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url: /glimpse/start.md
---
# What is glimpse

glimpse gives your computer the parts of a desktop you see and use every day: the bar along the top
of the screen, notifications, the wallpaper and the lock screen. It is made for lightweight window
managers, which are good at arranging windows but leave everything else up to you.

## Everything in one bar

The bar shows the time, your workspaces, what is playing, and the state of your Wi-Fi, Bluetooth,
sound and battery. Click any of them and a small popover opens with the controls you need. You can pick
a Wi-Fi network, connect your headphones, turn the volume down, look at the calendar or check the
weather for the week, all without opening a settings app.

## Notifications that wait for you

Messages from your apps appear on screen for a few seconds and then move to a list in the bar, so you
can read them later. When you need to concentrate, turn on Do not disturb and new messages stay out
of your way until you turn it off.

## Looks after your screen

When you step away, glimpse looks after your screen. Plugged in, the screen turns off after 15
minutes, locks after 30 and the laptop goes to sleep after 60. On battery the screen turns off
after 15 minutes and the laptop sleeps after 30; the lock screen comes up just before it sleeps, so
it always wakes up locked. Watching a video keeps all of that from happening. You unlock it with
the same password you log in with.

In the evening, the night light makes the screen colors warmer, which is easier on your eyes, and
changes them back in the morning. Everything also switches to dark mode at sunset and back to light
at sunrise, based on where you live. You can give the wallpaper a different picture for each mode.

## See-through blur

The bar, its popovers and notifications can blur whatever sits behind them, so your wallpaper and
windows show through as soft color instead of a flat background. Turn it on with `blur = true` in
the settings file; it is off by default.

Blur needs a compositor and a GTK version that support it. Where they don't, everything stays
solid and works the same. How strong the blur looks is up to your compositor's own settings.

## Small tools

glimpse comes with a screenshot tool where you can draw on a capture before saving it, a color
picker, an on-screen ruler, and a history of what you have copied.

## Fits in with your apps

glimpse uses the same building blocks as GNOME apps, so the bar and its popovers look like they belong
next to Files, Settings and the rest. It follows your accent color too.

## Make it yours

All your settings live in one text file. Change something, save, and you see the result right away.
You choose what goes in the bar and in what order, and you can add your own buttons, for example one
that takes a screenshot. If you know a little programming, you can build a whole new item for the
bar, with its own panel.

## What you need

glimpse runs on Linux with a Wayland compositor. It has packages for Arch Linux, Debian 14,
Ubuntu 26.04, Fedora 44, openSUSE Tumbleweed and NixOS.

## Next steps

* [Install glimpse](./install)
* [Take a first tour](./first-session)