Linux desktop app: tray, panel, Mail, Logs, Settings and Dumps

Flock has a menu bar app on macOS and a tray app on Windows. On Linux there's only the CLI and the daemon (#12), so Linux users have no panel, no Mail or Dumps windows, and no Settings.

Approach

A Go app, flock-app, in linux/, a Go module of its own:

Wails v3 on GTK 3 and WebKitGTK (webkit2gtk-4.1, built with the gtk3 tag). That's the default WebKitGTK on Arch, Ubuntu 22.04+ and Fedora.
The pages are plain HTML and JS, embedded with go:embed, with no npm build.
They reach the daemon's API through its unix socket, as the CLI does, so the app needs no token.
Its own module keeps the cgo and GUI dependencies out of the CLI's module and THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES. It still imports flock/internal/....
Tray icon through StatusNotifierItem: KDE, waybar (Hyprland, Sway), and GNOME with the AppIndicator extension.

Screenshots

Panel, Mail, and Settings (Sites, Services), in light mode and dark mode. Both follow the desktop.

Milestones

1. Tray, panel, Mail, Logs (done, draft PR to follow)

Tray icon with the running, warning and stopped states; menu with Open Flock, Mail, Logs, Restart, Quit
Panel: status, services, sites (open in browser), the Xdebug and dump-capture toggles, a mail count; "not running" and "not set up" states
Mail: list, HTML (no scripts, no remote loads, links open in the browser), Text, Raw, Headers, attachments, Clear All; live through the status poll
Logs: service and Laravel site logs, search, level filter, auto-refresh, clear
flock-app mail / flock-app logs opens that window, in the running app too

2. Settings and Dumps

Settings → Sites: HTTPS, domains, PHP and Node per site, pins, FrankenPHP/Octane, Boost, extensions
Settings → PHP, Node, Services (PostgreSQL, catalog services, install jobs and logs)
Settings → General (parked folders, beta channel), Mail, Dumps, Debugger, AI (MCP clients), About
Dumps window: timeline, search, capture options, editor links

3. Setup and distribution

Setup wizard: conflicts check, then flock-php install with a pkexec prompt instead of a terminal
Autostart (~/.config/autostart), a .desktop entry with Mail and Logs actions, flock:// links
Packaging: AUR flock-php-app (depends on webkit2gtk-4.1), release archive, CI build

Known limitations

Wails v3 is still in beta (v3.0.0-beta.32).
Its Linux tray ignores SetTooltip: the StatusNotifierItem tooltip is fixed to "Wails". The app sets the item's title as a workaround. This should be reported upstream.
The tray icons are the white variants made for dark bars. Light bars come later.

Hello,
How do I download a linux version?

@aldoyh

Hi @aldoyh, there's no Linux download yet. Every release so far (up to 1.0.0-beta.9) ships only the macOS .dmg and the Windows installer.

Linux support is in progress in three PRs:

feat: Linux support for the CLI and daemon #12: the CLI and the daemon
feat(linux): install.sh, release archives and an AUR package for the Linux CLI #16: Linux release archives, an install.sh, and an AUR package (flock-php-bin)
feat(linux): a desktop app for Linux, with the tray, Settings, Dumps, setup and packaging #19: the tray app this issue tracks (draft)

When #12 and #16 are merged, the next beta will include flock-<version>-linux-{x64,arm64}.tar.gz. You'll be able to install it with:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/flock-php/flock/main/install.sh | sh

On Arch you'll also be able to use the AUR package. The desktop app comes after that. Until then, Linux has only the CLI.

If you want to try it now, you can build the CLI from the feat/linux-install branch with make linux. Feedback is very welcome, especially from Ubuntu and Fedora.

On it.

@aldoyh

@aldoyh thanks for trying it! There's no release with Linux builds yet, so for now it's built from source. One limitation first: the manifest has no Linux PHP packages yet, so Flock can't install PHP or serve PHP sites on Linux yet. DNS, HTTPS, mail, dumps and the app itself already work.

Dark mode (follows the desktop):

1. Dependencies: Go 1.27+, plus GTK 3 and WebKitGTK 4.1 for the app.

# Arch
sudo pacman -S go gtk3 webkit2gtk-4.1
# Ubuntu 22.04+ / Debian
sudo apt install golang libgtk-3-dev libwebkit2gtk-4.1-dev
# Fedora
sudo dnf install golang gtk3-devel webkit2gtk4.1-devel

If your distro's Go is older than 1.27, get it from https://go.dev/dl/.

2. Build. The feat/linux-app branch has the CLI and daemon from #12 too:

git clone -b feat/linux-app https://github.com/Nejcc/flock.git
cd flock
go build -o bin/flock-php ./cmd/flock
make linux-app            # builds bin/flock-app

3. Set Flock up. This asks for your password once. It installs a systemd user service for the daemon, .test DNS through systemd-resolved, and a local CA:

./bin/flock-php install
./bin/flock-php status

4. Open the app:

./bin/flock-app              # tray icon + panel
./bin/flock-app settings     # or: mail, logs, dumps

The tray icon needs a StatusNotifierItem host. KDE and waybar have one built in; GNOME needs the AppIndicator extension.

./bin/flock-php uninstall undoes everything (--purge also deletes data). If something breaks, please paste flock-php status and your distro here.

Hello, thanks for this! However, I have to close this in favor of our own linux PR, which includes a native UI, which we prefer over a web UI.

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Linux desktop app: tray, panel, Mail, Logs, Settings and Dumps #18

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Linux desktop app: tray, panel, Mail, Logs, Settings and Dumps #18

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aldoyh commented on Oct 19, 2026

Nejcc commented on Oct 19, 2026

aldoyh commented on Oct 19, 2026

Nejcc commented on Oct 19, 2026

lukas-frey commented on Oct 26, 2026

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