Shift for Plasma 6

Sit less, without thinking about it. A Plasma 6 widget that reminds you to switch between sitting and standing, counts your standing time against a goal, and can move a motorized desk for you.

Sitting, with the week so far	A switch is due	Standing, with the desk raised

The screenshots use sample data, in a headless KWin (see Development).

Why you'll like it

• ⏱️ A cycle that runs itself. 45 minutes sitting, 15 standing by default, on its own timer; a notification when it's time to switch, with Sit/Stand now and Snooze.
• 🖥️ Moves the desk for you. IKEA Idåsen and other Linak desks through idasen, or any command line tool; it notices when you use the desk's own buttons too.
• 📈 Progress you can see. Daily standing time against a goal, a streak of days that met it, and the week as a chart in the popup.
• 🤝 Polite about your day. Paused while the screen is locked, and away 5 minutes or more starts the cycle over. Pause for a meeting (30 min, 1 h, 2 h or until resumed), optional working hours, and reminders that wait for Do Not Disturb to end.
• 🖱️ One click away. Middle-click the panel icon to switch between sitting and standing without opening the popup.

Using Glance? Shift is built into it, together with a focus timer that it waits for (its settings aren't imported from this widget).

Install

From the KDE Store

Right click the panel > Add or Manage Widgets > Get New Widgets > Download New Plasma Widgets, search for Shift, or get it from store.kde.org.

From a release

Download the latest .plasmoid file from releases/, then:

kpackagetool6 -t Plasma/Applet -i shift_v1.2.3.plasmoid
# or, to upgrade an installed Shift:
kpackagetool6 -t Plasma/Applet -u shift_v1.2.3.plasmoid

From source

git clone https://github.com/divinae/shift-plasmoid.git
cd shift-plasmoid
make install     # first time
make upgrade     # after changes
make uninstall   # removes the widget and its icons

Then add Shift to a panel or the desktop.

Besides the widget, make install puts its icons in ~/.local/share/icons/hicolor/scalable/apps/, because Plasma looks a widget's icon up by name. Installed from a .plasmoid file instead, the widget works and Add Widgets shows its icon, but the tooltip shows none.

Dependencies

• Plasma 6 (Qt 6 and KDE Frameworks 6)
• KNotifications QML module (org.kde.notification; Debian/Ubuntu: qml6-module-org-kde-notification, Arch: knotifications, Fedora: kf6-knotifications)
• Kirigami Addons (settings pages)
• Qt Multimedia (qt6-multimedia), for the notification sound

Optional:

• idasen or another command-line tool for the desk, see below

Desk control

Qt 6 has no QML API for Bluetooth, so the widget drives the desk through a command-line tool. The defaults use idasen, which works with IKEA Idåsen and other Linak desks:

pipx install idasen
idasen init        # finds the desk and writes ~/.config/idasen/idasen.yaml
idasen height      # should print the height

Pair the desk in System Settings → Bluetooth first. The sit and stand heights for idasen sit / idasen stand live in idasen's own config file.

Then, in the widget's settings, under Desk:

1. Turn on Control a motorized desk.
2. Press Test connection. It runs the height command and shows what it read.
3. Move the desk to your sitting height and press Use current height for sitting, then the same for standing. This sets the widget's preset and runs idasen save sit (or stand), so idasen and the widget agree on the heights. Above their midpoint counts as standing.

Any other tool works too. The commands run with sh, and {cm}, {mm} and {m} are replaced with the preset height, for example linak-controller --move-to {mm}. The height command may print the height in metres, centimetres or millimetres.

The widget reads the height every minute, so moving the desk with its own buttons is noticed too and the standing time stays right.

When the desk does not answer (off, out of range, asleep), the panel icon shows a warning triangle and nothing raises an error. A switch you ask for then waits until you have made it with the desk's own buttons and press Done (in the notification, in the popup, or with another middle click); until then the count stays in the old position. The next successful height read switches back to driving the desk.

A move that stops short of the preset (Linak desks do this now and then) is run again, up to 8 times. Two moves in a row that do not move the desk at all end the retries: something may be in the way, and the desk stopping is its anti-collision at work.

Move the desk when it is time to switch is off by default. A desk that moves on its own can catch a chair arm, a cable or a shelf. Turn it on only if nothing can be caught.

Limitations

• Away is the screen lock, not idle time. KDE's Wayland session answers org.freedesktop.ScreenSaver.GetSessionIdleTime with NotSupported. Plasma locks after its own idle timeout, so in practice this follows idleness too.
• The popup cannot show the height while the desk moves. The command reports nothing until it exits, and idasen holds the desk's only Bluetooth connection while moving.
• Standing time is credited to the day it is saved on, once a minute, so at most a minute of a session that spans midnight lands on the wrong day.

Support

If Shift is useful to you, you can buy me a coffee on Ko-fi.

Bugs and ideas

Report them in GitHub Issues: your distribution, the Plasma version, the widget version, your desk and the tool that drives it if desk control is on, and for a problem the widget's log. To get the log, do what goes wrong, then right after:

journalctl --user -b --since "-15min" | grep -i -E "stand|plasmashell" > shift.log

Look it over before attaching shift.log.

Development

make check       # qmllint, config and theme audits, qmltestrunner

The testable logic is plain JavaScript in package/contents/ui/lib/: cycle.js for the cycle and stats, desk.js for building desk commands and reading their output.

To try changes without touching the installed copy:

XDG_DATA_HOME=/tmp/stand-test make install
XDG_DATA_HOME=/tmp/stand-test plasmawindowed com.dv.stand

QML errors show up in journalctl --user -f.

The icon (package/contents/screenshot.png, which Add Widgets shows, and the store logo screenshots/logo.png) comes from python3 tools/icon/make_icon.py.

The README screenshots come from tools/screenshot/shoot.sh STATE OUT.png (sit, due or stand, optionally with -offline). It runs the widget alone in a headless KWin with sample data, so nothing else on the desktop ends up in the picture.

Several parts are taken from Fokus: ExecUtil.qml, NotificationManager.qml, Sfx.qml, ProgressCircle.qml, FormPathDelegate.qml, the Makefile and the audits in tests/.

License

GPL-3.0-or-later, see LICENSE. Parts are taken from Fokus, which is under the same license.