README.md

Windows Work Mode

Windows Work Mode is an elementary OS System Settings panel for a Windows-inspired work setup. Open System Settings → Personal → Windows Work Mode to turn it on, choose one of five supplied wallpapers or another image, enable a weekday schedule with local start and end times, or limit it to work networks identified by public IP. While active, it also shows the existing elementary bottom dock without auto-hide. The patched dock uses a full-width taskbar with Start, Search, weather and status controls; stock dock builds retain their floating layout. Icon sizes follow the adopted size system's work-taskbar or work token, with 48/40-pixel defaults when it is unavailable. Pinned apps and native running-window behavior stay in the dock. See the taskbar section below for its controls. The usual wallpaper and dock preferences are snapshotted and restored when Windows Work Mode turns off or the work window ends.

The included choices are Azure Bloom (the default), Blue Flow, Blue Ribbons, Violet Arc, and Forest Flow. Azure Bloom is rendered from work-mode-azure-bloom.svg in this directory (rsvg-convert -w 3840 -h 2160), original CC0 artwork for this project. The other newer choices are original artwork generated for this project; none of the bundled files are copied from Windows Spotlight or Microsoft themes. A custom image can be selected through the file chooser.

Rules

Work Mode never looks at attached displays, the Thunderbolt dock or any other hardware to decide whether you are at work. The only inputs are the main switch, the schedule and the public IP rule below. A work desktop that appears at home means the main switch is on with no schedule or network rule limiting it.

Windows Work Mode applies only while every rule you turned on is satisfied: the main switch, the schedule (if on), and the work-network rule (if on). With both schedule and network on, it means "during work hours, at work".

Work network. Turn on Only on work networks and list your workplace's public addresses, comma-separated: single IPv4/IPv6 addresses or CIDR ranges such as 203.0.113.0/28. Check shows this computer's current public address and Add lists it. The address comes from https://api.ipify.org (the public-ip-service key), which is contacted only while this rule is on and the other rules already pass. The answer is cached in ~/.local/state/mseries/work-mode-public-ip.json for 15 minutes per uplink; a change of default route (Wi-Fi, Ethernet, dock, VPN) triggers a fresh check. If a check fails, the last answer for the same uplink is reused for up to 30 minutes; otherwise the normal desktop stays.

~/.local/bin/mseries-work-mode --status      # current state, never contacts the service
~/.local/bin/mseries-work-mode --public-ip   # fresh lookup

The user systemd timer checks once per minute. It stores the current wallpaper and dock preferences before the mode first applies them. If the elementary dock was not already running, a dedicated user service starts it and stops it again when the mode ends. GSettings stores the controls; original desktop state is stored under ~/.local/state/mseries/.

Install from this checkout with:

bash mseries/install-work-mode.sh

Remove the panel and timer with:

bash mseries/install-work-mode.sh --uninstall

The GSettings values and original state snapshot are retained on uninstall. The bottom dock uses elementary's existing dock package and pinned launchers.

Window buttons

Window buttons in the panel (window-buttons key) sets GTK title-bar buttons while the Work Mode settings page is open. Keep my layout is the default, so the Mac-style buttons stay on the left (close,minimize,maximize:) in every mode. Windows (right side) is an explicit opt-in that puts minimize, maximize and close on the right (:minimize,maximize,close) while Work Mode is active. System Settings hides its own titlebar, so the panel supplies a header bar (drag area, back button and these window buttons), like the stock panels. Keeping the layout restores the GTK layout captured when the page was opened. The work-mode helper separately applies and restores the org.gnome.desktop.wm.preferences button-layout for other windows.

Taskbar

With the M-Series dock build (mseries/patches/dock-taskbar.patch), Windows Work Mode turns the dock into a full-width taskbar: weather at the left, a Start button and Search box beside the centred apps, and status icons plus the clock at the right. Start opens a Windows 11-style Start menu. Right-click Start for Lock, Log Out, Restart, Shut Down and System Settings. The top bar is hidden while the mode is active, and windows cannot be placed behind the taskbar.

icons/windows-work-mode-folder.svg is an original Windows 11-style folder icon (CC0).

Windows 11-style app icons

While active, Windows Work Mode can also switch the icon theme. Microsoft's own app icons are not bundled. Instead, mseries/install-work-mode-icons.sh fetches the community Win11 icon theme by yeyushengfan258 (GPL-3.0, credits Ubuntu's Yaru) at pinned commit a5b460a407da143b32f19a503d7fcebb3edf2371. Its app icons imitate Microsoft's Windows 11 designs; this repository redistributes none of them. The script copies only the icon folders (it never runs upstream's scripts) into ~/.local/share/icons/Win11 and Win11-dark, which inherit elementary and then hicolor, so apps the theme does not draw keep their usual icons. Each theme keeps upstream's COPYING and AUTHORS, plus MSERIES-SOURCE with the source URL, commit and license. It also links io.elementary.settings and io.elementary.photos to the theme's Settings and Photos icons.

bash mseries/install-work-mode-icons.sh                                # per user, no sudo
gsettings set io.elementary.mseries.work-mode icon-theme Win11-dark    # or Win11; '' = unchanged
bash mseries/install-work-mode-icons.sh --uninstall

The current org.gnome.desktop.interface icon-theme is snapshotted when the mode applies the theme and restored when the mode ends or on --restore. If the named theme is not installed, the icon theme is left alone.

Desktop mode switch

mseries-desktop-mode windows|elementary|toggle|status (also the "Desktop Mode" launcher and its right-click actions) flips Windows Work Mode on or off immediately, with no logout. The taskbar Start menu's Power menu also has Exit Windows Work Mode, which calls the same desktop-mode helper to turn off the persistent mode switch and restore wallpaper and dock preferences immediately.