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z13gui

GTK4 overlay drawer for z13ctl on Wayland — graphical controls for the 2025 ASUS ROG Flow Z13 on Linux.

License

What z13gui does

  • Profile switching — quiet, balanced, performance, and custom TDP profiles
  • Custom TDP control — configurable power limits (PL1/PL2/PL3) in the custom profile view, with basic and advanced modes
  • Fan curve editor — per-profile fan response curve editing (custom profile, advanced mode)
  • Undervolt — CPU Curve Optimizer offset (requires ryzen_smu kernel module; iGPU CO is not supported on Strix Halo)
  • APU telemetry — live temperature and fan RPM readouts in the custom profile view
  • Battery charge limit — set the charge cap (40–100%) from the drawer
  • RGB lighting — mode, color, speed, and brightness for the keyboard backlight and edge lightbar
  • System toggles — panel overdrive and boot sound on/off
  • Theme picker — 15 built-in themes with full custom theme support
  • Gamepad navigation — full D-pad + button control for Steam Gaming Mode

All hardware communication goes through the z13ctl daemon. z13gui never touches HID devices or sysfs directly.

Display backends

Three backends are supported, selected automatically based on the session environment:

  • Layer-shell (KDE Plasma, Hyprland, Sway) — Wayland layer-shell overlay with margin-based slide animation and focus-loss dismiss
  • Overlay (GNOME, and any compositor without layer-shell) — a fullscreen, transparent window with the drawer against the right edge. Everything outside the drawer is click-through, so the rest of the desktop stays usable. See GNOME support
  • Gamescope (Steam Gaming Mode) — X11 overlay via the STEAM_OVERLAY atom with opacity-based visibility and a click-to-dismiss backdrop

GNOME support

z13gui works on GNOME, but with a slightly degraded experience compared with KDE Plasma, Hyprland or Sway. This section covers why, and exactly what differs.

Why a workaround is needed

The drawer is normally anchored to the screen edge using the layer-shell protocol (zwlr_layer_shell_v1). That protocol is a wlroots extension — it is not part of wayland-protocols, and not every Wayland compositor implements it:

Compositor Wayland zwlr_layer_shell_v1
KWin (KDE Plasma) yes yes
Hyprland, Sway (wlroots) yes yes
Mutter (GNOME) yes no

GNOME supports Wayland perfectly well. What Mutter has never implemented is this one extension, on the long-standing position that panels and docks belong in GNOME Shell extensions rather than in a client-side protocol.

Installing gtk4-layer-shell does not help

gtk4-layer-shell is the client side of the protocol — it is what z13gui uses to speak layer-shell, and the packages already depend on it. The protocol itself has to come from the compositor, and Mutter offers no way to add Wayland protocols (GNOME Shell extensions cannot register Wayland globals). No package can add layer-shell to GNOME.

How the workaround works

Core Wayland deliberately gives a client no way to position its own window — the compositor decides placement. So without layer-shell, an ordinary window simply lands wherever Mutter puts it, which is the middle of the screen. That is exactly what used to happen.

Instead, z13gui takes a fullscreen window — a standard request every compositor honours, and one that needs no positioning — makes it fully transparent, and draws the drawer against the right edge inside it. The window's input region is then restricted to the drawer's rectangle, so every pixel outside the drawer is click-through: clicks and scrolls pass straight to the windows underneath, and the rest of the desktop keeps working normally.

The missing protocol is detected at startup and this backend is selected automatically. There is nothing to configure.

What is unchanged

  • The drawer sits against the right edge at full height, less 5% top and bottom
  • The slide-in and slide-out animation
  • Every control, theme and gamepad navigation behaviour
  • Escape dismisses, as does clicking another window

What is degraded

Because the drawer is an ordinary window rather than a compositor-managed overlay layer:

  • It cannot be drawn above a fullscreen application. Under layer-shell the drawer lives on the overlay layer, above everything; here it is a normal window and the compositor decides stacking.
  • It belongs to the current workspace, rather than being present on every workspace the way a layer surface is.
  • It may appear in the window switcher (Alt-Tab) while open. The window is unmapped when the drawer is closed, so it only shows up while on screen.
  • GNOME's top bar may be hidden while the drawer is open, since Mutter hides it for fullscreen windows.
  • There is no dedicated click-outside backdrop. Dismissal is Escape, or clicking another window — which works because that window takes focus.

None of this affects the controls themselves: every hardware feature behaves identically on GNOME.

Prefer the full experience?

Log into a session whose compositor implements layer-shell — KDE Plasma, Hyprland and Sway are all packaged for Fedora and every other major distribution. z13gui switches back to the layer-shell backend automatically.

Requirements

  • A Wayland compositor (layer-shell is used when available; GNOME and others get the overlay backend), or gamescope (Steam Gaming Mode)
  • GTK 4 and gtk4-layer-shell libraries (see Installation for distro package names)
  • z13ctl daemon running

Next steps

  • Installation — download the binary or build from source
  • Quick Start — open the drawer and explore the controls
  • Configuration — config file, environment variables
  • Theming — built-in themes and custom color definitions