Apps · Philosophy · Tech Stack · Theming · Contributing
Colony is an ecosystem of small, focused desktop utilities built with Rust.
Instead of one monolithic tool that does everything poorly, Colony offers a curated set of apps —
each designed to do one thing exceptionally well, with native performance and beautiful, themeable interfaces.
The Colony launcher ties them together: it installs, updates and launches
every app in this organization, and lists the apps already on your system alongside them.
| App | What it does | Platforms |
|---|---|---|
| Colony | Launcher and app store for the whole ecosystem | Linux · Windows · macOS |
| Eidos | Mod manager for Bethesda games — merges mods into a FUSE union at launch, so the game directory is never touched | Linux |
| SphereCord | Discord client with Equicord preinstalled and the Colony palettes bundled in | Linux · Windows |
| Spotter | Game library tracker — imports Steam, GOG, Epic, Xbox and PlayStation, follows playtime and achievements | Linux · Windows · macOS |
| Grape | Music player for a local library, with tag and cover reading and a built-in equalizer | Linux · Windows · macOS |
| D1Gg2r | System monitor — live CPU, memory, disk, network, temperature and GPU, with persistent history | Linux · Windows · macOS |
| orCAL | Desktop calculator, in a phone-shaped window or a tablet one with a scientific keypad | Linux · Windows · macOS |
| SAM · Colony Edition | Steam achievement manager — browse, unlock and edit the stats of games you own | Linux · Windows · macOS |
One app, one purpose — each Colony tool solves a single problem with clarity and precision.
No feature bloat, no hidden complexity.
Native performance matters — nearly everything is built in Rust.
Startup is instant, memory usage is minimal, and your CPU stays cool.
Beauty is not optional — the apps share one theming system
and adapt to your system's dark mode.
Tools should look as good as they work.
Cross-platform by default — most apps target Linux, Windows and macOS
from the same source, on Apple Silicon and Intel alike.
Only Eidos is Linux-only, because it is built on Linux mount namespaces.
| Layer | Technology |
|---|---|
| Language | Rust · TypeScript |
| GUI frameworks | Iced, Tauri, Electron |
| Data | SQLite (via rusqlite), TOML and JSON on disk |
| Secrets | OS keyring (Secret Service, Credential Manager, Keychain) |
| System access | FUSE and mount namespaces, NVML (NVIDIA), sysfs (AMD/Intel) |
| Platforms | Linux, Windows, macOS |
| Release | GitHub Actions, release-please, AUR |
The launcher ships 57 palettes across 25 families, compiled into the binary —
no theme files to download, no runtime parsing.
| 🐱 Catppuccin Latte · Frappé · Macchiato · Mocha |
🪵 Gruvbox Light · Dark |
❄️ Nord Dark · Light |
🌊 Kanagawa Wave · Dragon · Lotus |
| 🌃 Tokyo Night Night · Day |
🌹 Rosé Pine Main · Moon · Dawn |
🌲 Everforest Dark · Light |
🧛 Dracula Dark · Light |
…and Everblush, Solarized, One Dark, Monokai, Ayu, Material, Flexoki, Nightfox, Sonokai,
Oxocarbon, Night Owl, Iceberg, Horizon, Melange, Synthwave '84, Modus, and a fan-made Stellar Blade set.
Each theme combines with 8 accent colors, and the same palettes are bundled into SphereCord,
so your Discord client matches the rest of the desktop. A high-contrast mode
and an OpenDyslexic option ship alongside them.
Colony verifies its own updates against an ed25519 public key compiled into the binary,
and refuses to install anything that fails: a missing, malformed or invalid signature
aborts the update instead of trusting it.
The apps in the store publish detached signatures against that same key.
Once an app has been installed with a verified signature, the launcher will
refuse a later unsigned build of it — a repository cannot quietly stop signing.
Interface translations are static string tables compiled into each binary —
no runtime overhead, no external files, and fonts adapt to the active language.
D1Gg2r offers 50 selectable languages (falling back to English where a translation is incomplete),
while Colony and Grape are fully bilingual in English and French.
Here's what's ahead:
◇ Lilypad, a local-first password manager, as the next app in the catalog
◇ Wider translation coverage across the ecosystem
◇ More packaging targets beyond the AUR
◇ Community-contributed apps and themes
Colony is open to contributions!
Whether it's bug fixes, new utilities, theme additions, or translations — all help is welcome.
Each app lives in its own repository under the Project-Colony organization.
Pick one, open an issue or submit a PR.
Colony and its applications are released under the GNU General Public License v3.0 or later.
This is copyleft: you are free to use, study, share and modify them, provided
derivative works keep the same freedoms. See the LICENSE file in each repository.
Built with 🦀 and ❤️
