NextKDE

A Quickshell desktop for KDE Plasma.
Liquid glass, a floating dock, and a workspace you can make your own.

Get started · Explore · Develop · 简体中文

Plasma 6 / Wayland   Quickshell 0.3.x   Qt 6

_{The NextKDE desktop · macOS appearance · Theme settings}

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The desktop

NextKDE's KOS Desktop Shell brings the bar, dock, launcher, search, notifications, and settings together on KDE Plasma 6 Wayland. It works with KWin, NetworkManager, PipeWire, BlueZ, and systemd.

A workspace at a glance	A desktop in motion	Your choice of appearance
Clock, weather, calendar, system metrics, app usage, and media widgets.	A floating dock, window previews, app search, and a fullscreen launcher.	Liquid glass, soft-light and frosted materials, or a tonal Material Design interface.

• Top bar & system menu — app menus, system status, and the NextKDE logo menu for settings and session actions.
• Control center — Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, volume, brightness, screenshots, and Do Not Disturb.
• Desktop files — open, rename, copy, move, delete, and choose an application.
• Settings & motion — configure the bar, dock, launcher, shortcuts, window decoration, and animations.

Calendar, Calculator, Todo and Weather are available as optional standalone applications. ./tools/kosctl install apps installs these four. ListenFree and its audio SDK require an explicit ./tools/kosctl install apps --with-listenfree; see the application installation guide.

Source selection requires Git and Python 3.9+. Only the latest official release is maintained; see release policy. Default update selects the latest official Release and stops if none is available. To explicitly try development, use ./tools/kosctl update main (or --version main for the Debian installer). ./tools/kosctl version reports installed files and source separately. Source selection does not install or restart the desktop.

Get started

Use a KDE Plasma 6 Wayland session with KWin 6.6+, Quickshell 0.3.x, and Qt 6.6+. Installation builds the platform service, Settings, KWin effects, and window decoration.

After preparing the dependencies for your distribution:

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/SuceV587/NextKde.git
cd NextKde
./tools/kosctl update &&
./tools/kosctl doctor &&
./tools/kosctl install &&
./tools/kosctl start

Distribution	Installation guide
Arch Linux	Dependencies and setup
Debian 13	Installer and manual setup
Ubuntu 26.04	Packages and setup
Fedora 44	Packages and setup
openSUSE Tumbleweed	zypper packages and setup
NixOS	Flake quick start

Read the installation guide for desktop takeover, optional lock screen setup, first-login notes, updating, and uninstalling.

Everyday commands

Update and apply:

./tools/kosctl update &&
./tools/kosctl install &&
./tools/kosctl start

Check services:

systemctl --user status kos-platform.service kos-data.service kos-shell.service

Uninstall:

./tools/kosctl uninstall

Updated KWin effect binaries load after your next logout/login or reboot. See the daily-use guide for details.

Read the documentation index for canonical guides and AI contributor references.

Under the surface

Quickshell Shell ──► kos-platform ──────► KWin / network / audio / Bluetooth
                 └─► kos-data-service ─► metrics / desktop data / weather

Explore the project	Guide
How the pieces fit together	Project architecture
Glass, color, and appearance	Appearance architecture
Dock behavior and configuration	Dock architecture
Desktop icon layout	Desktop icons
Spatial wallpapers	Depth engine
Source sessions, builds, and debugging	Development guide
Changes and pull requests	Contributing

Next steps include per-screen layouts, consistent widgets across displays, expanded settings and applications, and better keyboard navigation and accessibility.

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License

See LICENSE for the project license. The bundled Glass effect has its own license.