dropkitty

A Quake-style drop-down terminal for Noctalia, built on kitty's quick-access-terminal kitten. One key drops it down and hides it again with your shell session intact. A bar widget shows whether it's open and lights up when a command finishes while it's hidden.

The terminal is a layer-shell panel that kitty draws itself, so it works the same on niri, Hyprland and sway. It doesn't depend on compositor scratchpads, which niri doesn't have.

Plugin

Field	Value
ID	lowcache/dropkitty
Entries	Bar widget: toggle; service: service

• Helper (bin/dropkitty): shows, hides, moves and resizes the terminal. Your compositor keybinds call it directly, so the terminal keeps working while Noctalia is reloading or not running.
• Bar widget (toggle): click to toggle, right-click for settings. The colour shows the state: muted when stopped, normal when hidden, primary when open. After a command finishes while hidden it turns tertiary (exit 0) or error (non-zero) until you show the terminal again.
• Service (service): copies your settings to the helper and works out how much room your Noctalia bars take, so a full-size terminal never runs under a bar.

Requirements

• kitty 0.42 or newer, which provides kitten quick-access-terminal
• niri, Hyprland or sway. The helper asks niri, hyprctl or swaymsg for the focused output's size.
• jq, flock, setsid and timeout on PATH
• kitty shell integration, for the finished-command badge. It's on by default for bash, zsh and fish.

Usage

Install dropkitty from the plugin catalog and add the dropkitty widget to a bar. Click the widget to start the terminal or toggle it.

For a keyboard toggle, bind a key to the helper. The catalog installs it at:

$XDG_STATE_HOME/noctalia/plugins/materialized/community/dropkitty/bin/dropkitty

$XDG_STATE_HOME defaults to ~/.local/state (if you set NOCTALIA_STATE_HOME, use that instead). A plugin installed by hand lives at ~/.local/share/noctalia/plugins/dropkitty/bin/dropkitty instead. The bindings below use the catalog location; adjust the path if yours differs.

Keybinds go in your compositor config, not in Noctalia. The widget and your keys control the same terminal only when both go through this helper. Replace any existing drop-down binding (one that runs kitten quick-access-terminal or a script of your own); otherwise you get a second, separate terminal.

niri (config.kdl):

Mod+Return       { spawn "~/.local/state/noctalia/plugins/materialized/community/dropkitty/bin/dropkitty" "toggle"; }
Mod+Shift+Return { spawn "~/.local/state/noctalia/plugins/materialized/community/dropkitty/bin/dropkitty" "position"; }
Mod+Alt+Return   { spawn "~/.local/state/noctalia/plugins/materialized/community/dropkitty/bin/dropkitty" "size"; }
Mod+Ctrl+Return  { spawn "~/.local/state/noctalia/plugins/materialized/community/dropkitty/bin/dropkitty" "orientation"; }

Hyprland:

$dropkitty = ~/.local/state/noctalia/plugins/materialized/community/dropkitty/bin/dropkitty
bind = SUPER, Return, exec, $dropkitty toggle
bind = SUPER SHIFT, Return, exec, $dropkitty position

sway:

set $dropkitty ~/.local/state/noctalia/plugins/materialized/community/dropkitty/bin/dropkitty
bindsym $mod+Return exec $dropkitty toggle
bindsym $mod+Shift+Return exec $dropkitty position

The helper takes one command:

Command	Does
toggle	Show or hide; starts the terminal if it isn't running
show, hide	Explicit show and hide
position	Landscape: top ↔ bottom. Portrait: left ↔ right
size	Normal ↔ full
orientation	Landscape (full width, drops from top or bottom) ↔ portrait (full height, slides from the side)
top, bottom, left, right, landscape, portrait, normal, full	Set one directly
restart	Restart kitty to apply launch-time settings (this ends the shell session)
status	Prints alive=0/1 visible=0/1

Live changes from these commands last until kitty restarts or you change the matching setting.

Settings

Setting	Type	Default	Description
orientation	select	landscape	Where a freshly started terminal opens. Landscape drops a full-width terminal from the top or bottom; portrait slides a full-height one from the side
edge_h	select	top	Edge for landscape: top or bottom
edge_v	select	right	Edge for portrait: left or right
size	select	normal	normal uses the percentages below; full fills the usable screen along the drop direction
normal_height	int	40	Normal landscape height, in percent of the usable screen height (10–100)
normal_width	int	50	Normal portrait width, in percent of the usable screen width (10–100)
bar_aware	bool	true	Subtract the space Noctalia bars reserve before sizing
opacity	double	0.9	Background opacity (0.1–1.0). Applies on next launch
focus_policy	select	on-demand	on-demand keeps compositor keybinds working while the terminal is open; exclusive grabs the keyboard. Applies on next launch
hide_on_focus_loss	bool	false	Hide when you click elsewhere. Applies on next launch
kitty_conf	file	(none)	Kitten config used instead of ~/.config/kitty/quick-access-terminal.conf. Applies on next launch

"Applies on next launch" means after restart, or the next time the terminal starts. Everything else (font, colours, shell) comes from your kitty and kitten config. The plugin's settings take precedence over the same options there.

IPC

The helper reports state changes to the service. You don't need to send these yourself; they're listed because the service accepts them:

noctalia msg plugin lowcache/dropkitty:service all shown
noctalia msg plugin lowcache/dropkitty:service all hidden
noctalia msg plugin lowcache/dropkitty:service all exited
noctalia msg plugin lowcache/dropkitty:service all cmd-finished <exit-code>

To control the terminal itself, call the helper (see Usage).

Notes

What it runs and writes

• The service and widget run only the bundled helper (bin/dropkitty), with the arguments shown in Usage plus _settings key=value… when settings or bar reserves change.
• The helper starts kitty with kitten quick-access-terminal --instance-group dropkitty, a group separate from your other kitty windows and any other quick-access terminal. It controls that kitty through a remote-control socket limited to it (allow_remote_control=socket-only). kitty loads the bundled watcher (bin/dropkitty-watcher.py), which calls the helper on focus changes, finished commands and the last window closing.
• The helper sends its state changes as the IPC messages above, through timeout 1 noctalia msg … in the background. Failures are ignored, so the helper works without Noctalia.
• Files: $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/dropkitty/, holding settings, state, a lock and kitty's socket. Nothing else is written, and there are no network calls.

Known limits

• Occasional badge delay. A command that finishes just after you hide the terminal can occasionally badge several seconds late, because kitty delivers the event late.
• No badge inside tmux or zellij. kitty can't see commands run inside a multiplexer.
• One monitor at a time. The terminal opens on the focused output. Moving it to another monitor needs restart, which ends the session.
• Bar sizing is approximate. It doesn't account for per-monitor bar layouts or the shadow bleed adjustment, so it can leave a few pixels too much room.

Issues: https://github.com/lowcache/noctalia-dropkitty-plugin/issues

License

MIT