Plainpad

A small, plain-text scratchpad for Omarchy. Copy some text, make a quick edit, copy it back, and press Escape to return to what you were doing.

Underscores stay underscores. Markdown stays text. No syntax highlighting, smart quotes, auto-indentation, file dialogs, or autosaving. Visual wrapping never inserts newlines into your text.

Plainpad is an independent GTK application with Omarchy window rules, not an Omarchy shell plugin. It is not affiliated with the Omarchy project.

Install on Omarchy 4

Dependencies: Python 3.10+, PyGObject, and GTK 4.12+. On Omarchy/Arch:

omarchy pkg add python python-gobject gtk4

Then install this release for your user (no sudo):

git clone --branch v0.1.0 https://github.com/billerickson/plainpad.git
cd plainpad
./install.sh --omarchy

Open Plainpad in your application launcher or run ~/.local/bin/plainpad. The window opens centered and floating. Super+T can tile it normally.

The installer copies the app, launcher, desktop entry, icon, and window rule into your user directories. It appends a marked block to hypr/hyprland.lua, backs up that config first, and reloads/validates an active Hyprland session. It never changes your keybindings. Existing files not owned by this installer, and locally modified installed files, are preserved: installation stops with an explanation instead of overwriting them.

To install just the GTK application, without changing Hyprland configuration:

./install.sh

Floating behavior requires the Omarchy rule or equivalent window-manager configuration. Omarchy 3's older .conf syntax is not supported by --omarchy. Tested on Omarchy 4.0.4 / Hyprland 0.56.2 / GTK 4.22, with additional GTK checks in Ubuntu 24.04 / GTK 4.14.

Optional shortcut

Check available bindings with omarchy menu keybindings --print. If Super+E is unused, add this to ~/.config/hypr/bindings.lua:

o.bind("SUPER + E", "Plainpad", o.shell_quote(os.getenv("HOME") .. "/.local/bin/plainpad"))

Then run hyprctl reload and hyprctl configerrors. Choose another shortcut if Super+E is already in use. Reopening brings back the same window and draft.

Use

Shortcut	Action
Ctrl+A	Select all
Ctrl+C / Ctrl+V / Ctrl+X	Copy / paste / cut
Ctrl+Z	Undo
Ctrl+Shift+Z or Ctrl+Y	Redo
Escape or window close	Dismiss, keeping the draft in memory
Super+T (Omarchy)	Toggle floating / tiled
Ctrl+Q	Quit and discard the draft

Typical workflow: copy → open Plainpad → Ctrl+A → Ctrl+V → edit → Ctrl+A → Ctrl+C → Escape → paste into your terminal.

Drafts are session-only: Plainpad keeps running while dismissed, but quitting, logging out, or restarting loses the draft. It does not save text to disk or send it over the network. Copying is explicit; opening the app does not read or replace your clipboard. Your desktop clipboard manager may retain copied text according to its own settings.

Update and uninstall

Quit Plainpad with Ctrl+Q before updating or uninstalling. From the checkout:

git fetch --tags
# Check out the release tag you want, then:
./install.sh --omarchy

For removal:

./uninstall.sh

Uninstall removes the installed files and its exact marked configuration block. Other configuration and files stay in place. Remove any shortcut you added manually. If an installed file or the managed block was edited, the installer stops; move the edited file aside or restore the original block before retrying. Keep the checkout to run updates/uninstall, or download the same release again.

Locations follow XDG_DATA_HOME and XDG_CONFIG_HOME (defaulting to ~/.local/share and ~/.config). The executable is always ~/.local/bin/plainpad; add ~/.local/bin to PATH to use plainpad by name. There are no dependencies on the checkout after installation.

Development

Run /usr/bin/python3 plainpad.py directly. No build step or pip packages are needed; PyGObject and GTK come from the operating system.

python3 -m unittest discover -s tests -v

Installer tests need desktop-file-validate from desktop-file-utils. The GUI smoke test uses a disposable X11 desktop and its own D-Bus session:

xvfb-run -a dbus-run-session -- python3 tests/gui_smoke.py

It needs xvfb, xdotool, xclip, and GTK/PyGObject. See verification notes for the Wayland checks and release scope. Bug reports and small, focused contributions are welcome on GitHub.

Future directory integration is tracked in the Omarchy plugin roadmap.

MIT licensed. Created by Bill Erickson.