Brain Desktop

A modular Quickshell/QML desktop shell for Hyprland.

Brain Desktop is designed to sit alongside an existing Hyprland setup rather than replacing it. The installer deploys the shell to the current user, creates a user-level systemd service, and adds Brain's keybind include without overwriting the user's Hyprland configuration.

Features

• Top desktop bar and dashboard UI
• Brain application launcher
• Dashboard, notifications, clipboard, audio, network, wallpaper and recording controls
• Click-outside / click-to-close popup behavior
• Super+Space Brain launcher shortcut
• Alt+F9 screen-recording control
• Multi-monitor Quickshell support
• Portable per-user installation
• Automatic backups of an existing Brain Desktop config
• Curated application launcher filtering
• Fixed, self-contained configuration

Installation

Arch Linux / Arch-based distributions

Run the installer from a cloned repository:

git clone -b brain-desktop https://github.com/ilhamfirmansyahhub/Brain_Desktop.git
cd Brain_Desktop
chmod +x install.sh
./install.sh

The installer:

1. Checks for an Arch-based system and Hyprland.
2. Installs the runtime packages used by Brain Desktop.
3. Backs up an existing Brain Desktop configuration.
4. Installs the shell to ~/.config/quickshell/brain-desktop.
5. Installs Brain keybind compatibility files under ~/.config/Brain_Shell.
6. Adds Brain keybinds to the existing Hyprland config without replacing it.
7. Creates and enables brain-desktop.service for automatic startup.
8. Validates the installed shell before finishing.

The installer is intentionally run as the normal user. It uses sudo only for system package and service operations.

Requirements

• Arch Linux or an Arch-based distribution
• Hyprland
• Wayland
• Quickshell

The installer installs the main runtime dependencies automatically.

Runtime paths

~/.config/quickshell/brain-desktop/
~/.config/Brain_Shell/
~/.config/systemd/user/brain-desktop.service

Keybinds

Default Brain bindings:

Super + Space       Application launcher
Super + D           Dashboard
Super + Z           Kanban / tasks
Super + C           Configuration
Super + N           Notifications
Super + W           Wallpaper
Super + V           Clipboard
Alt + F9            Screen recording

Brain's shipped keybind file uses the current user's home directory and Quickshell's path-based IPC, so it does not contain a hard-coded username or installation path.

Application launcher filtering

The launcher intentionally hides several utilities that are not useful in a typical Brain Desktop setup, including:

Avahi browser utilities
Caja/Nemo/Nautilus file-manager entries
Hardware Locality lstopo
MATE Color Selection
Yazi
xgps / xgpsspeed
Rofi / Rofi Theme Selector
Micro
KWrite
Neovim
Qt / Qt6 development utilities

These packages are not uninstalled; only their launcher entries are filtered.

Fixed configuration

Brain Desktop is shipped as a fixed configuration snapshot. The runtime is intentionally kept self-contained so the installed desktop remains consistent with this build.

Backups

The installer creates a timestamped backup under:

~/.config.backup-TIMESTAMP-Brain_Desktop/

It does not replace the user's Hyprland configuration wholesale.

License

Brain Desktop is distributed under the MIT License.

See LICENSE for the full license text.