USB Drive Manager

A Noctalia bar widget for managing USB drives and removable storage devices.

Features

• Auto-detection – Monitors udev events in real-time; the bar icon updates instantly when a USB drive is plugged in or removed
• Mount / Unmount – Mount and unmount partitions via udisksctl
• Safe Eject – Unmounts the partition and powers off the parent disk (udisksctl power-off) to prevent data loss
• File Browser – Open any mounted drive directly in your configured file manager
• Copy Path – Copy the mountpoint path to the clipboard
• Storage Usage – Visual progress bar showing used/free space per device
• Device Info – Shows volume label, filesystem type, size, vendor/model
• Bulk Actions – "Unmount All" and "Eject All" buttons in the panel
• Auto-Mount – Optional: automatically mount drives when plugged in
• Notifications – Toast notifications for all mount/unmount/eject events
• i18n – English and German translations included

System Requirements

Tool	Package (Gentoo)	Purpose
udisksctl	sys-fs/udisks	Mount, unmount, power-off
udevadm	sys-fs/eudev or sys-apps/systemd-utils	Real-time device monitoring
lsblk	sys-apps/util-linux	Device enumeration
df	sys-apps/coreutils	Disk usage statistics
wl-copy	gui-apps/wl-clipboard	Copy path to clipboard (optional)

Settings

Setting	Default	Description
Auto-mount	false	Automatically mount drives when plugged in
File browser	yazi	Command to open the file manager (e.g. yazi, ranger, xdg-open, dolphin, thunar, nautilus)
Notifications	true	Show toast notifications
Hide when empty	false	Hide bar icon when no devices connected
Icon color	none	Custom icon color

Usage

1. Left-click the bar icon to open the device panel
2. Right-click for quick actions (Refresh, Unmount All, Eject All, Settings)
3. In the panel, each device card shows:
   • Device label, size, filesystem type
   • Mountpoint path (when mounted)
   • Storage usage bar
   • Action buttons: Open / Mount / Unmount / Eject / Copy Path

IPC

# Refresh device list from a running Noctalia session
qs -c noctalia-shell ipc call plugin:usb-drive-manager refresh

# Unmount all devices
qs -c noctalia-shell ipc call plugin:usb-drive-manager unmountAll

Notes

• Only USB and removable devices are shown (filtered via lsblk TRAN/RM fields)
• The "Eject" action first unmounts the partition, then powers off the parent disk
• Disk usage is updated ~1 second after device enumeration
• udevadm events are debounced (800ms) to avoid rapid re-queries during partition table reads

Tested & Limitations

Tested filesystems

• ext4
• btrfs
• vfat / fat32
• ntfs via kernel ntfs3 driver

For NTFS volumes:

• A working NTFS implementation is required (e.g. CONFIG_NTFS3_FS in the kernel, optionally ntfs3g).
• Volumes must be cleanly unmounted by Windows. If the NTFS volume is marked dirty or hibernated (Fast Startup / Sleep), ntfs3 refuses to mount it and udisksctl will fail with a "wrong fs type / volume is dirty" error. The plugin intentionally does not force-mount such volumes; run chkdsk on Windows and disable Fast Startup instead.

Not implemented (yet)

• No built-in LUKS / encrypted volume unlock flow (encrypted devices that are unlocked externally and show up in lsblk behave like normal mounted devices).
• No special handling for network filesystems or non-UDisks-managed devices.