ShellNewHandler VS Noctalia.app

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• Polished minimal design
  Noctalia (as I know it, the Noctalia Shell for Wayland) has a clean, modern look with consistent styling. It suits users who want a good-looking desktop without designing each component themselves. I could not browse the site, so this is based on general knowledge of the project.
• All-in-one shell components
  It bundles a bar, app launcher, notifications, control center, lock screen, wallpaper management, and similar pieces in one package. This avoids stitching together separate tools such as Waybar, Rofi, and Dunst.
• Dynamic theming
  It supports wallpaper-based color generation and theming, so the interface can match your wallpaper or chosen palette with little manual work.
• Lightweight and built on Quickshell
  It is built on Quickshell (QML), which is more resource-efficient than many full desktop environments. The QML base also makes it easy for users to tweak or extend.
• Open source and community-driven
  The project is open source and actively developed, with community contributions, plugins and settings. Users can inspect, modify and contribute to the code.

Possible disadvantages

• Linux and Wayland only
  It targets Linux Wayland compositors such as Niri, Hyprland and Sway. It is of no use to Windows or macOS users, or to people who need X11.
• Setup and dependency overhead
  Installation needs Quickshell and several supporting packages and configuration steps. Users on stable or less common distributions may find this harder than installing a standard desktop environment.
• Young ecosystem
  Both Noctalia and Quickshell are relatively new and evolving quickly. Breaking changes, bugs, or missing features may appear between releases.
• Opinionated design with limited deep customization
  The default look and behavior are polished but opinionated. Users who want radically different layouts may need to edit QML or move to a more modular setup.
• Smaller community and documentation
  Compared with mature projects such as GNOME, KDE, or the Waybar ecosystem, there are fewer tutorials, third-party resources, and support channels. Troubleshooting can depend heavily on Discord or GitHub discussions.

• I recently got libreoffice, but now the new option in right click looks like a mess. Can someone help me get rid of them please?

  Use Shell New Handler. Run the portable app and simply untick the items you don't want to appear in your new context menu. Source: about 4 years ago

• This menu should be easy to add/remove programs to... Who is really creating Access Databases from this menu often enough to keep it here? (Not me!) Is there an easy way to edit this?

  I've always used ShellNewHandler for this. It's a really simple portable utility that allows you to remove most of the items from that menu. Tested it out on Windows 11 and it's still compatible. Source: over 5 years ago

Tracking Noctalia.app since May 2026.