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otter-settings is the GUI for Otter Shell config. Installed apps get their own tabs. You get a theme browser and drag-and-drop bar layout. If you prefer $EDITOR, both routes write the same files.

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Usage

Launch from otter-launcher or bind a compositor hotkey (for example Super+Comma). Settings only shows app tabs whose matching Otter executable is installed. Theme and Plugins always stay available. Restart Settings after installing or removing a component so it can refresh the sidebar.
Writes to ~/.config/otter-shell/*.conf. Running apps reload via inotify after Apply.

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What otter-settings handles

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Config files managed

Bar layout is drag-and-drop. You can add custom bar buttons. Text fields accept clipboard paste (Ctrl+V) through the Wayland data device.

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Wallpaper picker

Open the wallpaper grid directly from a keybinding:
Click an image to apply it, or press Escape to close. See otter-wallpaper.

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Theme Gen tab

The Theme Gen tab edits otter-theme-gen.conf. The otter-theme-gen daemon ships with otter-shell. Autostart it with otter-wallpaper so it can read $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/otter-shell/wallpaper-state and update generated-colors.conf. On the tab:
  • Enabled: turn wallpaper-reactive theming on or off
  • Mode: dark or light palette
  • Islands mode: Otter Shell Islands surface styling
  • Strategy: how colors are pulled from the wallpaper (material_you, analogous, vibrant, monochromatic, direct, temperature)
  • Contrast, Vibrancy, and Opacity: tune the generated palette
  • Background blur: request compositor blur behind translucent Otter surfaces
  • Templates: pick which third-party configs get rewritten (terminals, GTK, Hyprland Lua at ~/.config/hypr/otter-theme.lua, bottom, btop, KDE color schemes, Papirus folder colors, and others)
Turn on only the templates you want overwritten. Click Apply to save. For fixed presets instead, see Themes. See otter-theme-gen for daemon details.

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Monitor tab

The Monitor tab edits otter-monitor.conf for otter-monitor:
  • Refresh interval seconds: how often the collector polls /proc and sysfs (1 to 3600)
Restart otter-monitor after you change the refresh interval. Theme colors still hot-reload from theme.conf.

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Clicker tab

The Clicker tab edits otter-clicker.conf for otter-clicker. Interval, button, single or double click, repeat count, jitter, hold time, and fixed-position mode.

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Assist tab

The Assist tab edits otter-assist.conf for the otter-assist daemon (from otter-shell-extras):
  • Backend: cpu or vulkan
  • Vulkan device: GPU index, or -1 for llama.cpp auto selection
  • Idle seconds: unload the idle model after this many seconds (default 120)
  • Tool toggles and always-allow flags for knowledge, web, weather, and desktop search
  • Pika search URL, knowledge index path, and tool-call budgets
Full key list: otter-assist. The chat client keeps its own file, otter-assistant.conf, for window size, generation limits, and UI always-allow flags.

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What otter-settings does not configure

Compositor hotkeys (launcher, overview, screenshot, lock) belong in your Wayland compositor config. See Keybinds. otter-screenshot has no persistent config file. CLI flags only.

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Theme presets

Otter Shell, Otter Shell Islands, Catppuccin variants, Nord, Gruvbox, Dracula, Tokyo Night, and One Dark. Settings writes the selected preset colors to preset-colors.conf and imports that file from root theme.conf. It does not flatten preset colors into your root overrides. See Themes for color token details.

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Plugins tab

The Plugins tab lists installed .so plugins and writes plugins.conf enable toggles. Enabled bar plugins also show up as plugin:<id> chips in the bar layout palette. See Plugins.

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Overview tab

The Overview tab edits otter-overview.conf for otter-overview: card axis and scale, empty-workspace policy, thumbnail capture, and optional colors.

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Dock and Taskbar tabs

Dock edits otter-dock.conf. Taskbar edits otter-taskbar.conf. Both are optional session components. See otter-dock and otter-taskbar.

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Night Light tab

The Night Light tab edits otter-nightlight.conf. Autostart the otter-nightlight daemon so the bar widget and Settings can talk to it.

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Files tab

The Files tab edits otter-files.conf when otter-files is on PATH. View mode, sort, thumbnails, and confirm dialogs. See otter-files.