qmpanel - A Minimal Qt-Based Desktop Panel

What is this?

• A standalone desktop panel with a simple, traditional design
• Lightly customizable, but with a "Just Works" mentality
• Originally a fork of lxqt-panel

Features

• Searchable applications menu
• Configurable quick-launch toolbar
• Taskbar (showing running applications)
• Status icon area ("system tray")
• Date & time display with pop-up calendar

Where to use qmpanel

qmpanel supports both X11 and Wayland (via wlr-layer-shell protocol). It should work well with most standalone X11 window managers, such as Openbox. For Wayland, I recommend using a recent version of labwc.

Getting qmpanel

In Arch Linux, qmpanel is available via the AUR. On other systems, you can clone the repository and compile from source.

First ensure you have the required dependencies installed:

• Qt 6.5+ (6.11+ recommended for Wayland support)
• GLib 2.32+
• KWindowSystem 6.0+
• LayerShellQt 6.0+
• meson (build dependency)
• a C++ compiler (such as GCC)

To build, run meson setup build && meson compile -C build.

Then simply run ./build/qmpanel. No installation is necessary.

Configuration (optional)

For default settings, you can run qmpanel with no configuration at all.

To customize it, first create the file $HOME/.config/qmpanel.ini. The file contents should match the following format:

[Settings]
# Sets the icon displayed for the applications menu
MenuIcon=<icon-name>
# Pins favorite applications to the top of the menu
PinnedMenuApps=<app-name>.desktop;<app-name>.desktop
# Adds applications to the quick-launch toolbar
QuickLaunchApps=<app-name>.desktop;<app-name>.desktop
# Runs commands (e.g. system tray icons) at startup
LaunchCmds=<command>;<command>

All lines except the first ([Settings]) are optional.

Design philosophy

• Stay small, value correctness above features
• Work "out of the box" with minimal configuration
• Depend only on widely-used libraries (GLib, Qt, KWindowSystem, etc.)

Potential future development

• (External) fix remaining Qt issues under Wayland
• Upstream libdbusmenu-qt changes (or find a replacement)
• Non-English translations

Features not planned:

• Plugins/extensions
• Custom colors/themes (beyond the Qt theme)
• Custom panel layouts or multiple panels
• Grouping/ordering of taskbar buttons

Version history

0.1 (8 May 2020)

• Initial release

0.2 (2 Oct 2023)

• Build system changed from CMake to meson
• System tray changed from XEmbed to StatusNotifierItem
• New LaunchCmds feature to start system tray icons
• Several bug fixes (refer to commit log)

0.3 (21 Dec 2023)

• Several bug fixes to StatusNotifierItem system tray
• Work around multi-monitor issues under XWayland

0.4 (25 Mar 2024)

• Port to Qt 6 and KWindowSystem 6
• Experimental native Wayland support using LayerShellQt

0.5 (7 Jul 2024)

• Fix various Wayland-related issues

1.0 (9 Apr 2026)

• Minor bug fixes, especially related to icon loading
• Wayland support no longer considered experimental