrade.
show_download_size	bool	true	Show the estimated pacman download size (pacman -Si) in the panel.
check_arch_news	bool	true	Check the Arch Linux news feed and flag unread posts.
check_reboot_needed	bool	true	Flag when the running kernel is no longer installed on disk.
terminal	string	(empty)	Terminal command for the update run, e.g. kitty. Empty uses Noctalia's detection.
assume_yes	bool	false	Pass --noconfirm / -y so package managers do not ask for confirmation.
update_cmd	string	(empty)	Full override for the update command. Empty builds it from the settings above.
glyph	glyph	package	The glyph shown for the widget on the bar.
show_count	bool	true	Show the pending-update count next to the bar glyph.
hide_on_empty	bool	false	Hide the widget entirely when there is nothing to show.

IPC

noctalia msg plugin yuuto/arch-updater:service all check
noctalia msg plugin yuuto/arch-updater:service all update
noctalia msg plugin yuuto/arch-updater:service all dismiss

Notes

• Commands spawned. checkupdates; the configured AUR helper's -Qua (or your custom command); flatpak list / flatpak remote-ls --updates; pacman -Si for the download size (piped through awk to sum it); a local test -d against uname -r for the reboot check; and, for the update, your terminal running sh to launch sudo pacman/the AUR helper, optionally flatpak update (filtered through awk when packages are ignored, using sed to combine the Flatpak listings during the check). No upgrade command runs outside the terminal.
• Network. checkupdates, the AUR helper and the Flatpak check contact mirrors, the AUR RPC, or a Flatpak remote, same as the corresponding upgrade would. The Arch news check fetches archlinux.org/feeds/news/ on its own schedule, independent of a manual check.
• Privileges. The plugin never elevates anything itself. Plain pacman updates run via sudo pacman -Syu in the terminal, where sudo prompts normally. An AUR helper handles its own privilege escalation as usual.
• Files. One small file in the plugin's data directory tracks the last Arch news post you've read, so unread counts survive a restart. Nothing else is written; pacman.conf is never modified.
• Sizes are pacman-only. AUR and Flatpak downloads aren't sized. Most AUR packages build from source, where a download size wouldn't mean much.

Credits

Ported from the v4 QML "Arch Updater" plugin (MIT), rebuilt for v5's Luau plugin API with a different feature set. See Extras above.

License

MIT.