btop Activity for Omarchy Quattro

Brings btop back to the Omarchy bar: live CPU, RAM, and GPU usage and temperatures, with btop one click away.

Some features

• applies settings live to the running btop plugin
• preserves Omarchy's btop theme without touching the normal user btop.conf

Quickstart

After installation:

• left-click bar icon to start/focus btop in the selected window mode
• right-click bar icon to open the plugin settings
  • choose Settings to change plugin and btop options
  • choose Help to open built-in help in the selected window mode
• hover over it to see RAM use, CPU use and temperature, and GPU use and temperature

Install

omarchy plugin add https://github.com/ilyaZar/omarchy-btop-activity --enable

Omarchy includes btop by default. On AMD systems, btop's own GPU panel also needs the distribution's ROCm SMI library (rocm-smi-lib on Arch).

Use

The plugin reads GPU telemetry from the kernel driver. If that driver does not publish a temperature sensor, the hover shows a dimmed <unavailable>. If something fails here, GPU and driver combinations can be messy, so feel free to file an issue.

AMD usage and temperature are read directly from DRM sysfs. NVIDIA uses NVML, while Intel i915 usage is sampled from the same Linux performance counters used by btop. Install the plugin's narrow helper once to enable the native backends:

~/.config/omarchy/plugins/ilyazar.btop/setup-gpu-helper.sh

The helper is built locally. On Intel it receives only cap_perfmon; NVIDIA uses the driver-provided NVML library without elevated privileges. Intel integrated GPUs commonly expose package temperature rather than a separate GPU sensor, so temperature can remain unavailable even while usage is working. Building requires a C compiler and setcap from libcap. NVIDIA monitoring also requires the official driver-provided libnvidia-ml library, as btop does.

Demo

See btop launch from the bar, switch between floating and tiled layouts, apply a 250 ms refresh interval live, and update its keybinding.

screenrecording-2026-08-14_13-22-48.mp4

Settings

The plugin keeps a short list of useful controls before opening btop:

Setting	Choices
Tray icon	Meters, CPU, Pulse, or a custom image
Keybindings	opens the Omarchy user bindings file
Window mode	floating or tiled
Update interval	any whole number from 100 ms to one day
Process sorting	lazy CPU, direct CPU, memory, or program
Process tree	on or off

For the update interval, press Enter or click the value to edit it. Left/Right (or h/l) change it by 1 ms. Up/Down (or k/j) move through 250, 500, 1000, 2000, and 5000 ms while still letting you type any value in btop's full range. From a custom value, they jump to the next preset above or below it and wrap around at the ends.

Edit ~/.config/hypr/bindings.lua directly, or select Keybindings in the plugin settings to open it. The button prefers Neovim, jumping to an existing Activity override or to the end of the file; without Neovim, it uses Omarchy's config editor.

Omarchy assigns Super+Ctrl+T to btop by default. To replace it, e.g. with Super+Ctrl+Alt+g, add:

hl.unbind("SUPER + CTRL + T")
o.bind("SUPER + CTRL + ALT + G", "Activity", { tui = "btop" })

After Hyprland reloads, the settings row shows the effective shortcut, or Unbound when no Activity binding remains.

Cycle Tray icon through Meters, CPU, Pulse, and Custom. The default CPU icon follows the bar's normal foreground color. The custom path is stored separately, so switching between styles does not discard it. CPU is the default for new installations.

For Custom, enter an absolute path, a ~/path, or a file:// URL, then press Enter or Save. SVG and PNG work well. The plugin renders the file as-is and does not recolor it. An invalid path shows !.

Depending on the installed icon themes, useful paths include:

• /usr/share/icons/hicolor/scalable/apps/btop.svg
• /usr/share/icons/HighContrast/scalable/apps/utilities-system-monitor.svg
• /usr/share/icons/Yaru/scalable/apps/system-monitor-app-symbolic.svg

Plugin choices are stored in Omarchy's shell.json and survive shell restarts.

Under Appearance, choose whether btop opens tiled or floating. The setting applies to both left-click and Help. Floating is the default and restores Omarchy's centered 875 x 600 window size when selected.

Roadmap and releases

Planned work stays at the top. Shipped entries come from CHANGELOG.md, newest first.

Release	State	Date	What changed
Next	planned	TBD	add details when the next release is planned
0.2.0	shipped	2026-08-21	make the release table clean and easy to scan
0.1.10	shipped	2026-08-21	choose any update interval or step through presets
			restore settings when disabling or removing the plugin
			show Intel and NVIDIA GPU data after helper setup
			keep the widget readable on a transparent bar
0.1.9	shipped	2026-08-15	show GPU use and temperature in the tooltip and menu
			show when GPU temperature is unavailable
			display Scroll Lock correctly in shortcuts
0.1.8	shipped	2026-08-14	add a demo for launch, window modes, refresh, and keys
0.1.7	shipped	2026-08-14	update the preview and explain Activity shortcuts
0.1.6	shipped	2026-08-14	show the current Activity shortcut or Unbound
			keep custom icon controls beside the icon choice
0.1.5	shipped	2026-08-14	open the user bindings file from settings
			apply btop settings without reloading the plugin
			create the private btop config when it is missing
0.1.4	shipped	2026-08-13	keep settings usable while the private config loads
			switch open btop windows between floating and tiled
			add the 250 ms interval
0.1.3	shipped	2026-08-13	start from Omarchy's btop config and current theme
0.1.2	shipped	2026-08-12	keep plugin settings separate and remove them cleanly
0.1.1	shipped	2026-08-12	show CPU temperature in the hover details
			refresh hover data at the chosen interval
			use the CPU icon by default for new installs
0.1.0	shipped	2026-08-12	first release

Config safety and troubleshooting

The plugin stores its choices in Omarchy's shell.json and generates a private btop config under $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR. The normal user btop.conf is never read or written.

The runtime file is created from Omarchy's packaged btop config. Quickshell writes it atomically, and a running btop receives its supported config-reload signal only after a successful change. Disabling or removing the plugin restores a file that existed before the plugin was enabled, or removes the file it created.

GPU temperature depends on driver support. If unavailable, the hover shows <unavailable>. For AMD temperature monitoring in btop, install ROCm SMI:

sudo pacman -S rocm-smi-lib

Then restart btop. This can matter for AMD GPUs like the Radeon RX 6400.

Remove

omarchy plugin remove ilyazar.btop

Removing the plugin removes its private btop settings. It does not remove btop or change btop's normal configuration.

Development

Link this repository into the local plugin folder and enable it:

ln -s "$PWD" ~/.config/omarchy/plugins/ilyazar.btop
omarchy-shell shell rescanPlugins
omarchy plugin enable ilyazar.btop --section right

Service.qml owns system sampling and the native Quickshell config bridge. BarWidget.qml owns the bar icon, menu, and navigation.

License

MIT