Noctalia

Configure and recover Monarch's Noctalia v5 desktop shell.

Noctalia v5 provides Monarch's bar, application launcher, notifications, control center, lock screen, on-screen displays, wallpaper handling, and several Monarch panels. It is a native desktop shell and is controlled with the noctalia command.

Documentation for the older Qt/Quickshell-based Noctalia v4 does not apply to Monarch's Noctalia v5.

Open Noctalia

Interface	Shortcut
Application launcher	SUPER + Space
Control center	SUPER + Comma
Settings	SUPER + SHIFT + Comma
Clipboard history	SUPER + SHIFT + V
Session and power menu	SUPER + SHIFT + L

The settings panel is the easiest place to change the bar, widgets, appearance, wallpaper, notifications, idle behavior, and plugins.

Configuration files

Noctalia merges every *.toml file in ~/.config/noctalia/.

• config.toml contains Monarch's main defaults.
• monarch-workspaces.toml and monarch-widgets.toml contain Monarch integration.
• Extra TOML files can hold your manual overrides separately from the managed files.
• Changes made by the Noctalia settings UI are kept in ~/.local/state/noctalia/settings.toml.

For an upgrade-safe manual customization, add a separate file such as ~/.config/noctalia/user.toml, then reload the configuration:

noctalia config validate
noctalia msg config-reload

You can also open the main file from Monarch Menu → Settings → Config → Noctalia.

Restart or restore Noctalia

Restart the shell without changing its configuration:

monarch restart noctalia

Restore the Monarch-managed Noctalia files, restart the shell, and reapply the wallpaper:

monarch refresh noctalia

The refresh command saves changed managed files as .bak.<timestamp> before replacing them. It does not delete separate TOML overlays or Noctalia's mutable settings state, so inspect those too if an override continues to apply.

Check whether the running shell is responding with:

noctalia msg status

For colors, wallpaper, and application templates, see Themes.