Game Bar

An overlay for DankMaterialShell.

Widgets

Widget	Contents
Audio	Master output volume + mute, output device switching, microphone volume + mute, input device switching
Apps	Per-application volume sliders with individual mute, app icon and what is playing
Media	Now playing with album art, seek bar, previous/play/next, and a chip per MPRIS source to switch between players
Capture	Record the focused monitor, arm a replay buffer and save the last N seconds, or hand a screenshot to the quickCapture plugin (needs gpu-screen-recorder)
Visualiser	Bars driven by whatever is actually playing out of this machine (needs cava)
Bluetooth	Paired devices with battery, connect/disconnect, adapter and scan toggles
Notes	The shell's notepad scratch tab, editable in place; file-backed tabs are shown read-only
Timer	Countdown with presets and an optional label, plus a stopwatch tab with laps; ends with a sound and a notification even when the overlay is closed
Performance	CPU (usage, temperature), memory (used / total), network (rx/tx), disk (root usage, read/write)
Home	Home Assistant entities you pick: lights (toggle + brightness), numbers (slider over the entity's own min/max/step), switches/fans, media players (volume, mute, play/pause), covers, scenes and scripts, plus read-only sensors

Home Assistant

Settings → Plugins → Game Bar:

1. Home Assistant URL, e.g. http://homeassistant.local:8123
2. Long-lived access token — HA profile page → Security → Create token. It is stored in plugin_settings.json, which is world-readable by default (chmod 600 it if that matters to you).
3. Refresh, then tick the entities you want in the Home widget.

State is polled (default every 5 s) only while the Home widget is open. The token is handed to curl through the process environment, so it never shows up in the process list.

If a refresh fails, dms ipc call gameBar homeStatus shows what the plugin actually sent and got back. A 401 means Home Assistant rejected the token; compare with

curl -H "Authorization: Bearer <token>" https://your-ha/api/

Note that editing plugin_settings.json by hand does not reach a running shell.

IPC commands

Command	Effect
dms ipc call gameBar toggle	Toggle the overlay
dms ipc call gameBar open	Open the overlay
dms ipc call gameBar close	Close the overlay
dms ipc call gameBar widget audio|apps|media|home|system	Show/hide one widget
dms ipc call gameBar homeToggle <entity_id>	Toggle an entity (activates a scene/script/button)
dms ipc call gameBar homeRefresh	Re-poll Home Assistant now
dms ipc call gameBar homeStatus	Print URL, token length, HTTP status, entity/picked counts and last error
dms ipc call gameBar record	Start/stop recording the focused monitor
dms ipc call gameBar replay	Arm/disarm the replay buffer
dms ipc call gameBar saveReplay	Write the last N seconds to disk
dms ipc call gameBar captureStatus	Print recorder mode, monitor, elapsed time and last file
dms ipc call gameBar brightnessStatus	Print the display→DDC map, pins and resolved brightness per screen
dms ipc call gameBar layoutStatus	Print each screen's layout key and where every widget resolves
dms ipc call gameBar timer <seconds> [label]	Start a countdown
dms ipc call gameBar timerStop	Stop and reset the countdown
dms ipc call gameBar timerStatus	Print countdown and stopwatch state
dms ipc call gameBar resetLayout	Forget all saved widget positions

Settings

Settings → Plugins → Game Bar (gear icon):

• Background dimming — how dark the desktop behind the overlay gets (0–95%).
• Capture — folder, frame rate, quality, replay buffer length and the recorded audio source (a gpu-screen-recorder device name, e.g. default_output; gpu-screen-recorder --list-audio-devices).
• Timer — sound on/off, notification on/off and which sound file to play.
• Home Assistant — URL, access token, refresh interval, and the entity picker.
• Reset widget positions — back to the default arrangement on every monitor.

License

MIT