glance

A file clipboard for Wayland — watches directories for new files and shows a transient widget in Waybar. Click to open a dropdown menu with actions: drag-and-drop, open, edit, or copy the path.

What's new in 0.4.0

• New watch-status command — a long-lived process that watches the state file via inotify and outputs JSON to stdout on each change. Alternative to polling for setups where waybar signals work. Note: waybar's continuous exec mode blocks click/scroll handlers, so the default waybar config still uses interval: 5 with glance status.
• Scroll keeps widget visible — scrolling through file history now keeps the widget visible for dismiss_seconds after the last scroll, then dismisses normally. Previously, scrolling to a non-zero index kept it visible forever, and scrolling back to the newest file dismissed it immediately.

What's new in 0.3.6

• Fix: file lock no longer blocks indefinitely — the state file lock now uses non-blocking flock with a 2-second timeout. Previously, if the watcher held the lock while a waybar handler called scroll or menu, the handler would block forever, freezing waybar entirely.
• Fix: menu scroll no longer blocks GTK event loop — scroll-in-menu now spawns the scroll subprocess without waiting for it, preventing the menu from freezing.
• Fix: external drag command timeout — external drag tools (ripdrag, dragon, etc.) are now killed after 30 seconds if they don't exit, instead of blocking forever.
• Fix: wl-copy no longer blocks — the copy command now fires wl-copy without waiting for it to finish.

What's new in 0.3.5

• Configurable drag command — set drag_command in your config to use ripdrag, dragon, or any drag tool of your choice. Useful for dragging files into XWayland browsers where native Wayland DnD doesn't work. Defaults to the builtin GTK4 drag overlay.
• Fix: waybar freeze — pkill -RTMIN+8 waybar was accidentally killing waybar's child processes (like a running glance status), leaving waybar with an orphaned pipe that it busy-loops on. Now targets only the main waybar process with -x -o flags.
• Fix: waybar polling interval — changed from "interval": 1 (spawned 3600 processes/hr) to "interval": 5, massively reducing process spawning overhead.
• Fix: full binary paths — glance init now writes absolute paths in Waybar and Hyprland configs, so glance works even when ~/.local/bin or ~/.cargo/bin aren't in waybar's PATH.
• Fix: menu scroll — scroll inside the dropdown menu now uses the full binary path, fixing scroll not working when launched from waybar.

Dependencies

Arch Linux:

sudo pacman -S gtk4 gtk4-layer-shell wl-clipboard swappy

Fedora:

sudo dnf install gtk4-devel gtk4-layer-shell-devel wl-clipboard swappy

You also need a Rust toolchain and Hyprland (uses hyprctl for overlay placement).

swappy is a lightweight Wayland screenshot annotation tool used by the Edit button. If not installed, glance will fall back to opening files with your default app. You can also set a different editor in the config.

Install

From crates.io:

cargo install wayglance

If cargo install fails with "gtk4.pc not found", try: PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/usr/lib64/pkgconfig cargo install wayglance

From source:

git clone https://github.com/areofyl/glance
cd glance
cargo build --release
cp target/release/glance ~/.local/bin/

Then run the setup wizard:

glance init

This automatically:

• Creates the default config at ~/.config/glance/config.toml
• Adds the Waybar module to your Waybar config (with full binary paths)
• Appends CSS styles to your Waybar style.css
• Adds exec-once and SUPER+V keybind to your Hyprland config

Restart Waybar and you're done.

Manual setup

Autostart

Add to your Hyprland config (~/.config/hypr/hyprland.conf):

exec-once = /path/to/glance watch
bind = SUPER, V, exec, /path/to/glance drag

Waybar module

Add to your Waybar config (~/.config/waybar/config.jsonc):

"custom/glance": {
    "exec": "/path/to/glance status",
    "return-type": "json",
    "interval": 5,
    "signal": 8,
    "on-click": "/path/to/glance menu",
    "on-click-right": "/path/to/glance copy",
    "on-scroll-up": "/path/to/glance scroll up",
    "on-scroll-down": "/path/to/glance scroll down"
}

Use the full path to the glance binary (e.g. /home/you/.local/bin/glance) since waybar may not have ~/.local/bin in its PATH.

Then add "custom/glance" to your bar layout (e.g. modules-right). A complete snippet is in waybar-module.jsonc.

Waybar styling

Add to your Waybar CSS (~/.config/waybar/style.css):

#custom-glance {
    padding: 0 8px;
    color: #cdd6f4;
}

#custom-glance.active {
    color: #a6e3a1;
}

#custom-glance.empty {
    padding: 0;
}

Config

Optional. Copy config.example.toml to ~/.config/glance/config.toml and edit to taste. Everything has sane defaults.

# directories to watch for new files
watch_dirs = ["~/Pictures/Screenshots", "~/Downloads"]

# RTMIN+N signal to poke waybar
signal_number = 8

# auto-dismiss the waybar widget after N seconds
dismiss_seconds = 10

# skip partial downloads etc.
ignore_suffixes = [".part", ".crdownload", ".tmp"]

# waybar bar height in px (for menu placement)
bar_height = 57

# number of files to remember in history
history_size = 5

# editor command for the Edit button (default: "swappy -f")
# supports full commands with arguments, e.g. "gimp -n" or "swappy -f"
editor = "swappy -f"

# which buttons to show in the dropdown
actions = ["drag", "open", "edit", "copy"]

# auto-dismiss the dropdown after N seconds (0 = never)
menu_dismiss_seconds = 8

# drag command: "builtin" for GTK4 native drag, or an external tool
# use "ripdrag --and-exit" for better browser compatibility (XWayland)
drag_command = "builtin"

# customize menu appearance
[menu_style]
background = "rgba(30,30,46,0.95)"
text_color = "#cdd6f4"
secondary_color = "#a6adc8"
button_background = "rgba(255,255,255,0.08)"
button_hover = "rgba(255,255,255,0.15)"
border_radius = 12

Commands

glance init            # set up config, waybar module, CSS, and autostart
glance watch           # run the inotify watcher (long-running)
glance watch-status    # continuous JSON output for waybar (long-running)
glance status          # one-shot JSON for waybar
glance menu            # dropdown menu below waybar with actions
glance copy            # wl-copy the selected file path
glance drag            # drag-and-drop overlay at cursor
glance scroll up|down  # navigate through file history

License

MIT