Screen Recorder — Dank Material Shell Plugin

Plugin for Dank Material Shell (DMS) that wraps gpu-screen-recorder in a QML UI, letting you start, pause, and stop screen recordings directly from the DankBar. Works on any Wayland compositor.

What's new in v1.5.0

• Audio modes: record system audio, microphone, both mixed into one track, both as separate tracks in the same file (ideal for tutorials — adjust or mute either track later in an editor), or no audio.
• Quick switching: scroll the mouse wheel over the bar pill (while idle) to cycle audio modes, or bind cycleAudioMode / setAudioMode <mode> IPC commands to keyboard shortcuts. The pill shows the active mode next to the camera icon.
• Device overrides: pick a specific monitor or microphone; empty defaults (default_output / default_input) follow the active devices, even if you switch outputs mid-recording.
• Legacy Record audio / Audio source settings migrate automatically.
• Control Center widget (#16, thanks @AshotN): toggle recording from the DMS Control Center, with live status and elapsed time.

What's new in v1.4.0

• Uses DMS's supported composite layout: an always-on daemon owns the recorder while DankBar widgets share its state over IPC.
• Stops only the process it started. It sends SIGINT to finalize the video, then escalates only if that process fails to exit.
• Checks the recorder binary and portal ScreenCast interface before starting, and surfaces gpu-screen-recorder diagnostics when a recording fails.
• Verifies that the output video exists before reporting success or running a post-record command.
• Adds focused-window capture and an explicit audio-source setting; default follows the current PipeWire/PulseAudio output monitor.

Requirements

• Dank Material Shell >= 1.2.0
• gpu-screen-recorder installed and in your PATH
• A working XDG Desktop Portal with the ScreenCast interface (required when Capture source is set to portal)

Note: The Flatpak version of gpu-screen-recorder is a bundled GUI frontend and is not supported. Install the native system package instead.

Installing gpu-screen-recorder

Arch Linux & derivatives

sudo pacman -S gpu-screen-recorder

Other distros

See the official installation guide.

XDG Desktop Portal (for portal capture mode)

If portal capture is unavailable, make sure the backend appropriate to your compositor is installed and active. The plugin checks for the org.freedesktop.portal.ScreenCast interface before opening the selector.

# Inspect the active portal backend
systemctl --user status xdg-desktop-portal
gdbus introspect --session \
  --dest org.freedesktop.portal.Desktop \
  --object-path /org/freedesktop/portal/desktop

If the ScreenCast interface is missing, install/configure the portal backend for your desktop or compositor, then restart the portal user services.

Installation

# Clone
git clone https://github.com/arqueon/dms-screen-recorder
ln -sf "$(pwd)/dms-screen-recorder" ~/.config/DankMaterialShell/plugins/screenRecorder

# Reload
dms ipc plugin-scan reload screenRecorder

Then go to DMS Settings → Plugins and enable the plugin on the bar. On current DMS versions, rescan/reload it with:

dms ipc plugin-scan rescan screenRecorder
dms ipc plugin-scan reload screenRecorder

Usage

DankBar controls

Action	Result
Left click	Start recording
Left click (while recording)	Show Stop? confirmation — click again to stop and save
Right click or Middle click	Pause / Resume
Scroll wheel (while idle)	Cycle audio mode (no audio → system → mic → mixed → separate tracks)

When you click to stop, the pill turns orange and shows Stop? for 3 seconds. Click again to confirm, or do nothing to cancel and keep recording. This prevents accidentally stopping a recording with a misclick.

Control Center

The plugin also appears as a Control Center toggle: it shows the recorder status (Ready, Recording m:ss, Paused m:ss) and toggles recording on click. Add it from DMS Settings → Control Center.

IPC commands (keybinds)

The plugin exposes IPC commands you can bind to keyboard shortcuts:

dms ipc call screenRecorder toggleRecording   # start or stop
dms ipc call screenRecorder startRecording
dms ipc call screenRecorder stopRecording
dms ipc call screenRecorder togglePause       # pause or resume
dms ipc call screenRecorder cycleAudioMode    # next audio mode
dms ipc call screenRecorder setAudioMode both_tracks   # none|system|mic|both_merged|both_tracks
dms ipc call screenRecorder getAudioMode

Audio mode changes while recording apply to the next recording.

Note: IPC commands bypass the 3-second stop confirmation. toggleRecording stops immediately when a recording is active.

niri (~/.config/niri/config.kdl):

bindings {
    Mod+Alt+R { spawn "dms" "ipc" "call" "screenRecorder" "toggleRecording"; }
    Mod+Alt+P { spawn "dms" "ipc" "call" "screenRecorder" "togglePause"; }
}

Hyprland (hyprland.conf):

bind = SUPER ALT, R, exec, dms ipc call screenRecorder toggleRecording
bind = SUPER ALT, P, exec, dms ipc call screenRecorder togglePause

Sway (~/.config/sway/config):

bindsym $mod+Alt+r exec dms ipc call screenRecorder toggleRecording
bindsym $mod+Alt+p exec dms ipc call screenRecorder togglePause

KDE Plasma (System Settings → Shortcuts → Custom Shortcuts): Set the trigger command to dms ipc call screenRecorder toggleRecording.

Wayfire / COSMIC / any compositor with custom keybind support: Run dms ipc call screenRecorder <method> as the command.

Configuration

Open DMS Settings → Plugins → Screen Recorder:

Option	Description	Default
Frames per second	Recording framerate	60
Video quality	h264 encoding preset	Very high
Audio	What to record: no audio, system audio, microphone, both mixed, or both as separate tracks	System audio
System audio device	Empty = default_output (follows the active output). Accepts an entry from gpu-screen-recorder --list-audio-devices	—
Microphone device	Empty = default_input (follows the active input). Accepts an entry from gpu-screen-recorder --list-audio-devices	—
Record cursor	Include mouse pointer	On
Capture source	portal = choose window/screen on start; screen = all screens; focused = focused window	portal
Recordings folder	Output directory (empty = ~/Videos/Screencasting)	—
Post-record command	Command to run after recording finishes. Use $1 to reference the file path.	—

Audio modes explained

• System audio — desktop sound only: what you hear (videos, calls, games). Use it to record a Zoom meeting or a playing video.
• Microphone — your voice only: narrated tutorials where desktop sound doesn't matter.
• Both, mixed — one audio track with everything. Smallest and simplest, but the balance is fixed forever.
• Both, separate tracks — the same MP4 carries two independent audio tracks (system on track 1, mic on track 2). Best for tutorials: raise, lower, or mute either track afterwards in any editor (Kdenlive, DaVinci, ffmpeg). Most players play the first track by default; editors see both.

To extract or remix tracks later:

ffprobe recording.mp4                                   # inspect tracks
ffmpeg -i recording.mp4 -map 0:a:1 -c copy mic.opus     # extract mic track

Post-record command examples

Goal	Setting value
Copy file:// URI to clipboard	wl-copy --type text/uri-list "file://$1"
Open file with dragon-drop	dragon-drop "$1"
Open in mpv	mpv "$1"
Copy raw path to clipboard	wl-copy "$1"
Run a custom script	~/.local/bin/my-script "$1"

The file path is available as $1 and is fully expanded (e.g. ~/Videos/Screencasting/2026-06-13_09-00-00.mp4).

How stopping works

The plugin keeps ownership of its own recorder process and sends it SIGINT, allowing the MP4 to finalize. It waits ten seconds before a controlled SIGTERM fallback and only force-stops as a final fallback five seconds later. It never searches for or terminates other gpu-screen-recorder processes.

The “saved successfully” notification and postRecordCommand run only after the recorder exits successfully and the output file exists with content. Failures include the recorder's diagnostic output, which is especially useful for portal/backend problems.

Development

ln -sf "$(pwd)" ~/.config/DankMaterialShell/plugins/screenRecorder
dms ipc plugin-scan reload screenRecorder
dms ipc plugin-scan list

License

MIT