DualSense — Omarchy bar widget

Your PlayStation DualSense (and DualSense Edge) at a glance in the Omarchy Quattro bar, plus a floating panel that controls everything the controller can do on Linux: lightbar, player LEDs, adaptive triggers, rumble, the built-in microphone and speaker, a live input tester and the hardware details. Works over USB-C and Bluetooth, alongside the kernel's hid_playstation driver, with no extra packages.

• Gamepad glyph with the battery level beside it and a bolt while charging. Dimmed when no controller is connected; urgent color when the battery is low and not charging.
• Clicking opens a floating panel — the same popout style as the network and power widgets — with the battery bar, a DualSense drawing that shows the real lightbar color and player LEDs, and five tabs:
  • Lights: lightbar color from swatches, a hue slider or the theme accent (the bar follows every theme change), brightness, lightbar on/off; player LED pattern (off, 1–5) and LED brightness.
  • Feel: adaptive trigger effects for L2/R2 — off, resistance, weapon, bow, galloping, machine, vibration — with a strength slider, linked or per trigger; rumble and trigger motor strength; a rumble test through the same force-feedback path games use.
  • Audio: mute the built-in microphone, the mute LED (auto/off/on/pulse), mic gain, headphone/speaker routing and volume.
  • Test: live input drawn on the controller — every button lights, the sticks move, triggers fill, touches show on the touchpad, gyro and accelerometer read out below.
  • Info: model, connection, address, firmware build, hardware revision, kernel driver and device nodes, with permission problems called out, and the plugin version (worth including in a bug report).
• Everything you pick is saved to a profile and re-applied automatically when a controller connects (the kernel resets the lightbar on every connection).
• Desktop notifications (via the Omarchy shell) for: controller connected / disconnected, battery low, fully charged.
• Power off / disconnect buttons when the controller is on Bluetooth.
• Several controllers: a picker chooses which one the panel shows (battery, tester, details). Lightbar, LED, trigger and audio settings are one profile applied to every controller.
• Hot-plug aware (udev): a controller shows up the moment it connects. While one is connected the widget polls every 5 s (2 s with the panel open); with none it checks once a minute.

Interactions

Action	Result
Left / right click	Toggles the floating panel
Middle click	Refreshes now
Esc (panel open)	Closes the panel

IPC:

omarchy-shell atoslins.dualsense open|close|toggle|refresh
omarchy-shell atoslins.dualsense lightbar '#ff4000'   # also: brightness 60, followTheme true
omarchy-shell atoslins.dualsense player 2            # 0 (off) to 5
omarchy-shell atoslins.dualsense trigger weapon      # off|feedback|weapon|bow|galloping|machine|vibration
omarchy-shell atoslins.dualsense mic off             # mute · `mic on` unmutes
omarchy-shell atoslins.dualsense rumble              # half-second test
omarchy-shell atoslins.dualsense apply               # re-apply the saved profile
omarchy-shell atoslins.dualsense poweroff            # Bluetooth only
omarchy-shell atoslins.dualsense tab test            # lights|feel|audio|test|info

Install

omarchy plugin add https://github.com/atoslins/omarchy-plugin-dualsense
omarchy plugin enable atoslins.dualsense

It lands in the right section of the bar; move it where you like: omarchy bar move atoslins.dualsense --section right --index 3.

Update

omarchy plugin update atoslins.dualsense
omarchy restart shell

The update shows the diff before applying it, and CHANGELOG.md — also on the releases page — says what changed. Restart the shell afterwards: it keeps the panel code it already loaded until then.

Every version is tagged. To go back to one, check out its tag and restart the shell; the next omarchy plugin update brings you to the latest again:

git -C ~/.config/omarchy/plugins/atoslins.dualsense checkout v1.0.3

Remove

omarchy plugin remove atoslins.dualsense

The profile in ~/.config/dualsense/ stays; delete it if you want.

Permissions

The plugin writes to the controller's hidraw node. Steam's steam-devices package already grants that to the logged-in user, so if Steam is installed you are done. Otherwise install the rule shipped in udev/ with the verifier that sits next to it:

sudo ~/.config/omarchy/plugins/atoslins.dualsense/udev/install-udev-rule

then reconnect the controller. The same rule also opens the motion-sensor and touchpad input nodes, which the Test tab needs for gyro, accelerometer and touches (the gamepad itself works without it). The panel tells you when access is missing.

The verifier exists because a plain sudo cp would copy whatever is in your home directory at the moment the privileged copy runs, and a udev rule is system policy. install-udev-rule (Python 3, standard library) pins the SHA-256 of the reviewed rule, opens the source without following symlinks, checks that the descriptor is a regular, single-link, non-world-writable file owned by root or by you, hashes the bytes it actually read, writes those bytes to a root-owned staging file created with O_EXCL in /etc/udev/rules.d, verifies the staged copy, renames it atomically, verifies the installed file again, and only then reloads udev. Any mismatch aborts, removes what it staged, and installs nothing. install-udev-rule check reports the state without root; sudo install-udev-rule remove takes the rule out, refusing to delete a file that is not the reviewed one unless you pass --force.

Bluetooth

Hold Create + PS until the lightbar blinks fast, then pick "Wireless Controller" in the Bluetooth menu. Once paired it reconnects with the PS button. The battery, lightbar, LEDs, triggers, audio and power-off all work over Bluetooth; USB and Bluetooth report the battery in 10% steps (5, 15, …, 95, 100), which is what the controller sends.

Troubleshooting

The controller looks on but the widget says nothing is connected. Over Bluetooth the input session can drop while the link itself stays up — the controller keeps its lights, but the kernel has no device left, so nothing can read the battery or set the lightbar. The panel detects this and offers Reconnect (dualsense-ctl reconnect, or omarchy-shell atoslins.dualsense reconnect), which only ever tries to connect: a DualSense powers itself off the instant the host drops its link, so disconnecting first would turn a recoverable state into a controller that is simply off. When connecting does not take, the PS button is the only way back.

It keeps dropping every few minutes. Look for this in journalctl -u bluetooth:

bluetoothd: profiles/input/device.c:hidp_send_message() BT socket write error:
Resource temporarily unavailable (11)

That is the L2CAP send buffer filling up, and BlueZ tears the HID session down when it happens. A connected DualSense streams ~220 input reports a second, so the link has little headroom, and combo Wi-Fi/Bluetooth chips (MediaTek MT7921, some Intel and Realtek parts) share a radio between both. The usual fix is to turn off L2CAP retransmission mode, which is what keeps the buffer blocked:

echo 'options bluetooth disable_ertm=1' | sudo tee /etc/modprobe.d/bluetooth-ertm.conf
sudo sh -c 'echo 1 > /sys/module/bluetooth/parameters/disable_ertm'   # until reboot

Reconnect the controller afterwards; the setting applies to new links. The USB-C cable is unaffected by all of this.

The lightbar keeps its startup color. The controller runs its own lightbar animation after connecting and ignores requested colors until it is handed control explicitly. Every command here that touches the lightbar sends that handover first, so this should not happen; if it does, Reapply profile forces it.

Games

The kernel driver exposes a standard gamepad, so SDL-based games and Steam Input see the DualSense right away. Steam handles rumble, the lightbar and adaptive triggers itself while a game runs and hands the controller back when it exits; the plugin re-applies your profile on the next connection or with Reapply profile.

Settings

Set them with omarchy bar set:

omarchy bar set atoslins.dualsense lowBattery 15
omarchy bar set atoslins.dualsense hideWhenDisconnected true

or in the widget's entry in ~/.config/omarchy/shell.json. Switches take true/false (also on/off, yes/no, 1/0); numbers out of range are clamped.

• pollSeconds (default 5, 1–3600) — polling interval while a controller is connected and the panel is closed.
• notifications (default true) — desktop notifications.
• lowBattery (default 20, 0–100) — percentage that counts as low.
• applyOnConnect (default true) — re-apply the profile when a controller connects (and at shell start).
• profileFile (default ~/.config/dualsense/profile.json) — where the profile lives.
• showPercent (default true) — battery percentage in the bar.
• hideWhenDisconnected (default false) — collapse the widget when no controller is connected instead of dimming it.

Example:

{ "id": "atoslins.dualsense", "lowBattery": 15, "hideWhenDisconnected": true }

Command line

bin/dualsense-ctl is a standalone tool (Python 3, standard library only) that the panel drives; it is handy on its own:

ln -s ~/.config/omarchy/plugins/atoslins.dualsense/bin/dualsense-ctl ~/.local/bin/

dualsense-ctl status --pretty              # JSON snapshot of every controller
dualsense-ctl info                          # human readable details
dualsense-ctl lightbar '#ff4000' -b 80      # color + brightness; also: lightbar off|on
dualsense-ctl player 3 [--fade]             # 0–5 (6 outer pair, 7 inner three)
dualsense-ctl led-brightness low
dualsense-ctl trigger both weapon -s 6      # left|right|both · effects above
dualsense-ctl rumble --strong 80 --weak 40 --ms 500
dualsense-ctl mic off --led                 # mute + light the mute LED
dualsense-ctl speaker internal && dualsense-ctl volume 60
dualsense-ctl attenuation 2 0               # weaker rumble, full triggers
dualsense-ctl monitor                       # live input as JSON lines
dualsense-ctl profile set lightbar.color '#00ff88'
dualsense-ctl apply                         # re-apply the profile
dualsense-ctl reconnect                     # rebuild a stale Bluetooth link
dualsense-ctl poweroff                      # Bluetooth only

Add --device MAC to pick a controller, --all for every one.

Requirements

• Omarchy 4 (Quattro) shell.
• Linux hid_playstation driver (kernel 5.12+, built into Omarchy).
• python3 (already required by Omarchy), udevadm (systemd).
• Read/write access to the controller's hidraw node — see Permissions (udev/install-udev-rule installs the bundled rule with digest verification).
• Optional: bluetoothctl for the disconnect button.

Credits

• Controller line art by dualshock-tools (© 2024 the_al, MIT), converted to QtQuick Shapes so it takes the theme colors — see THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md.
• HID report layout documented by dualsensectl and the Linux hid-playstation driver.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.