A native GNOME app (Rust + GTK4 + libadwaita) for controlling LIFX smart bulbs from the Linux desktop — no phone required.
- Local control, no cloud needed — bulbs are discovered directly on your Wi-Fi/LAN using the LIFX UDP protocol (port 56700) and controlled with millisecond latency.
- Isolated IoT networks supported — if your bulbs live on a separate
subnet/VLAN where broadcast discovery can't reach them, list their subnets
in Preferences (e.g.
192.168.20.0/24). Each configured subnet gets a directed-broadcast probe plus a unicast sweep of every host address (up to a /22), which routes across VLANs. Your router's firewall must allow traffic from this machine to the IoT network on UDP port 56700. - Optional LIFX Cloud support — add a personal access token (from https://cloud.lifx.com/settings) in Preferences to list and control lights through the cloud, e.g. when you're on a different network. When a bulb is reachable both ways, local control is always preferred.
- Rooms — bulbs are grouped into room sections (from their LIFX group by default; assign any bulb to a different or new room from its Room field). Every room header has a color button (wheel + warmth popover), power switch, and brightness slider, and an "All Lights" row applies the same controls to the whole house at once.
- Scenes — save the current state of your lights under a name and restore it with one click, choosing exactly which lights each scene includes. Scenes are stored locally, so they work without any cloud account.
- Per-bulb power switch, brightness slider, and a Colors/Whites mode toggle:
Colors shows a LIFX-style hue/saturation wheel (white center, colors toward
the rim) plus an RGB hex entry (
#RRGGBB); Whites shows a color-temperature (warmth) slider with a typed kelvin entry (1500–9000 K) and the live LIFX shade name (Incandescent, Daylight, …). Live state polling means external changes (app, physical switch) show up automatically. - Bulbs go insensitive when unreachable.
| Action | Shortcut |
|---|---|
| Rescan for lights | Ctrl+R |
| Preferences | Ctrl+, |
| Quit | Ctrl+Q |
Requires gtk4-devel and libadwaita-devel (Fedora) or equivalent.
cargo runRequires the GNOME 50 SDK and the Rust extension:
flatpak install flathub org.gnome.Platform//50 org.gnome.Sdk//50 \
org.freedesktop.Sdk.Extension.rust-stable//25.08Then build and install:
flatpak-builder --user --install --force-clean build \
build-aux/io.github.hyprlab.Luxel.json
flatpak run io.github.hyprlab.LuxelThe flatpak builds offline from vendored crate sources. After changing
dependencies in Cargo.toml, regenerate the list with:
./build-aux/regenerate-cargo-sources.sh--share=network— required both for LAN UDP discovery/control and for the optional cloud API.- Wayland (with X11 fallback) and DRI for rendering.
Nothing else: no host filesystem access. The cloud token is stored in the
app's sandboxed config directory
(~/.var/app/io.github.hyprlab.Luxel/config/luxel/config.json).
src/lan.rs— background thread speaking the LIFX LAN protocol over UDP (lifx-core): broadcast discovery every 10 s, state polling every 3 s, set-power/set-color commands.src/cloud.rs— background thread for the LIFX HTTP API (api.lifx.com/v1).src/ui/— libadwaita UI. Both backends report bulbs keyed by serial number, so a bulb seen by both is merged into a single row; commands route to the LAN when the bulb is locally reachable, falling back to the cloud.
Luxel is built by a human maintainer working with generative AI as a development tool:
- Code — the large majority of the Rust code in this repository was written with Anthropic's Claude (via Claude Code), working from the maintainer's direction. The maintainer decides what gets built, reviews the results, tests every release, and signs off on everything that ships.
- Text — documentation, release notes, and in-app copy are largely AI-drafted and human-edited.
- The app itself contains no AI. Luxel has no AI features and makes no requests to AI services — it talks only to your LIFX bulbs on your local network. AI was used to build the app, not to run it.
Bug reports and pull requests are welcome from humans and their AI tools alike; everything merged gets the same human review.
AGPL-3.0-or-later