DankMaterialShell, a desktop shell for Wayland compositors built with Quickshell, has released version 1.6, codenamed “Marble Tabby,” introducing the new Dank Island bar, performance improvements, lower memory usage, GTK3 dynamic theming, and a standalone greeter.
The biggest visual addition is Dank Island, a new bar mode built around a central interactive island with satellite widgets on both sides.
Its content can react to notifications, media playback, and on-screen displays, while surfaces such as the dashboard and control center can expand directly from the island. DMS 1.6 also introduces spring-based animations throughout the shell.
On the performance side, according to the project’s benchmarks, IPC calls are 5.2 times faster, screenshot operations up to 8.6 times faster, and the color picker 3.9 times faster. Idle shell memory usage was reduced by about 19%, or roughly 76 MB on the developers’ two-monitor test system.
Screenshot tooling has improved beyond raw speed. Users can now select regions spanning multiple monitors, resize and reposition selections more easily, use an initial scroll-capture mode, and capture 10-bit/HDR content through the Wayland wp_color_manager_v1 protocol.
DMS 1.6 also adds dynamic GTK3 theming when adw-gtk3 is installed, letting GTK3 apps follow generated DMS colors and switch between light and dark modes without restarting. Networking improvements include Wi-Fi hotspot creation, cellular modem support through NetworkManager, better 802.1X handling, and support for Opportunistic Wireless Encryption networks.
Another notable change is unified versioning across the Dank Desktop suite. DMS, dsearch, dgop, dcal, and dgreeter now share the same release number, while the greeter itself has been split into the new standalone dank-greeter project.
The plugin ecosystem has grown considerably too, with the official registry now hosting more than 335 plugins and 42 themes. The release also introduces a redesigned plugin browser, portable plugin lockfiles, multiple plugin and theme registries, and plugin-specific translations.
Finally, the developers say DMS is gradually evolving from a shell into a broader desktop suite, with more components planned as standalone applications. That said, a standalone file browser and DankConnect phone integration are already in development.
For additional details, see the announcement.
Image credits: DankMaterialShell
