Small, focused desktop apps for Linux, installed and kept up to date by one launcher.
Apps · Philosophy · Tech Stack · Theming · Contributing
Colony is an ecosystem of small, focused desktop utilities, nearly all of them built with Rust.
Instead of one monolithic tool that does everything poorly, Colony offers a curated set of apps,
each designed to do one thing well, with native performance and themeable interfaces.
The Colony launcher ties them together: it installs, updates and launches
every app that publishes a colony.json manifest and a release build it can match to your platform,
and lists the apps already on your system alongside them.
| App | What it does | Builds | In Colony |
|---|---|---|---|
| Colony | Launcher and app store for the whole ecosystem | Linux · Windows · macOS | it is the store |
| Eidos | Native Linux mod manager for Bethesda games: mods are merged into a private, per-launch FUSE view, so the game directory is never touched. Listed in Colony, but installed from its release tarball with the bundled install.sh (or makepkg on Arch) |
Linux | listed only |
| Colony Firewall Control | Application-aware outbound firewall, a Rust port of opensnitch with per-app prompts, a CLI and a tray companion | Linux | not yet |
| Raven | Experimental: runs Windows programs from Linux against a real Windows installation mounted as C:, with Wine kept only at the syscall boundary | Linux | ✅ |
| Grape | Music player for the music you already own: your folder is the library, with tag and cover art reading | Linux · Windows · macOS | ✅ |
| SphereCord | Discord client (a fork of Equibop) with Equicord preinstalled and the Colony palettes bundled in | Linux · Windows | ✅ Linux |
| Spotter | Game library tracker: imports Steam, GOG, Epic, Xbox and PlayStation, follows playtime and achievements | Linux · Windows · macOS | ✅ |
| D1Gg2r | System monitor: live CPU, memory, disk, network, temperature, GPU and processes, with persistent history | Linux · Windows · macOS | ✅ |
| orCAL | Desktop calculator, in a phone-shaped window or a tablet one with a scientific keypad | Linux · Windows · macOS | ✅ |
| SAM · Colony Edition | Steam achievement manager: browse, unlock and edit the stats of games you own | Linux · Windows · macOS | ✅ |
| Lilypad | Local-first password manager: several encrypted vaults, with a desktop app, a terminal interface and a command-line client sharing one core | Linux · Windows · macOS | ✅ |
| Collector | Terminal system monitor: CPU, memory, disks, network and processes, live in any terminal, locally or over SSH | Linux · Windows · macOS | ✅ |
| MemoryStick | Markdown viewer that renders a file the way GitHub does, with highlighted code, math, Mermaid diagrams and a table of contents | Linux · Windows · macOS | ✅ |
| Xion | File explorer with tabs, a sidebar of drives and favourites, and list and grid views. Its interface is in French only for now | Linux · Windows | ✅ |
| Exospine | Portable desktop email client (IMAP, SMTP, OAuth2). No release yet, so Colony lists it without a download | none yet | listed only |
Also in development, with no release yet: Artemis (chat client and relay server),
Avalon (writing studio), GitSpace (Git client),
KayaBot (media renamer), Oasis (weather notifications),
Roxanne (code editor) and Shift (image viewer).
Status: Colony installs and updates Collector, D1Gg2r, Grape, Lilypad, MemoryStick, orCAL, Raven, SAM · Colony Edition, Spotter and Xion, and SphereCord on Linux. Eidos and Exospine are listed only, and Colony Firewall Control is not in the store yet. Every app Colony installs, and Colony itself, ships release builds signed with the organization's ed25519 key. Linux is the supported platform, where the released apps are developed and tested. Windows and macOS builds are best-effort and are not code-signed: the shared release workflow can add Authenticode through SignPath, but no app has turned it on yet, and macOS builds are not notarized, so expect SmartScreen and Gatekeeper warnings.
| Repository | What it is |
|---|---|
| Project-Colony-Resources | Shared design tokens and UI conventions, the colony-ui crate, the colony.json schema, the shared release signing workflow and the repository templates |
| nix | Nix flake that packages Colony apps and tracks their releases automatically (SphereCord today) |
| Arch-Colony | Arch-derived Linux distribution (not a fork) with a signed [colony] repository and a hardened base; early, with an installable ISO. Of the Colony apps, [colony] ships only Colony Firewall Control so far; the rest is the distribution's own tooling (installer, colonyctl, keyring, mirrorlist) and paru |
One app, one purpose: each Colony tool solves a single problem with clarity and precision.
No feature bloat, no hidden complexity.
Native performance matters: nearly everything is built in Rust.
Startup is instant, memory usage is minimal, and your CPU stays cool.
Beauty is not optional: Colony, Eidos, Raven, Grape, D1Gg2r, Xion and Colony Firewall Control
share one theme library, colony-ui, so a palette looks the same wherever you meet it.
Tools should look as good as they work.
Linux first, honestly: Linux is where the apps are built, used daily and tested.
Several apps also ship Windows and macOS builds from the same source, on Apple Silicon and Intel alike;
those are best-effort, and bug reports from them are welcome.
| Layer | Technology |
|---|---|
| Language | Rust · TypeScript · JavaScript |
| UI frameworks | Iced, egui, Ratatui, Tauri, Electron |
| Data | SQLite (via rusqlite), TOML and JSON on disk |
| Secrets | OS keyring (Secret Service, Credential Manager, Keychain) |
| System access | FUSE and mount namespaces, NFQUEUE and eBPF, NVML (NVIDIA), sysfs (AMD/Intel) |
| Platforms | Linux (supported), Windows and macOS (best-effort) |
| Release | GitHub Actions, release-please, AUR, Nix |
The launcher ships 59 palettes across 26 families from colony-ui, compiled into the binary:
no theme files to download, no runtime parsing.
| 🐱 Catppuccin Latte · Frappé · Macchiato · Mocha |
🪵 Gruvbox Light · Dark |
❄️ Nord Dark · Light |
🌊 Kanagawa Light · Dark · Journal · Dragon |
| 🌃 Tokyo Night Night · Day |
🌹 Rosé Pine Main · Moon · Dawn |
🌲 Everforest Dark · Light |
🧛 Dracula Dark · Light |
...and Everblush, Solarized, One Dark, Monokai, Ayu, Material, Flexoki, Nightfox, Sonokai,
Oxocarbon, Night Owl, Iceberg, Horizon, Melange, Synthwave '84, Modus, Parchment, and a fan-made Stellar Blade set.
Each theme combines with 8 accent colors. SphereCord bundles 57 of the 59 palettes as Discord themes
(all but Kanagawa Dragon and Parchment), so your Discord client matches the rest of the desktop.
Colony, D1Gg2r, Eidos, Grape, MemoryStick, Spotter and Xion offer a high-contrast mode,
and Colony, Grape and MemoryStick can also switch the interface to the OpenDyslexic font.
Colony verifies its own updates against an ed25519 public key compiled into the binary,
together with a signed .meta file that names the version, the file and its SHA-256.
It refuses to install anything that fails: a missing, malformed or invalid signature
aborts the update instead of trusting it.
Every app Colony installs declares "signed": true in its manifest and publishes detached signatures
against that same key, so a missing signature aborts the install. Most releases also carry the signed .meta file.
Once an app has been installed with a verified signature or .meta file, the launcher
refuses a later build without it: a repository cannot quietly stop signing.
Interface translations are compiled into each binary:
no language packs to download and no external files.
D1Gg2r offers 50 selectable languages (falling back to English where a translation is incomplete),
while Colony, Grape and MemoryStick are bilingual in English and French.
Xion's interface is in French only for now, and the other released apps are in English,
except SphereCord, which shows Discord's own interface in the language set in Discord.
Here's what's ahead:
◇ Colony Firewall Control in the Colony store
◇ First releases for the apps still in development
◇ Code-signed Windows builds
◇ Wider translation coverage across the ecosystem
◇ More packages in the Nix flake and the Arch Colony repository
◇ Community-contributed apps and themes
Colony is open to contributions!
Whether it's bug fixes, new utilities, theme additions, or translations, all help is welcome.
Each app lives in its own repository under the Project-Colony organization.
Pick one, open an issue or submit a PR. Themes live in Project-Colony-Resources.
Found a security problem? Please report it privately, as described in our security policy.
All Project Colony apps are licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0 or later (GPL-3.0-or-later),
except SAM · Colony Edition, which is GPL-3.0, inherited from upstream Samira.
Third-party files bundled with an app keep their own licenses: Eidos, for instance, ships OMOD translations under GPL-3.0-only.
Built with 🦀 and ❤️