_{// design by t2}

wallbash

A fast and minimal wallpaper engine for HyDE

Use wallbash as a core component of your Wayland desktop environment — set wallpapers, generate color palettes, and dynamically theme your desktop.

Features

• Vulkan-powered GPU acceleration for smooth performance
• Color palette generation for dynamic theming
• Fluid transitions and animations*
• Multi-monitor support*
• Scale and anchor the image to your liking
• Dynamic blur fill for mismatched aspect ratios to eliminate black bars

*work in progress

Build

git clone https://github.com/prasanthrangan/wallbash
cd wallbash
cargo build --release
sudo cp target/release/wallbash /usr/local/bin/

Usage

wallbash start                  #  Start the wallpaper daemon
wallbash set /path/to/file.img  #  Set wallpaper (auto start daemon)
wallbash stop                   #  Stop the daemon
wallbash status                 #  Show daemon status

# options for "set"
wallbash set [option] <value>
    -p, --palette <color>       # Generate color palette (auto, dark, light)
    -m, --mode <scale>          # Scaling mode (cover, fit, original)
    -a, --anchor <1-9>          # Anchor point (1=top-left ... 9=bottom-right)
    -w, --wall <file>           # Wallpaper file /path/to/file.img

The Rust binary compiles to a single executable, wallbash. It acts as both a client and a daemon:

• wallbash start Launches the daemon (background process). The daemon initializes the Wayland and Vulkan subsystems and listens for commands on a Unix socket.
• wallbash set Sends a command to load and display the image. If the daemon is not running, it automatically starts it and waits for it to be ready before sending the command.
• wallbash stop Terminate the daemon.
• wallbash status Query the daemon status.

Architecture

src/
├── main.rs
├── wallbash.rs
├── wayland.rs
├── vulkan.rs
├── filters.rs
└── colors.rs

The core project is structured in simple modules:

• main.rs Entry point of the binary. Works as a CLI tool to parse arguments and handle the daemon.
• wallbash.rs The core daemon module. It manages the IPC listener, handles incoming commands, and orchestrates the wallpaper loading and rendering process.
• wayland.rs Handles the Wayland integration. It creates a Wayland surface, binds to the layer shell protocol, and sets up the layer surface for the wallpaper.
• vulkan.rs Manages the Vulkan rendering pipeline. Initializes Vulkan instance, selects physical device (preferring discrete GPU), creates swapchain, and renders the wallpaper.
• filters.rs – Implements image filters and post‑processing effects, including dynamic background blur, scaling algorithms, and other visual transformations.
• colors.rs – Auto detects and generates light and dark color palettes from the wallpaper’s dominant color using k‑means clustering.

_{// HyDE}