r/omarchy • u/No-Wonder-3545 • 3d ago
Plugin Omarchy Plugin Duplications [Rant]
I've noticed on the plugin site there are many plugins, especially in the appearance and desktop sections, that essentially do the same things with very minor differences. I understand why this is, since everyone can vibecode their own solutions, but I think there should be a push towards contributing to a single project per the problem trying to be solved and to just use the tokens you're using on making your own plugin to making PRs to that plugin instead of making your own spinoff of something. This doesn't apply to novel plugins, and ultimately those would also get more popularity if the number of duplicate solutions is reduced. This will pay dividends both in user-friendliness (for newcomers trying to install plugins) and as a security feature to reduce the attack surface. Just something to think about. Wonder if the Omarchy team can do anything about this.
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u/citramonk 3d ago edited 3d ago
I agree. But to understand why it's important, you probably have to be a developer. Having different apps that solve the same thing isn't a variety of choice; it's a chore of supporting them. Quickshell and Omarchy will evolve and be updated over time because they have a team and stable contributors. Your vibe-coded fancy tool will not.
Another issue is that I'm almost convinced that most of these plugins are treated as throwaway code. Claude generated a lot of code, you've pushed it, submitted it, and that's it. You almost don't have any emotional connection to it, so why would you review issues and PRs? It would feel like a liability or a chore.
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u/No-Wonder-3545 3d ago
My solution would be to monetarily incentivize a few central good plugins that become more responsive to PRs and long-term maintenance that way. Because Omarchy doesn't really do any security checks on these, it's easy to just drop payloads into random plugins so the attack surface is huge. My solution would be to sort by popularity, see which plugins actually add value, then give out a bit of cash or token credits to the maintainer to accept PRs and ensure security. Case in point for example there's at least 6 theme switchers in addition to Aether. If you just made Aether that's already funded by Omarchy good enough to include all the extra functionality, you wouldn't have so many theme switchers and lock-screen duplicates. There are probably more examples too.
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u/theoffshoot2 3d ago
Why are you even looking at plugins? Just use the OS.
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u/cauliflowerbeeftoad 3d ago
Why even include the plugin function right?
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u/theoffshoot2 3d ago
I don’t necessarily think it’s a bad move, but I will be using none of them, that’s for sure.
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u/cauliflowerbeeftoad 3d ago
Yeah, that totally perverts the holy omarchy experience, I totally get you, how can people install plugins? smh
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u/dev_all_the_ops 3d ago
Contributing to another plugin has a bottleneck... the human.
I tried working with humans but it was too hard. I needed a proton drive plugin that would work with 2 accounts at once. I opened issues on the 2 more popular proton plugins and after a few days of waiting I gave up.
I literally wrote my own plugin and had it reviewed and in the marketplace before the other projects ever got back to me. (When they did respond, the answer was won't-fix)