Udiskie Manager

Manage USB drives and media with notifications in just one panel.

Features

• Real-time device discovery and status monitoring via UDisks2 event streaming.
• Storage capacity and partition usage indicators with formatted bytes and percentage.
• Automatic detection and dedicated unlock action for LUKS encrypted volumes (crypto_LUKS).
• Interactive management panel with drive hierarchy, open, mount, unmount, eject, and power off actions.
• Copy mount path to clipboard action.
• Configurable bar widget with mounted device counter and auto-hide when empty option.
• Native desktop notifications for drive connections, disconnections, mounts, unmounts, and errors.
• Quick refresh and native settings integration.

Plugin

Field	Value
ID	aristides/udiskie
Entries	Bar widget: status; panel: manager; service: service

Requirements

Install udiskie, udisks2, and xdg-open on PATH:

• udiskie: Device mount operations and device info queries.
• udisks2: Provides udisksctl for real-time DBus event streaming.
• xdg-open: Launcher binary for opening mounted folders in the file manager.

udiskie-info -o fields: the service queries udiskie-info -o with the device attributes listed under VALID_PARAMETERS (e.g. is_drive, is_partition, is_luks, mount_path, is_detachable). If your udiskie is old enough to lack any of them, the device list will come back empty — upgrade udiskie in that case. A recent release (2.x) is recommended.

Usage

• Bar Widget (status): Add status to the bar configuration in Noctalia settings. Left-click to open the Udiskie Manager Panel. Right-click to trigger an immediate plugin refresh.
• Panel (manager): Open via the bar widget or run:

noctalia msg panel-toggle aristides/udiskie:manager

Settings

Setting	Type	Default	Description
enable_notifications	bool	true	Show desktop notifications on drive events and errors.
auto_open_filemanager	bool	false	Automatically open mounted drives in the file manager upon connection.
file_manager_cmd	string	xdg-open	File manager launcher command.
glyph	glyph	device-usb	Icon glyph shown for the widget on the bar.
show_count	bool	true	Display the count of mounted devices on the bar widget.
hide_when_empty	bool	false	Hide the bar widget when no USB drives are connected.

IPC

# Toggle panel
noctalia msg panel-toggle aristides/udiskie:manager

# Service actions
noctalia msg plugin aristides/udiskie:service all mount /dev/sdX
noctalia msg plugin aristides/udiskie:service all unmount /dev/sdX
noctalia msg plugin aristides/udiskie:service all eject /dev/sdX
noctalia msg plugin aristides/udiskie:service all detach /dev/sdX
noctalia msg plugin aristides/udiskie:service all mount_all
noctalia msg plugin aristides/udiskie:service all unmount_all
noctalia msg plugin aristides/udiskie:service all refresh

Performance

The plugin eliminates the standalone Python udiskie daemon by using an event-driven udisksctl monitor subprocess managed by Noctalia. Both approaches activate udisksd via D-Bus on first use.

Component	RSS	VSZ	CPU
udisksctl monitor (this plugin)	~12 MB	~170 MB	0.0%
udiskie Python daemon (standalone)	~84–110 MB	~1183 MB	0.2%
udisksd (shared, D-Bus activated)	~22 MB	~688 MB	0.2%

Total footprint: plugin ~34 MB vs standalone ~106–132 MB. Saves ~72–98 MB RAM and avoids a persistent Python process.

Measurements are local to a given system/kernel and udiskie version; actual RSS/VSZ/CPU values vary by hardware and environment.

Development

Run plugin validation and tests using the workspace Makefile:

make test

Notes

• Requires plugin API level 9 or newer.