lios-bar 0.1.1

A native GTK4/VTE sidebar workspace for navigating live Lios terminal sessions.
Documentation

LiosBar

LiosBar is a native terminal workspace created by Trevor Knott through Knott Dynamics. It keeps several real GTK4/VTE terminal sessions alive in one window and turns a compact sidebar into navigation between them.

The sidebar starts on the left. Move it to the right from the header, with Ctrl+Shift+B, with --sidebar right, or by setting sidebar = "right" in ~/.config/lios/bar.toml.

What it does

  • Keeps up to 32 terminal sessions alive while LiosBar is running.
  • Switches sessions without restarting shells or losing scrollback.
  • Inherits the active terminal's working directory for each new session.
  • Shows running/exited state and the shell-provided terminal title.
  • Renames sessions locally without changing shell state.
  • Keeps exited sessions visible so their output can still be inspected.
  • Places the session bar on the left by default or persistently on the right.
  • Uses UUIDv7 session identifiers internally.
  • Confirms multiline, control-character, and unusually large clipboard pastes.
  • Installs and removes a desktop launcher with lios-bar --install and lios-bar --uninstall.

LiosBar owns only the sessions it launches. It does not discover unrelated terminal windows, expose terminal byte streams, run a network service, store credentials, or restore shells after the LiosBar process exits. Use tmux, screen, or another multiplexer inside a session when persistence across app restarts is required.

Install

LiosBar needs the same GTK4 and VTE GTK4 development libraries as native Lios. The simplest supported path is:

cargo install lios
lios install
cargo install --locked lios-bar
lios-bar --install
lios-bar

Lios 0.1.69 and newer can manage the reviewed LiosBar release from Preferences → Plugins. The Lios card installs only its version-pinned crates.io artifact, records enablement separately from installation, and launches LiosBar as an independent process. Disabling the card preserves the binary and does not terminate a workspace that is already running.

From source:

cargo run
cargo run -- --sidebar right
cargo run -- --working-directory /path/to/project

Keyboard navigation

  • Ctrl+Shift+T: create a session.
  • Ctrl+PageDown: select the next session.
  • Ctrl+PageUp: select the previous session.
  • Ctrl+Shift+W: close the selected session, with confirmation while running.
  • Ctrl+Shift+R: rename the selected session.
  • Ctrl+Shift+B: move the sidebar between left and right and save the choice.
  • Ctrl+Shift+C: copy selected terminal text.
  • Ctrl+Shift+V: guarded clipboard paste.

Configuration

LiosBar reads ~/.config/lios/bar.toml, or $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/lios/bar.toml when XDG_CONFIG_HOME is set:

sidebar = "left"

Malformed configuration fails closed with a clear error instead of silently overwriting the file. Sidebar changes are saved atomically with user-only file permissions.

Scope and safety

Each sidebar entry is a local VTE child shell. LiosBar passes arguments as argv, does not invoke a command string, and does not provide arbitrary remote execution. Closing a live entry warns before the terminal widget and PTY are removed. Closing the window warns when any owned shell is still running.

Clipboard text pastes directly only when it is a reasonably sized single line without unsafe control characters. Risky paste confirmation displays counts, never clipboard contents.

For vulnerabilities and the threat boundary, see SECURITY.md. For ownership and callback boundaries, see ARCHITECTURE.md. Maintainers can use the repeatable RELEASING.md checklist. The exact boundary between Lios and this standalone application is documented in INTEGRATION.md.

Author and license

LiosBar is created and maintained by Trevor Knott through Knott Dynamics. It is distributed under your choice of the MIT License or Apache License 2.0. See NOTICE, LICENSE-MIT, and LICENSE-APACHE.