# Veronica (namannn04/Veronica) > Veronica is a native desktop control center for Ubuntu. It combines agent usage tracking, system utilities, media control, clipboard history, an emoji picker and GNOME integration in one app. - GitHub: https://github.com/namannn04/Veronica - GitHub.Locker page: https://github.locker/namannn04/Veronica - Stars: 837 - Language: Rust - License: GPL-3.0 - Last push: 2026-11-01 ## Questions and answers Written by GitHub.Locker from the README and the repository; check the README below for details. **Is it a port of something else?** Yes. It is a port of Edith, a macOS control center, to Linux. It keeps Edith's models and reimplements the platform layer on Linux services. **How do I install it on Ubuntu?** Use the Debian package, which the README recommends on Ubuntu. The install command downloads the latest GitHub release, checks its SHA-256 checksum and installs it with apt. Then log out and back in once so GNOME loads the extension. **What does it need to run?** Ubuntu 24.04 or later on x86-64, with GNOME Shell 46 through 50. The Debian package pulls in jq, which the usage collector needs, and curl for update checks. **Is the AppImage as complete as the Debian package?** No. The AppImage is desktop-only. It has no vr command and no GNOME Shell extension, so the top-bar notch, clipboard capture, Focus Dim, keystroke display and paste-in-place are missing. Use the Debian package for full integration. **Does it send my usage history anywhere?** No. Claude, Codex, Cursor and Command Code accounting stays on the machine. Alerts are off by default and make no request to any provider while off. Site audits fetch only the pages you give them. **What does the agent usage section show?** Local accounting of Claude, Codex, Cursor and Command Code activity by machine, repository and chat. It also shows live rate-limit rings for Claude and Codex windows, with pace-based risk readings. **Can it manage other machines over SSH?** Yes. The Machines view reaches any host you can already reach over SSH. It shows CPU, memory, disks, temperatures, GPUs and busiest processes from one probe, with no agent on the remote side. It can also control Docker or Podman containers and send a Wake-on-LAN packet. **What global shortcuts does it register?** Ctrl+Alt+V opens Veronica, Ctrl+Alt+B opens Clipboard, Ctrl+Alt+M toggles the microphone, Ctrl+Alt+P picks a colour, Ctrl+Alt+E opens the emoji picker, and Ctrl+Alt+K enters keyboard-cleaning mode. --- ## README (checked against GitHub 2026-11-06) Source: https://github.com/namannn04/Veronica/blob/main/README.md # Veronica A native desktop control center for Ubuntu. Veronica replaces a shelf of single-purpose utilities with one application. Free and open source under the [GPL-3.0](LICENSE). Every feature is in the one app. No licence key, no account, no paid tier. Veronica is a port of [Edith](https://github.com/pulkitxm/edith), a macOS control center, to Linux. It keeps Edith's models — the capability map, the extension catalogue, the rate-limit maths, the usage schema — and reimplements the platform layer against Linux services. The usage collector is shared verbatim, so the numbers are identical on both platforms. Requires Ubuntu 24.04 or later on x86_64, with GNOME Shell 46 through 50. See [docs/RUNNING.md](docs/RUNNING.md) for how to run it, use the notch, and troubleshoot. ## Install The Debian package is the recommended route on Ubuntu. This command downloads the latest GitHub release, verifies its published SHA-256 checksum, and installs it through `apt` (which may ask for your sudo password): ```bash curl -fsSL https://namannn04.github.io/Veronica/install | bash ``` It also turns on the GNOME Shell extension and opens Veronica. GNOME only loads new extensions at login, so log out and back in once to see the notch. Running the same command again later updates to the newest release. See screenshots, shortcuts and download choices on the [Veronica website](https://namannn04.github.io/Veronica/). To install a package you downloaded yourself instead: ```bash sudo apt install ./Veronica_0.1.19_amd64.deb ``` That installs the app, the `vr` command line tool, the desktop entry, the AppStream metadata and the tray icon, and pulls in `jq`, which the usage collector needs, plus `curl` for the on-demand update check. An AppImage is also published for other distributions: ``` chmod +x Veronica_0.1.19_amd64.AppImage ./Veronica_0.1.19_amd64.AppImage ``` Ubuntu 24.04 and later no longer ship the FUSE 2 runtime an AppImage needs to mount itself. Either install it once with `sudo apt install libfuse2t64`, or run the image without it: ``` ./Veronica_0.1.19_amd64.AppImage --appimage-extract ./squashfs-root/AppRun ``` The AppImage is the desktop app only. It does not install the `vr` command or the GNOME Shell extension, so the compact top-bar notch, clipboard capture, Focus Dim, keystroke display and paste-in-place are unavailable. It also relies on host tools such as `jq` and Bun or Node for usage collection. Use the Debian package for Veronica's complete Ubuntu integration. ### Flatpak Veronica is also published as a Flatpak from its own signed repository: ```bash flatpak install --user https://namannn04.github.io/Veronica/flatpak/veronica.flatpakref flatpak run io.github.namannn04.Veronica ``` `flatpak update` picks up new releases from then on. Each release also attaches `Veronica__x86_64.flatpak` for offline installs (`flatpak install --user ./Veronica_0.1.19_x86_64.flatpak`). Veronica controls the computer it runs on, so the Flatpak is not a confined app: it has access to your home directory and runs PipeWire, GNOME Shell, apt, ssh and your terminals on the host through `flatpak-spawn --host`. On first launch it copies its GNOME Shell extension into `~/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions`; log out and back in once, then enable it from Veronica. The process list only shows processes inside the sandbox. ## Features **Agent usage** - **Local accounting** — Claude, Codex, Cursor and Command Code activity attributed to the right machine, repository, worktree and chat, without sending history anywhere. - **Rate-limit rings** — Claude's session and weekly windows as live gauges, with second-by-second countdowns, and any model-scoped window the account has. Codex's windows too, read from its own server rather than the network. - **Pace, not just percentage** — a window at 60% with minutes left matters more than one at 80% with a week to go, so each ring reports how far ahead of a linear burn you are and blends that into one risk reading. - **Dashboard** — spend and token KPIs with per-day, model, source and hourly charts, plus a sortable model table. - **Activity calendar** — a daily spend calendar across your whole history, ranked against your own busiest day. - **Share cards** — export the highlights, the calendar, the daily rhythm and your busiest day as branded PNGs. A card never carries a repository name, a folder path, a chat title or a dollar cost: it exists to be posted, and those are the four fields that would leak a client, an employer or an income. - **Project drilldown** — spend by project and repository, expanding into the chats that produced it. **Alerts** - **Every crossing, once** — a window rising past a level, falling back to green, drifting ahead of pace or burning hot each produce one banner when they happen, and silence while nothing changes. Edith's wording, verbatim. - **Time-aware levels** — a session at 60% with minutes left outranks a week at 80% with days to go, so the level follows the blended risk rather than the raw percentage. - **Before a reset** — an optional reminder a chosen time before either window resets, fired by Veronica itself since freedesktop notifications cannot be scheduled. - **One banner, updated** — a rising threshold replaces its own notification rather than stacking five, and the state survives a restart, so relaunching while a window sits at 90% does not re-announce it. - **Nothing until asked** — off by default, and while off no request is made to any provider at all. **Quinjet** - **Your review workspaces** — the projects and worktrees Quinjet knows, on this computer or on any SSH machine, read through Quinjet's own JSON so the answer is the one the tool itself would give. - **Opens where you work** — Quinjet's review TUI in the installed terminal, or `vr quinjet open` prints the exact command for a terminal you already have. Quinjet stays the owner of the review. **Site Audit** - **Edith's rules, exactly** — the same eleven checks and the same thresholds, so a page that passes on macOS passes here. Titles, descriptions, canonicals, headings, language, Open Graph, X cards and HTTPS. - **Sitemap first** — `robots.txt`, then `/sitemap.xml`, then the page you gave it, following a sitemap index into its children. - **A template problem, not a page problem** — the report counts each issue across the site, so one missing `og:image` and forty read differently. - **Every run stays local** — Veronica fetches the pages being audited and nothing else. No result is uploaded and no third-party service is consulted. **Herdr** - **Live agent board** — every running Herdr agent grouped into Edith's Blocked, Working, Unknown, Done and Idle lanes, refreshed from Herdr's public JSON API. - **Session and kind filters** — focus the board by persistent session or agent family, with a compact rail for agents and terminals. - **Attach anywhere** — copy the exact attach command or open a session or agent directly in GNOME Console, while Herdr remains the owner of terminal state. **This computer** - **Live metrics** — CPU, memory, load, disks and thermal sensors from procfs and sysfs, with snap and loop mounts filtered out. - **Microphone** — a system-wide mute switch through PipeWire. **Calendar** - **Your agenda** — every calendar configured on the machine, local or from an online account, with recurrences already expanded. Grouped by day, all-day events first, with what is happening now called out. - **One-tap join** — meeting links recovered from the event's location, description or conference field, for Meet, Zoom, Teams, Jitsi, Webex and more. **Media** - **One place for every player** — anything that speaks MPRIS: Spotify, a browser tab, Rhythmbox, VLC. Now-playing with album art, transport control, and a progress bar that knows the difference between a track and a live stream. - **Local library** — music under `~/Music` is indexed without uploading it, searchable by title, artist or album, and plays directly with queue, seeking, volume and hardware media-key support. **Machines** - **One fleet view** — this computer plus any host you can already reach over SSH, each with live CPU, memory, disks, load, uptime, temperatures, fan speeds, GPUs and its busiest processes, from a single probe. One round trip, no agent on the far end, nothing installed beyond a POSIX shell. - **No new credentials** — remote machines are reached by running `ssh`, so your config aliases, keys, agent and jump hosts apply unchanged, and Veronica never handles a key or a passphrase. - **Discovery** — aliases in `~/.ssh/config` are offered as one-click additions. - **Files and terminals** — browse a local or remote home directory, download a file safely through SFTP, or open the host in the installed terminal. - **Containers** — list Docker or Podman containers on any machine, read the last screenful of one's output, and start, stop or restart them without installing a Veronica agent on that host. - **Power** — restart or shut down a remote machine, or wake one that is off with a Wake-on-LAN packet. Never on the computer Veronica is running on, and never escalated: the account it connects as has to be permitted already. - **Honest failures** — an unreachable host says why, and never delays or hides the machines that answered. **Global shortcuts** - `Ctrl+Alt+V` opens Veronica, `Ctrl+Alt+B` opens Clipboard, `Ctrl+Alt+M` toggles the microphone, `Ctrl+Alt+P` picks a colour, `Ctrl+Alt+E` opens the emoji picker, and `Ctrl+Alt+K` enters keyboard-cleaning mode. GNOME Shell performs compositor-only actions. **Clipboard** - **Searchable history** — everything you copy, deduplicated so re-copying moves an entry up rather than adding a row, with a count of how often you have used it. One click copies it back. - **Captured from the compositor** — on Wayland only the focused window may read the clipboard, so the GNOME Shell extension does the watching and the last few entries are available straight from the top bar dropdown. - **Stays local** — a plain file under your data directory that you can inspect or delete; large copies are skipped rather than stored. **Color Picker** - **Sample any pixel** — the compositor's own eyedropper, through GNOME Shell or the desktop portal. Veronica never reads the screen without a click. - **Every representation** — hex, `rgb()`, `rgba()`, `hsl()` and a `GdkRGBA` literal, from one pick. Choose which one lands on the clipboard. - **Swatch history** — every colour you have sampled, kept locally, with the hex printed on the colour itself in whichever of black or white stays legible. - **sRGB or Display P3** — the compositor reports sRGB; Display P3 converts it properly, for a wide-gamut panel. **Emoji Picker** - **Edith's catalogue, exactly** — the same emojibase release, the same names, the same search terms and the same ranking, so a search for "shrug" returns the same three characters in the same order on both platforms. - **Skin tones and recents** — every tone variant, and a most-used list weighted by a 21-day half-life, so an old habit fades rather than sitting at the top forever. - **Copy, or type it in place** — the clipboard always works; typing the emoji into the app you were in goes through the shell extension, because only the compositor may synthesise input into a window Veronica does not own. **Keystroke Highlight** - **A keycap for every press** — for demos and screen recordings, at the top or bottom of the screen, six at a time, each fading after a configurable 0.5 to 3 seconds. - **Listen-only, inside the compositor** — Wayland hands key presses only to the focused window, so the shell extension reads them and never consumes one: typing is unaffected whether the overlay is running or paused. - **Nothing while a password is being typed** — while the shell holds a modal grab, the lock screen and authentication prompts included, nothing is recorded at all. **Audio** - **Per-application mixer** — every stream PipeWire holds, playing or recording, with its own volume and mute. A browser tab and a notification sound are two streams, and the mixer says so rather than pretending an app has one volume. - **Bluetooth** — the adapters and devices BlueZ knows about, with each device's battery where it reports one. Read-only: Ubuntu's Quick Settings stays the only thing that pairs a device or switches the radio. **Database** - **Six engines** — PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, SQLite, Redis and Valkey. Browse the objects, read a bounded page, run a statement that reads. - **Nothing unbounded** — every page has a hard ceiling and asks for one row more than it shows, so "is there more" is known rather than guessed. `KEYS *` is never sent; Redis is scanned. - **A change is previewed, then confirmed, then applied** — the preview says what it would touch, what it cannot undo, and the exact text to type back. It hands you a token that is signed, expires, works once, and stops matching the moment anything about the plan changes. Edit the statement, a parameter, the table or the connection's policy after previewing and the apply is refused with nothing sent. - **`query` never writes** — the check recognises the verbs that read and refuses everything else, so a statement type nobody thought of fails closed. Comments cannot hide a second statement. - **Credentials in the keyring** — the Secret Service, the same place GNOME keeps everything else. A connection definition holds a reference, never a password, so it can be printed, logged and synced safely. - **Read-only means read-only** — three separate switches refuse a change, and the refusal names which one. On PostgreSQL, MySQL and SQLite the server is told as well, so it is not only Veronica declining to send. - **An MCP server for agents** — `vr database mcp` offers exactly two read-only tools. An agent learns which databases you have and what each can do; it never learns a host, a username or a credential. **App Maintenance** - **One update inventory** — apt, snap and flatpak in one list, with what is installed and what is available side by side. Checking installs nothing. - **What you asked for, not its dependencies** — the apt inventory is the packages you chose, not the three thousand pulled in behind them. - **Review-first removal** — apt's own simulation, so you see everything that would go with a package, and what would be left behind unused, before anything is removed. - **Never escalates** — reads run unprivileged. A change that needs root goes through `pkexec`, so the desktop's own dialog asks you to authenticate; Veronica never wraps anything in `sudo` on your behalf. **Disk cleaner** - **Measures before it touches anything** — the developer caches sitting in your home directory, per category, with what removing each one actually costs you, and a sweep for `node_modules`, `target`, `.venv` and the rest inside any folder you point at. - **Moves to the Trash, never deletes** — through the freedesktop trash spec, so Files can restore it. The Trash keeps occupying the disk until you empty it, which every screen that offers a clean says. - **Your files only** — it walks your home directory with your own permissions, never asks for root, and never touches a system cache such as apt's. **Presenter** - **Blurs what should not be shared** — spend, token counts, rate limits, calendar entries and track names, while navigation and controls stay usable. - **Notices a screen share** — an app capturing the screen or controlling it remotely activates it automatically, detected from the compositor's own screencast sessions. Dismiss one share without switching detection off. - **Category by category** — reveal the calendar for a demo while spend stays hidden. **Focus Dim** - **Darkens everything behind your window** — drawn inside GNOME Shell, so it works on Wayland, where no application could place a dim behind another app's window. - **Per display or focused only** — keep each monitor's front window bright, or dim every monitor but the one you are typing in. **Appearance** - **Thirteen themes, one setting** — System follows Ubuntu's own light/dark choice. Four light: Ivory, Sandstone, Mist and Paper. Eight dark: Graphite, Midnight, Aubergine, Forest, Nord, Ocean, Ember and Carbon. - **The app and the notch together** — one `appearance` setting themes the desktop window and the GNOME shelf, so the two never disagree, and anything Veronica launches with a theme of its own gets the light-or-dark answer rather than the theme's name. - **Charts follow the family** — every theme declares whether it is light or dark, and the categorical and sequential chart ramps are chosen from that, so a chart is readable on Carbon's true black and on Paper's white alike. - **Paper and Carbon are the accessibility pair** — Paper trades the soft hairlines for borders that clear the 3:1 non-text minimum on their own; Carbon paints an unlit `#000` page for OLED panels. **Getting around** - **Ctrl+K** — search every page by name, by what it does, or by a word you would reach for: "ssh" finds Machines, "apt" finds App Maintenance, "theme" finds Settings. - **A grouped rail** — nineteen pages sorted into Agents, This computer, Tools and Veronica, rather than one column to read top to bottom. **Top bar** - **CPU and memory beside the clock** — Edith's menu bar readout, in the position Ubuntu has for it, read straight from procfs rather than by running anything. - **Compact Edith shelf** — while the extension is enabled, Veronica replaces only the center date button with its 580px Home, Notifications, Files, Clipboard and Camera shelf. It does not lengthen GNOME's calendar dropdown. - **Ubuntu controls stay native** — Quick Settings remains the only owner of Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, volume and battery. Veronica adds neither copies of those indicators nor an agent-spend indicator to the right side of the panel. - **No second panel** — the shell keeps owning the top bar; Veronica only adds what the shell has no idea about. **Media** - **One place for every player** — anything that speaks MPRIS: Spotify, a browser tab, Rhythmbox, VLC. Now-playing with album art, transport control, and a progress bar that knows the difference between a track and a live stream. **Notch** - **The clock dropdown, upgraded** — click Ubuntu's center clock as usual. One panel holds now-playing with album art and transport, the notification history, a month grid, the day's events, and the things the shell knows nothing about: agent spend and machine load. - **Edith's structure** — Home, Files, Clipboard, Audio and Camera use the same pill-tab order as Edith. Home has the paired now-playing and limit cards plus real Keep Awake and Lid Awake actions; Clipboard is a scrollable copy/delete history. Tabs whose Linux backend is still being ported identify that state instead of presenting a dead control. ## Command line Installing Veronica installs `vr`, which reaches the same operations as the UI. ``` vr diagnose the resolved session, capabilities and extensions vr usage summary the same totals the dashboard shows vr usage projects --chats spend by project, with its chats vr usage calendar --days 30 the spend calendar in the terminal vr usage refresh --progress run the collector vr usage limits rate-limit gauges, with pace and countdowns vr usage export --card activity branded PNG cards, safe to post vr media status what is playing, on any MPRIS player vr media toggle play or pause; also next, previous, stop vr media players every player registered on the session bus vr calendar list your agenda, grouped by day, with join links vr calendar next the next event and how long until it starts vr machines ls the fleet, with live CPU, memory and disk vr machines stats one machine's vital signs in full vr machines add add a machine; discover finds config aliases vr machines containers Docker or Podman containers; logs tails one vr machines power restart --confirm restart or shut down a machine vr machines wake a Wake-on-LAN packet, for a machine that is off vr clipboard list the clipboard history, searchable vr clipboard get one entry's full text, for piping onward vr usage alerts what the notifier would post right now, as a dry run vr alerts test post one banner, to check notifications arrive vr alerts state what the notifier is comparing against vr color pick sample a pixel; copies and records it vr color list the swatch history vr color show one swatch in every format vr presenter status the blur state, and what detection sees vr presenter start blur now; also stop, enable, disable, dismiss vr focus-dim on dim behind the focused window; also off, intensity vr keystroke-highlight on show key presses on screen; also off, duration vr emoji list shrug search the catalogue; copy puts one on the clipboard vr emoji recents the emoji you reach for most vr system audio list the per-application mixer, with volumes vr system bluetooth adapters and devices, with their batteries vr system ps running processes, by CPU or memory vr power lid-awake on --for 30m keep running with the lid shut for 30 minutes vr herdr board the live agent board, in Edith's lanes vr quinjet projects Quinjet's review workspaces; open prints the command vr audit site example.com crawl a sitemap and check every page's metadata vr companion list your notes and voice memos, searchable vr media library the local music library under ~/Music vr maintenance updates what apt, snap and flatpak could update vr maintenance remove what removing it would take with it vr database connections your saved databases; add takes a password on stdin vr database query "…" run a statement that reads; a write is refused vr database mutations preview what a change would do, and a one-shot token vr database mcp two read-only tools for an agent, over stdio vr cleaner scan what could be reclaimed, per category vr cleaner clean --yes move it to the Trash; --root sweeps a project tree vr backup export back up settings and persistent app data vr backup inspect verify and describe an archive without restoring vr backup import --confirm validate and restore an archive atomically vr extensions what can run on this session, and why not vr tools the command line programs the extensions need vr tools install fetch one, when there is a route Veronica can drive vr config set every setting the UI exposes ``` Every read command takes `--json`, stdout is exactly one document, logs go to stderr, and exit codes are reliable, so an agent can drive Veronica headlessly. ## What works on your session Veronica resolves each of its 31 capabilities against the running session and reports the result, with the service it talks to, on the Diagnostics page and in `vr diagnose`. Nothing is silently disabled. Compositor-owned features ask for permission or the GNOME extension when the session requires it. Local music, keyboard cleaning and Companion all have native Linux implementations and no longer need external integration. A note on the calendar: GNOME's calendar server expands recurring events but does not pass an event's location or description through, so Veronica reads those per event from Evolution Data Server to recover join links. That costs one D-Bus call per event, which is why the notch's agenda skips it and the Calendar page does not. Clipboard history and Focus Dim were restricted until the shell extension existed. Capture and dimming now happen inside the compositor, which is the only thing a Wayland session lets read the selection or place one window behind another. Veronica reports a capability it has not built as needing integration rather than as available, so the Extensions page never shows "Ready" for a switch that would do nothing. **Companion** is local-first: notes and searchable voice-memo metadata are stored under the XDG data directory, recordings use PipeWire, and the complete folder is included in Veronica backup/restore. It needs no Docker service or account. Keystroke Highlight, the emoji picker's insert-in-place and paste-in-place all run through the shell extension for the same reason clipboard capture and dimming do: on Wayland only the compositor may observe or synthesise input for a window it does not own. Each says so on the Diagnostics page rather than appearing to work and doing nothing. Everything else has a working route: PipeWire for audio, the per-application mixer and mic mute, BlueZ for Bluetooth, logind for prevent-sleep and lid-awake, MPRIS for media, Evolution Data Server for calendar, and the desktop portal for colour picking, camera, global shortcuts and screen-share detection. ## Privacy Usage history never leaves this computer. Provider rate-limit checks go straight from this machine to the provider, using the OAuth token your agent CLI already holds, and nothing is proxied through Veronica. There is no Veronica account and no telemetry. Network access otherwise happens only for features that inherently need it or that you explicitly run: checking GitHub for an update, auditing a website, connecting to a remote machine or database, and downloading a tool you asked Veronica to install. Background provider checks run only when their alert switches are enabled. Veronica reads your local agent history from `~/.claude`, `~/.codex`, `~/.cursor` and `~/.commandcode`, and writes its own state under the XDG directories, which `vr diagnose` prints. ## Building from source Needs Rust, Bun and the Tauri system dependencies: ``` sudo apt install libwebkit2gtk-4.1-dev libgtk-3-dev librsvg2-dev \ libayatana-appindicator3-dev libjavascriptcoregtk-4.1-dev \ libsoup-3.0-dev libxdo-dev patchelf cargo test --workspace cd apps/desktop && bun install && bunx tauri build --bundles deb ``` See [docs/ARCHITECTURE.md](docs/ARCHITECTURE.md) for the crate layout, the capability model, and why this is a reimplementation rather than a Swift port. ## Licence Veronica is free software licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0, matching Edith, from which its models are derived.