Syd sits in the background, watches your system (Volume, Battery, Wifi, etc.), and sends a clean stream of events to your app (frontend shell)

If you're building a custom desktop environment, this handles the backend plumbing so you can just focus on the UI

• syd-daemon: Run this in the background. It wraps standard Linux CLI tools and DBus services into one event loop
• syd-client: Exposes Syd::events() stream

• pactl (Audio)
• playerctl (Media)
• brightnessctl (Screen)
• nmcli (Network)
• bluetoothctl (Bluetooth)
• upower (Battery)

Build-time dependencies: You'll need libgtk-4-dev and libdbus-1-dev (or your distros equivalent) to compile the examples

1. Get the daemon running:

git clone https://github.com/kyleconciso/syd
cd syd
cargo install --path crates/syd-daemon
# Start it up (put this in your sway/hyprland config)
syd-daemon &

2. Use it in your Rust app:

Add to Cargo.toml:

[dependencies]
syd-client = { path = "/path/to/syd/crates/syd-client" }
tokio = { version = "1", features = ["full"] }

3. Listen for events:

use syd_client::{Syd, SydEvent};
#[tokio::main]
async fn main() {
 let syd = Syd::connect().await.unwrap();
 let mut stream = syd.events().await;
 while let Some(event) = stream.next().await {
 match event {
 SydEvent::Volume(v) => println!("Vol: {}%", v),
 SydEvent::NetworkState(s) => println!("Wifi: {}", s),
 SydEvent::Battery(pct, state) => println!("Bat: {}% ({})", pct, state),
 // ... handle media, brightness, bluetooth, notifications, tray, etc
 _ => {}
 }
 }
}

It works on my machine (Arch/Hyprland)

• Audio: Pulse/Pipewire supported.
• Network: Only NetworkManager for now.
• System: Uses UPower for battery, systemd for reboot/shutdown.
• Tray: Implements the StatusNotifierItem watcher so tray icons show up

License: MIT