Settings, themes and plugins
The settings have been completely reorganized and made more user-friendly. The Theme Store and themes themselves now display a clear preview, and several minor bug fixes have been implemented.
- Reorganized settings into a combined Bar & Design section, with plugin appearance controls alongside the rest of the bar design.
- Added a clearer plugin sidebar: installed plugins are grouped, and disabled plugins remain accessible with a muted appearance.
- Simplified saving and exporting the current look, with native file dialogs for theme import and export.
- Added local plugin installation from ZIP files. Both flat archives and archives containing a plugin folder are supported. Importing the same plugin ID updates its code while preserving its data and disabled state.
- Added desktop-style theme previews showing bar position, layout and behavior, with compact previews and color swatches in the Theme Store.
- Improved the settings footer, language selection and version/update shortcut.
Fixes
- Covered bars no longer trigger hover flyouts through other application windows when Behind windows is selected. Visible parts of the bar remain interactive.
- Clicking Plugin Store in the navigation returns from plugin details to the overview.
- Fixed cramped README tables in plugin details and long descriptions overflowing Theme Store cards.
- Prevented late events from a stopped plugin process from overriding its disabled state.
Plugin development
- Expanded the downloadable plugin authoring references, UI/theme contracts and example plugins for use with web-based AI tools.
macOS remains in beta.
smabar 1.4.0 lets plugin flyouts ask for more room and keeps every plugin header on your theme’s accent.
Highlights
- Flyout widths: a plugin can mark its flyout or hover content as wide (twice the default width) or request a pixel count. The bar caps the width to the monitor’s work area and keeps the side margins.
- Split panes: a flyout can show two columns that stack on narrow screens. Either column can scroll on its own for long tables; on narrow screens the whole flyout scrolls as before.
- Plugin headers look alike: the icon badge has one fixed size whatever SVG a plugin ships, and every plugin uses the theme’s accent color by default. The new switch “Plugin accent colors” in Settings > Plugins lets plugins show their own brand color again; themes can set it too.
Plugin authoring
- The plugin guide, kit index and contract document the width request and the split layout with three copyable examples, and the new appearance.pluginAccent setting with what it changes.
- The kit tells plugin authors that re-coloring through –sb-accent is possible but not preferred: the user’s theme owns the accent.
Fixes
- A re-render with unchanged flyout geometry no longer restarts the native placement.
- Header badges of plugins that ship their own inline SVG no longer render larger than badges built from the kit’s icons.
Updates
Installed copies can find 1.4.0 in System > Updates, after the startup check or at the next scheduled check. Installation starts only when you choose to update. Microsoft Store installations receive updates separately through Microsoft.
smabar 1.3.0 keeps Python plugins waiting for their runtime instead of failing them, and lets the content-sized bar grow with its content.
Highlights
- First start: while smabar downloads the Python runtime, plugins show Starting with the reason instead of Failed. A failed download (offline, GitHub blocked) is retried on its own, every 15 seconds at first and every 5 minutes at most, and the Plugins tab shows the download or the cause with a full-width Try again. No plugin is parked as failed because of the runtime any more. This is the picture the Microsoft Store certification saw in 1.0.0.
- Auto width: the bar grows with its content. Tiles that appear after the start no longer leave the last plugin cut off at the right edge until the width mode was toggled, and showing a hidden tile again restores the full width.
- The divider between shortcuts and plugins can be dragged at full width only. At auto width both zones size to their content and the grip is a plain separator.
- Windows: the first start no longer restarts all plugins once the first pycache folder appears.
- The “No shortcuts pinned yet” and “All plugins hidden” hints sit vertically centered in the bar.
Fixes
- Plugins whose uv keeps no persistent script environment (uv configured without a cache) start through uv run –script with a warning instead of failing.
- A plugin that fails to start says when the next restart happens (for example “restarting in 15s (2 of 5 consecutive failures)”), and the card explains that smabar retries up to five times on its own before you need to intervene.
- The “Python installation failed” notice appears once per failure episode instead of on every automatic retry.
Updates
Installed copies can find 1.3.0 in System > Updates, after the startup check or at the next scheduled check. Installation starts only when you choose to update. Microsoft Store installations receive updates separately through Microsoft.
smabar 1.2.0 adds images to the Community Store and improves the MCP tools for working with plugins and themes.
Highlights
- Store listings now show plugin icons and GitHub author avatars. Detail pages include screenshot galleries and keyword tags, with lazy image loading and browser caching.
- Themes have a compact details overview beneath their screenshots. Plugin details remain beside the README, with aligned headings. Theme README and release sections appear only when content is available.
- Agents can read one publishing guide for plugins and themes. New creations point to an optional sharing offer after final checks; ordinary edits and reloads do not add the reminder. Publishing still requires your permission.
MCP fixes
- plugin_list and bar_get_state return complete plugin objects, including hiddenTiles, so clients accept their responses.
- theme_get returns a compact overview. Larger theme contracts can be requested by path and paged instead of arriving in every response.
- theme_remove removes user-created themes, with checks for bundled and active themes.
- Settings screenshots include the full scrollable content, and available screenshot targets correctly include open flyouts.
- Clearer overlay, plugin reload and settings errors; installing an already current Store theme now matches the availability shown in the catalog.
Memory first: the Linux leaks are gone, every platform runs leaner, and smabar now tells you about new releases itself.
- Linux memory no longer grows. Three leaks in the web view are closed: removed plugin forms, flyout styles and the crypto ticker stop piling up. Twelve hundred flyout openings in a row leave memory where it was, and the JavaScript engine now runs without its JIT, which trims the baseline further.
- Less RAM on every platform: Python plugins run without a spare helper process each, the Settings window is only created when you open it, and plugin HTML reaches the bar only when it changed, bundled per tick, so the bar holds and does less.
- Stability: quitting from the tray ends cleanly instead of hanging, and a click-through area that could not be updated is retried instead of staying stale.
- Windows: dragging the size slider no longer makes the bar wobble or claim its screen space on every step, and a hidden bar now hides its web view with it.
- Update notifications: smabar tells you when a new release is out, with Update now and a close button, plus a dot in Settings for app, plugin and theme updates that takes you straight to the entry.
- For agents:
open_settings accepts system/updates.