DS4 Color

Set the LED lightbar colour on a connected PlayStation 4 DualShock 4 controller from a Noctalia bar button and a color panel. Click the bar icon to apply your saved colour, or right-click to open the panel and pick a new one.

The entire DualShock 4 output-report protocol (USB report 0x05, Bluetooth report 0x11 with CRC32) is implemented in pure Lua — no external binary or library is required. The plugin writes the HID output report straight to /dev/hidrawN.

Plugin

Field	Value
ID	hy4ri/ds4-color
Entries	Bar widget: widget; panel: panel; service: service

Requirements

Requires python3 (declared in dependencies): if Noctalia's writeFile cannot open the /dev/hidrawN node O_WRONLY, the plugin falls back to a python3 one-liner that performs the raw binary write. Systems without Python present cannot apply the colour when the direct write path fails. The plugin also needs read/write access to the DualShock 4 /dev/hidrawN node.

On most modern Linux desktops with systemd-logind and uaccess, the device node is automatically accessible when you are logged in at the seat.

On headless systems or systems without uaccess, create a udev rule:

SUBSYSTEM=="hidraw", ATTRS{idVendor}=="054c", ATTRS{idProduct}=="05c4|09cc|0ba0", MODE="0660", GROUP="plugdev"

Then add your user to the plugdev group:

sudo usermod -a -G plugdev $USER

Re-login or run udevadm trigger for the change to take effect.

Usage

Left-click the DS4 Color bar button to instantly apply the last saved colour to every connected DualShock 4. Right-click the bar button (or run the command below) to open the panel:

noctalia msg panel-toggle hy4ri/ds4-color:panel

In the panel: pick a colour with the native picker, type a hex value (RRGGBB / #RRGGBB / 0xRRGGBB), or tap a preset. Save persists the chosen colour (so left-click reapplies it later) without touching the controller; Apply sets the lightbar immediately and also saves it. The saved colour survives restarts.

Settings

Setting	Type	Default	Description
glyph	glyph	device-gamepad-2	Icon shown on the bar button.

IPC

noctalia msg plugin hy4ri/ds4-color:service all apply <hex>
noctalia msg plugin hy4ri/ds4-color:service all save <hex>

Notes

• Implements the DualShock 4 HID output report protocol directly in Lua (derived from the Linux kernel drivers/hid/hid-playstation.c): USB report id 0x05 (32 bytes) and Bluetooth report id 0x11 (78 bytes) with the required CRC32 checksum. No kernel drivers or external binaries.
• Detects all connected DS4 controllers (USB 0x03 and Bluetooth 0x05 bus) by scanning /sys/class/hidraw/*/device/uevent for Sony VID 054c and product IDs 05c4 / 09cc / 0ba0.
• The last chosen colour is persisted to the plugin data directory (last.json) and restored on next open. Left-clicking the bar button applies the saved colour; the panel's Save button updates it without writing to the controller.
• No network access. Only the locally detected DualShock 4 controllers are touched.