webapp-maker 1.0.0: turn websites into desktop apps with their own icon and app window

[UmedjonBA]

Plugin

• Id: umedbazarov/webapp-maker
• New plugin
• Update to an existing plugin (version bumped in plugin.toml)

What it does

Turns websites into desktop applications. A floating panel with a small form — name, URL, optional chromium launch flags (e.g. a per-site --proxy-server=…), optional icon override — and Create produces a real launcher entry: the site's own icon is fetched (apple-touch-icon → well-known path → favicon service), an escaped .desktop file is written to ~/.local/share/applications/, and the app opens in a dedicated browser app window (no tabs, no URL bar) via --app. The same panel lists every web app it created, with one-click removal that can only ever touch launchers created by this mechanism.

Nothing in the catalog does this today: web-launcher opens sites in the regular browser from the launcher; this one produces standalone app windows with system-wide launcher entries and per-site launch flags.

All logic lives in three small bundled shell scripts under scripts/ (readable, ~200 lines total); the panel only assembles commands. The launch script is copied into the plugin's data directory and .desktop entries reference that stable copy, so created apps keep working across plugin updates — and even after uninstalling the plugin.

External dependencies

Declared in dependencies: bash, chmod, cp, curl (fetching the site page and icon — the only network access), file (verifying the icon download is an image), grep, head, mkdir, rm, sed, setsid, tr, xdg-settings (resolving the default browser). Optional and guarded with command -v, documented in the README: gtk-update-icon-cache, update-desktop-database, notify-send. A chromium-family browser is required for the app windows (documented; the launch script falls back from the default browser to the first installed one and reports clearly when none exists).

Testing

• Tested on Niri
• Tested on Hyprland
• Tested on Sway
• Tested on another compositor:
• Noctalia version tested against: v5.0.0-beta.10 (noctalia-git 5.0.0.r5344.g74e6c2790)
• Plugin API level: 9

Exercised live: web apps created through the panel (with and without flags, e.g. --proxy-server), icons fetched from real sites, launcher entries verified in the app launcher, app windows opened via the created .desktop entries (correct chrome-<domain> app ids for compositor window rules), the Installed list and its removal button, the freedesktop escaping paths, the env_file setting, and failure cases (icon download refused for a site with no icon, name with / rejected). noctalia plugins lint clean.

Screenshots / Videos

Checklist

Ready-for-review requirement: Every box in this section must be checked. If any statement is not true, keep the
pull request as Draft. An explanation does not replace a required check.

• The directory name matches the part of id after the / in plugin.toml exactly.
• It ships plugin.toml, README.md, thumbnail.webp, and translations/en.json.
• README.md follows the
  README template, documents
  every entry id and dependency, and includes exact panel IPC commands and launcher prefixes where applicable.
• I created thumbnail.webp with the thumbnail generator.
• version follows semver and is bumped in this PR; plugin_api is the oldest API level this plugin requires.
• Every non-English translation in this PR uses a locale supported by Noctalia core, and I can read, write, and
  understand that language well enough to review and maintain it (no unreviewed machine/LLM translations).
• I did not edit catalog.toml; CI generates it.
• This PR touches exactly one plugin directory.

Code review attestation

Plugins run as trusted, unsandboxed Luau in the user's session. Confirm:
Ready-for-review requirement: Every attestation below must be checked.

• The code is readable and not obfuscated, minified, or generated.
• It does not download and execute remote code.
• Every network call, filesystem write, and spawned process is something the description above accounts for.
• I have the right to publish this code under the license declared in plugin.toml.