Hi friend,

Last issue I said plugins were high on my list, and here we are. Plugins are where Omarchy gets personal. They're small add-ons that change what your top bar shows and what it can do, and the community is making them at an amazing pace.

So what's a plugin?

A few words first, so we're all on the same page:

• App vs. plugin. An app is a program that opens in its own window, like your browser. A plugin lives inside Omarchy's shell, the part that draws the top bar, its pop-up panels, and its menus. As one plugin author puts it in his instructions, "a shell plugin is not an application." It adds to Omarchy itself.
• Bar widget. That's the little icon or bit of text a plugin puts in your top bar. Click it and a panel usually opens with more.
• First-party vs. third-party. First-party plugins are built by the Omarchy team and come with Omarchy. The clock, battery, Bluetooth, and network pieces of your bar are all plugins already. Third-party plugins are made by people in the community, and those are the ones you add yourself.

Where to find them

Omarchy's official plugin page is plugins.omarchy.org. That's the place to look. You can search, sort by what's popular or new, read what each plugin does, open its source code on GitHub, and copy the exact command to install it.

Quick reminder from last issue: omarchystore.com is a fake copy. Don't install anything from it.

What's on my bar right now

I've switched on several third-party plugins, including these:

• Clippy: yes, that paperclip. He sits in the corner of the screen, his eyes follow your mouse, and every so often he offers a tip from the Omarchy manual. I like him because he really does point me to features I didn't know about or had forgotten, and when I don't want the distraction, it's easy to move him or tell him to go away.
• Quattrolitaire: classic solitaire that lives in the bar, colored to match your Omarchy theme, with undo and an auto-finish button. Your game is saved even if you close it. This one is just for fun, an all-too-handy game for when life gets stressful. I'd love to switch the card faces to something easier for me to read (maybe I just haven't found that setting yet), but I play it now and again anyway.
• Uber Notebook: Notion-style notes right in the shell. Press Super + N to open it. Your notes are saved as plain files you own, and your AI agent can work on a page with you. This is one of my favorites. I love the graphical notebook look and how quickly it responds. I do have a couple of small gripes. It takes over the desktop, so I'm forever closing and reopening it to copy and paste things. The page layout also feels a bit rigid (maybe I just haven't configured it right yet), and I'd like a smaller title font with more room between the title and the page. Those are minor, though, next to how useful and enjoyable I find it.
• Uber TV: a TV-style media center for YouTube channels and internet TV, with a program guide and movies on demand. It opens with Super + Alt + T. I installed it because it looked like a good idea, but I don't really have a TV habit, so I've only opened it once to look around. I'm keeping it anyway, just because I can.
• OmaFire: a tiny campfire in your bar. Add a log, stoke it, and let it burn down. I installed it because Wes Grimes talked about it in the Sunday Builders Club chat on X, and it looked cool. Well, hot, actually. Wes is a good guy, and he co-hosts the club's X Spaces (more on those below). At first it wouldn't show up on my bar at all. It turned out it was written for a newer Omarchy than the 4.0.6 I'm running (Wes runs a development version). I messaged Wes, he pushed a fix that same night so it works on Omarchy 4.0, and now I have a little fire icon in my bar. If a plugin won't show up for you, don't give up: check your Omarchy version with omarchy-version and ask the developer.
• USB devices: a newer find from browsing plugins.omarchy.org. I think it'll come in handy when I'm playing with microcontrollers, since their scripts need to know which port a device is on. Its icon shows up on the bar when you plug in a USB device, and clicking it lists everything attached, with each device's type (flash drive, phone, keyboard, and so on). Flash drives open in your file manager with one click and have an eject button. Don't be puzzled if you can't see it at first: it stays hidden until something is plugged in, unless you turn on its "Show icon even when nothing is plugged in" setting.

Installed, but switched off for now

I've installed more to try, and I keep some switched off. Switching a plugin off keeps it installed, so it's easy to bring back later. A few of them:

• Starlink: shows your Starlink dish's speed and connection quality in the bar. It talks only to the dish on your home network, with no account needed. It's installed, just not on right now.
• Keyarchy: when you do something with the mouse, it shows you the keyboard shortcut you could have used instead.
• Seismic Atlas: earthquakes, volcano reports, and tsunami bulletins on a globe you can spin.
• Quick Bridge: shows a QR code so you can send a file from your phone to your computer, or the other way around.

How to add, switch off, or remove a plugin

The easiest way is the Omarchy menu (Super + Space), then Setup > Plugins. You'll find Add Plugin, Enable Plugin, Disable Plugin, and Remove Plugin there.

If you'd rather use the terminal (Super + Return), here are the commands. The "id" is the plugin's name tag, like jankeesvw.clippy, and the first command shows you each one.

• See what you have: omarchy plugin list
• Add one: omarchy plugin add <git-url>, with the plugin's GitHub link in place of <git-url>. For example: omarchy plugin add https://github.com/jankeesvw/omarchy-clippy
• Switch one on: omarchy plugin enable <id>
• Switch one off (it stays installed): omarchy plugin disable <id>
• Remove one completely: omarchy plugin remove <id>
• Update your plugins: omarchy plugin update. Before it changes anything, it shows you what's different and asks first. That list of changes can be long, so watch for the question at the end. To update one plugin and say yes up front, add its id and --yes, as in omarchy plugin update wesleygrimes.omafire --yes, then run omarchy-restart-shell.

Tip: the plugin page's copy button gives you a ready-made command that adds the plugin and switches it on in one go.

Be careful what you install

Plugins are powerful because they run as part of Omarchy itself, with the same access to your computer that you have. Both Omarchy and the plugin page are upfront about it: plugins aren't sandboxed (walled off from the rest of your system), and getting listed on the plugin page isn't a security check. When you add one, Omarchy even warns you: "Only add repos you trust, and review the code before you enable it."

A few simple habits:

• Install from the official page, or from a GitHub project you trust. Not from a random link in a reply or a look-alike site.
• Read what it does first. Plugins on the official page link to their code on GitHub, where the project page explains what it does. If the explanation is over your head, paste the link to your agent and ask, "What does this do, and is it safe?"
• If something feels off, switch it off. Disable it, or remove it. Then ask the Omarchy community on X.

Want to go deeper?

Listen to the Omarchy Sunday Social episode "Demystifying Plugins", hosted by @ncfrontiersman and @NixFred. The page has the recording, a short film, a written summary, and a full transcript, if you'd rather read than listen.

It covers what a plugin is, how to make your first one by having your agent copy a built-in plugin, the ways to share one, and how to submit one to the official page. Their three tips before you submit: don't submit it the day you build it, let other people suggest changes, and bring patience. You'll also hear about OmarKit, a tool that runs the plugin page's checks on your own computer before you submit, and "Omarchy Fort Knox," Wes's nickname for work on making Omarchy ready for federal government use.

Their homework for first-timers is small: clone a built-in plugin with your agent and change one thing about it.

Worth a follow

A few X accounts that help if you're learning Omarchy:

• @omarchy: the official account
• @SundayBuildClub: Sunday Builders Club, community Spaces (builds and hangouts)
• @omarchyupdates: community-run, not official, but useful for catching what's changing
• @ncfrontiersman: Wes Grimes, co-host of the Sunday Builders Club's X Spaces and the maker of OmaFire
• @NixFred: Fred, Wes's Spaces co-host

What's on your bar? Hit reply and tell me which plugins you love, or which one you're curious about. I read every message.

Warmly,

Katherine

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Sorry about that, and thanks for reading!

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