Disclaimer: I’m not a professional programmer. Beyond the HTML and Python I’ve learned this term in school, I do not know how to code. These widgets were vibe coded using Google Gemini to fill specific workflow gaps that benefit me personally. I am sharing them because I think some of you might enjoy them, please do not come after me if something is wrong with them.
The project originally started because I wanted a seamless way to send and receive text messages directly from my desktop. If you use an Android phone with Google Messages, you can link it to their web client—so I used QtWebEngine to integrate that directly into the system tray.
From there, it grew into a full suite. The collection currently includes:
Google Messages: Acts like a background application that minimizes to the task manager, closes to the tray, and pushes notifications that will open the exact chat responsible when clicked.
Gmail: Does everything Google Messages does, but for Gmail.
Google Calendar Clock: A customizable digital clock that opens Calendar when clicked. It features a tooltip with progress bars for the current year, month, week, day, hour, and minute. It also has full notification support (events/reminders) just like the first two.
YouTube Music: Also acts like a background application, minimizing to your task manager and closing to your tray, but does not have any permissions enabled what-so-ever.
To make everything cohesive, I created a Google Account Singleton dependency. Instead of logging into each widget individually, you just add one and sign in, after which you will automatically be signed into the others before you even add them.
All of this was made and tested on Arch Linux for Plasma 6.
It’d be great if you could update the readme.md to perhaps show a screenshot or two for each widget so people know what to expect. Also perhaps an install guide.
Each widget is effectively a stripped down browser that just loads the respective web application, so the interface is the exact same one you should already be familiar with. I could definitely make sure to clarify that though.
I won’t use it myself, I just didn’t find the github page very inviting for someone that may use it. If it were me I’d include a bit about how it works, what platform and version it relies on, a screenshot of each widget in action so people can decide if that’s what they want without installing it.
you can label it as a “web wrapper plasmoid for google services. supporting Gmail, Gcal, yt music and Gmessages”. everything explained in just 2 sentences!
Well, for one thing, the platform and version are in the very first page of the repo. It’s my “Plasma” repo, and the very first page says it is specifically for Plasma6. It is also clearly stated that everything was made and tested on Arch, so I genuinely don’t understand your confusion in that regard, or what I could do to improve the clarity.
As for the screenshots, I will reiterate, all it is doing is loading a website in a Qt window. It’s going to look like whatever that website looks like, decorated with your Aurorae theme.
You need to figure out how to present your wares. You generated it with AI and you can’t even provide a welcoming and descriptive introduction. This will turn many people off.
You want the page to look more legit and to be more welcoming. Even if you just put what you wrote in your OP here onto that page it would make a big difference.
Though yeah, the fact that it was AI-generated gives me a long pause. Do you understand what the code does? Were you at least able to verify the integrity and quality (is it properly optimized?) of the code? Also, if each widget is a standalone web browser, how would this be different from, or beneficial to, using WebApps or Chrome Apps?
Regarding the presentation, I literally just agreed with the previous commenter to update the README to be more welcoming and descriptive, so I’m not sure what you’re hoping to accomplish with that line of questioning.
As for the code, it’s an open-source hobby project. If you have genuine concerns about the integrity or optimization of the code, you are more than welcome to audit the repository yourself rather than questioning my competence—something I openly acknowledged from the very beginning.
Finally, to answer your question about why this is beneficial compared to WebApps or Chrome Apps: web browsers are notoriously garbage at handling competent background notification pushing. You’re not going to receive notifications if a specific tab is paused to save on memory, closed, or if the browser itself isn’t running. A native Plasma widget solves this by providing actual native desktop integration without needing a full browser instance constantly open and active just to get your messages or calendar alerts.
I tried to give you some advice and asked questions out of genuine curiosity. There is no need to get so worked up. If you can’t handle criticism and questions from users then maybe releasing software out into the wild is not something you should be getting into.
And please do not give me the “look at the code yourself” – these aren’t the 90s any more. people expect support and answers from developers nowadays, even if it’s FOSS.
