ZIGX

A fast Linux system monitor. Processes, a per-core CPU grid, memory, GPU, disk, network, and startup apps — spectral white ink on black glass.

The window is transparent. On Hyprland and Omarchy the blur behind it is the glass. ZIGX does not paint a fake frost and it does not use a widget toolkit.

The visual system is monochrome and flat: one ink stepped by alpha, hairlines instead of shadows, tracked uppercase labels for structure, a monospace face for every number, and a single smoked pill, a faint wash with a fine bright edge, for the active choice. Chroma appears only as status, amber at 70 percent load and red at 90.

cargo run --release

Design system, layout, components, and motion are documented in docs/design.

Install

cargo install --path .
install -Dm644 share/zigx.desktop ~/.local/share/applications/zigx.desktop

The desktop entry expects zigx on PATH; ~/.cargo/bin is the default install location.

Using it

Sampling runs off the UI thread and the window redraws when numbers change, not on a busy loop.

Press ? or F1 (or click Keys at the foot of the nav) for a sheet of every shortcut, with the page you are on listed first. Esc closes it.

The window has no decorations: drag the title bar to move it and double-click it to maximize.

Keys, when the search box is not focused:

• 1 2 3 4 switch pages (Processes, Performance, Startup, Settings). Ctrl+, opens Settings.
• On Performance, c m g d n select CPU, memory, GPU, disk, and network; Left and Right cycle those sections; Up and Down scroll the sheet; Space pauses or resumes sampling.
• On Processes, Up and Down move focus through group headers and process rows (Shift extends the selection, Ctrl moves focus without changing it). Past the last row a fresh press wraps to the top, and past the first it wraps to the bottom; holding the key stops at the end. Startup and Settings wrap the same way. Home and End jump to the ends. Left and Right collapse or expand the focused group. v cycles the list view. Ctrl+A selects every visible process. Ctrl+Space toggles the focused process in the selection.
• Hold Space on Processes to freeze the list in the order on screen (or toggle a focused group header). Counts keep updating in place; letting go sorts again. Space still types into search while that field is focused.
• Search takes keys only while its field is focused. Click it, or press Ctrl+F. Esc clears it, Ctrl+Backspace empties it. Esc with an empty unfocused search clears the selection.
• Click selects a process; Ctrl and Shift extend the selection.
• Right-click a process for its menu, or press Shift+F10 / the Menu key: End task, Force kill (click twice), Suspend or Resume, Open file location, Copy command line, and Copy PID. It acts on the whole selection when the row is part of it. Right-click a group header (or press Shift+F10 on it) for the same menu acting on every process in the group, plus Expand or Collapse and Select all. Arrow keys and Enter drive it, Esc closes it. Copying uses wl-copy (or xclip / xsel).
• Delete arms End task and a second press (or Enter) sends SIGTERM. With nothing selected and a group header focused, it ends the whole group. Turn off Confirm ending in Settings to skip the second press.
• On Startup, Up and Down focus an entry; Space or Enter toggles it.
• On Settings, Up and Down focus a row; Left and Right cycle choices, chips, and zoom; Space or Enter toggles switches or activates Reset.
• PageUp PageDown scroll the current page.

Settings

The Settings page, at the foot of the nav, applies every change at once and saves it to ~/.config/zigx/settings.txt, which is also safe to edit by hand.

• Appearance: interface scale, glass (clear, glass, solid), animations (on or off: fades, glides and transitions across the interface), graph motion (smooth or reduced), row density, status color, title bar readout.
• Graphs: history (30 s, 1 min, 2 min), curves (smooth or linear), fill under traces, grid, and the disk graph: throughput (read and write speed) or active time (the share of each interval the disk had I/O in flight, from /proc/diskstats, like Task Manager's "Active time").
• Data: update speed (0.5, 1 or 2 s, or Pause), process CPU as a share of one core or of the whole machine, byte units (1024 or 1000), temperature (°C or °F).
• Processes: which optional columns show (GPU, Disk, PID, User, Threads), and whether ending a task asks for a second click.
• General: the page ZIGX opens on, and Reset, which takes two clicks.

Pause lasts for the session only; ZIGX always launches live.

Zoom

Ctrl++ / Ctrl+= zooms in and Ctrl+- zooms out. Stops run from 80% to 180% (80, 90, 100, 110, 125, 140, 160, 180). Ctrl+0 resets to 100%. Settings has the same control. The scale is saved in ~/.config/zigx/ui.txt with the other remembered layout state.

Startup lists every .desktop in /etc/xdg/autostart (and $XDG_CONFIG_DIRS) merged with ~/.config/autostart, where a user file overrides the system one of the same name, plus Omarchy/Hypr o.launch_on_start(...) lines from ~/.config/hypr/autostart.lua. OnlyShowIn / NotShowIn / TryExec do not hide desktop entries from the list. Turning a desktop entry off writes Hidden=true into the user file (creating it from the system entry when needed) and keeps a one-time .bak. Turning a Hypr launch off comments that o.launch_on_start block in the Lua file.

Fonts

ZIGX picks installed fonts in this order: Inter, Adwaita Sans, Cantarell, Noto Sans, Liberation Sans, DejaVu Sans for text, and JetBrains Mono (Nerd Font), Adwaita Mono, Cascadia Mono, Fira Code, Noto Sans Mono, Liberation Mono, DejaVu Sans Mono for numbers. Override with ZIGX_SANS and ZIGX_MONO set to an installed family name.

Compositor

The Wayland app id is zigx. If the desktop blur does not pick the window up:

windowrule = blur on, match:class zigx

License

Apache License 2.0. See LICENSE.