feat(tailscale): add Tailscale control center widget by Gdetrane · Pull Request #1875 · AvengeMedia/DankMaterialShell

Gdetrane · 2026-03-01T18:43:33Z

Summary

Native Tailscale integration as a builtin control center plugin — search, filter,
and copy IPs or FQDNs of any node in the tailnet without opening the web admin
panel or using the CLI.

Motivation

Tailscale is a rapidly growing mesh VPN with a vibrant community, now shipping by
default in distros like Bazzite and other Fedora variants. Existing desktop
integrations (e.g., GNOME extensions) are limited and unreliable. This widget
provides quick, native access to tailnet device information directly from the DMS
control center.

Changes

Go backend (core/internal/server/tailscale/)

Official Tailscale client — uses tailscale.com/client/local (v1.96.1) for
automatic socket discovery and typed API responses, with 3s context-based poll
timeout and 30s poll interval
Status conversion — converts ipnstate.Status into lean IPC types with
peer sorting (online first, alphabetical), DNS-derived hostnames (unique per
node), user ID resolution, and relative time formatting
IPC methods — tailscale.subscribe (streaming state updates),
tailscale.getStatus (one-shot), tailscale.refresh (manual poll)
Daemon lifecycle handling — eager init with 30s background retry when
tailscaled is not running at startup; polls keep running through daemon
stop/restart cycles for automatic recovery
17 unit tests covering status conversion, peer parsing, sorting, manager
lifecycle, poll errors, handler routing, and state comparison

QML frontend

TailscaleService singleton with ref counting and subscription management
following the CupsService pattern
TailscaleWidget PluginComponent with control center tile (device_hub icon,
online peer count) and expandable detail view
Filter chips — My Online / Online / All with live device counts; filters
compose with search (tagged devices correctly included in My Online)
Searchable device list — match on hostname, DNS name, IP, and OS; search
applies within the active filter
Copy-to-clipboard buttons for Tailscale IPs and DNS names
Self device highlighted with accent tint and This device badge
Expandable cards showing DNS name, tags, owner, relay/direct info
All strings use I18n.tr() with translator context per CONTRIBUTING.md

Integration

Widget registered in WidgetModel.qml with DragDropGrid and DetailHost wiring
DMSService.qml signal added for tailscale state updates
DetailHost.qml height set to 350px (matching Bluetooth/VPN)

Dependencies

Add tailscale.com v1.96.1 (official local API client, ~22 transitive deps, pure Go)
Bump Go to 1.26.1 (required by tailscale.com)
Bump golangci-lint hook v2.9.0 → v2.11.3

Daemon lifecycle handling

Tailscale running at startup: widget shows immediately
Tailscale started after DMS: widget appears within 30s (retry loop)
Tailscale stopped while running: widget shows Disconnected within 30s
Tailscale restarted: widget recovers automatically within 30s
Tailscale not installed: widget shows Not available, no errors

Test plan

Tested on:

CachyOS (Arch), niri compositor, 57-node tailnet

Purian23 · 2026-03-01T18:56:01Z

Hi there, thanks for the PR. I think this is better suited as an optional plug-in rather a native DMS feature as it's best fit for a select number of users. I will refer to @bbedward for a final accessment.

Gdetrane · 2026-03-01T18:56:35Z

Let me know if you want to see more screenshots

Gdetrane · 2026-03-01T19:03:07Z

@Purian23 Hi, thanks for jumping in, that's fair. I thought this could be a nice built-in feature, given Tailscale's growth and it being included in some distros, but I totally see your point.

I'm still new to this repo, but I imagine this would require keeping the core Go logic and moving the QML logic to a plugin package, right?

Any feedback is welcome

mecattaf · 2026-03-04T10:45:26Z

I would 100% use that!

Gdetrane · 2026-03-04T10:53:08Z

Thanks @mecattaf I really appreciate that 😄
I moved everything to Tailscale, it's brilliant and genuinely love it. It's exploding in popularity, I work at Red Hat and I know that in the Fedora world it's starting to get a lot of traction, see https://universal-blue.org/
If I'm not mistaken it's pre-installed in all their variants. One day I'd be very happy to see an official DMS flavor of Fedora btw 😎

mecattaf · 2026-03-04T12:29:18Z

Thanks @mecattaf I really appreciate that 😄
I moved everything to Tailscale, it's brilliant and genuinely love it. It's exploding in popularity, I work at Red Hat and I know that in the Fedora world it's starting to get a lot of traction, see https://universal-blue.org/

Been a ublue user for 5+ years! Specifically have my own bluebuild recipe

If I'm not mistaken it's pre-installed in all their variants. One day I'd be very happy to see an official DMS flavor of Fedora btw 😎

Actually DMS ships with the miracle window manager official distro but that's super niche. Otherwise check out Zirconium (dms + niri)

Purian23 · 2026-03-07T03:36:24Z

Thanks again for the forward thinking here! The main dev @bbedward is out this week but we'll review whether a plugin would work or by using it natively in a few days!

Purian23 · 2026-03-07T21:16:34Z

Just another quick note on the plugin option route I mentioned. One already exists for you to see how it works.
https://danklinux.com/plugins
Tailscale Manager
https://github.com/cglavin50/dms-tailscale

Gdetrane · 2026-03-09T08:37:36Z

@Purian23 No worries at all, we all need time off 👍

Just a little note on the plugin route, I think this might be a bit too complex for a plugin if I understand this correctly, given there's some Go code to handle everything via Tailscale's Unix sockets API, which imho is cleaner than relying on the cli as a middleman.

I'm not sure obviously, I don't exactly have a ton of experience with implementing tools using Unix sockets from my day to day work, but my intuition was in general to use the APIs that are natively provided to integrate with whatever the underlying system is

bbedward

This looks mostly good, and I think it's fine as a built-in, though its worth noting a plugin could interface with it directly since it is a unix socket API, which can be done in QML/JS

core/internal/server/tailscale/client.go

core/internal/server/server.go

core/internal/server/tailscale/manager.go

Gdetrane · 2026-03-11T15:32:08Z

Hi @bbedward thank you for the review, I will happily address all the requested changes asap

bbedward · 2026-03-11T18:08:36Z

@Gdetrane Also consider using the tailscale GO client, it would probably simplify things quite a bit and help compatibility/maintenance long-term. https://github.com/tailscale/tailscale/blob/main/client/local/local.go

Gdetrane · 2026-03-12T14:43:30Z

@bbedward I noticed the Tailscale go client requires a very recent go version, 1.26+, considering there might be CI involved with 1.25, nix packages I haven't verified availability for, I think I will simply assess your feedback in code without changing the core implementation, but in the future maybe the tailscale go client will be the way to go (pun intended).
I'll resume work on this ASAP, a bit busy at work this week, but the changes I believe will be minimal, based on your feedback

bbedward · 2026-03-12T15:04:49Z

Bumping GO version is no big deal, CI should be unaffected since it pulls version from go.mod

Gdetrane · 2026-03-12T15:52:44Z

@bbedward Cool, I will dive deeper into the library then, it doesn't seem to have a ton of dependencies either, so win win

Gdetrane · 2026-03-13T16:31:36Z

@bbedward moved to the Tailscale go client and refactored based on it, I made some extra modifications fixing a couple of lingering issues I've noticed in manual testing done on my desktop. I believe your points should be addressed now, but ptal :)
Rebased on upstream and updated the description to reflect the new changes while at it.
One thing I should've asked, I'm used to squashing into a single commit and amending, that's a convention from my team at work, but let me know if you would prefer seeing multiple commits in the future

Full-stack Tailscale integration for DMS control center: Backend (Go): - Tailscale manager using official tailscale.com/client/local library - Typed conversion from ipnstate.Status to QML-friendly IPC types - 3s context-based poll timeout, 30s poll interval - Manager cleanup in cleanupManagers() - Comprehensive test coverage (16 tests) Frontend (QML): - TailscaleService with WebSocket subscription - TailscaleWidget with peer list, filter chips, search - Copy-to-clipboard for IPs and DNS names - Daemon lifecycle handling (offline/stopped states) Dependencies: - Add tailscale.com v1.96.1 (official local API client) - Bump Go to 1.26.1 (required by tailscale.com) - Bump golangci-lint hook v2.9.0 -> v2.11.3

Gdetrane · 2026-03-13T22:30:33Z

Noticed new conflicting changes merged upstream, rebased again

bbedward · 2026-03-16T14:43:38Z

core/internal/server/server.go

+	// Eagerly try to initialize Tailscale manager; if it fails (socket not
+	// found), start a background retry loop so the widget recovers when
+	// tailscaled starts later.
+	if err := InitializeTailscaleManager(); err != nil {


This looks like it will never be triggered, because tailscale.NewManager() never returns an error.

bbedward · 2026-03-16T14:49:07Z

core/internal/server/tailscale/manager.go

+	current := m.state
+	m.stateMutex.RUnlock()
+
+	if !reflect.DeepEqual(m.lastState, current) {


lastState RW should also be protected by mutex, or we could probably be more cautious with a notifier in a single goroutine pattern that might be more thread-safe, like some other managers do.

bbedward · 2026-03-16T14:50:16Z

core/internal/server/server.go

+		return err
+	}
+
+	tailscaleManager = manager


tailScaleManager probably needs mutex protection, seems like it can be written from multiple goroutines.

bbedward · 2026-03-16T14:51:48Z

core/internal/server/tailscale/handlers.go

+func HandleRequest(conn net.Conn, req models.Request, manager *Manager) {
+	switch req.Method {
+	case "tailscale.subscribe":
+		handleSubscribe(conn, req, manager)


We can remove this case, since the pattern is to subscribe through the main server.go with what we want. Other managers may do it (but its not a pattern thats used)

bbedward · 2026-03-16T14:53:46Z

core/internal/server/tailscale/manager.go

+)
+
+const (
+	pollInterval = 30 * time.Second


I would really prefer to not do polling here, I think we can use watch-ipn-bus : https://github.com/tailscale/tailscale/blob/54606a0a89bc5e90b5295179e5b776f6a2df8cfa/ipn/localapi/localapi.go#L119 , that would be much nicer

bbedward · 2026-03-16T14:55:32Z

core/internal/server/tailscale/manager.go

+)
+
+const (
+	pollInterval = 30 * time.Second


As a bonus without polling maybe we can avoid all of the reflect.DeepEqual usage. Which has a few risks:

Very slow and inefficient

May evaluate as not equal on fields you dont care about

bbedward · 2026-03-16T14:57:09Z

core/internal/server/server.go

 var capabilitySubscribers syncmap.Map[string, chan ServerInfo]
 var cupsSubscribers syncmap.Map[string, bool]
 var cupsSubscriberCount atomic.Int32
+var tailscaleSubscribers syncmap.Map[string, bool]


We increment these but I can't tell that they actually matter or are used for anything. Ideally we would stop the retry loop when its 0 at least

bbedward · 2026-03-16T14:58:43Z

quickshell/Services/TailscaleService.qml

+    property string magicDnsSuffix: ""
+    property string tailnetName: ""
+    property var selfNode: null
+    property var peers: []


The way this is computed probably triggered an inefficient binding chain, but it's not a major deal for now.

Gdetrane · 2026-03-19T10:15:02Z

@bbedward taking some time to address all the issues, I'm a little swamped at work right now

Purian23 requested a review from bbedward March 1, 2026 18:56

bbedward requested changes Mar 11, 2026

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Gdetrane force-pushed the feat/tailscale-widget branch 2 times, most recently from 1099a17 to b2da0ac Compare March 13, 2026 16:19

Gdetrane force-pushed the feat/tailscale-widget branch from b2da0ac to 4fd16c4 Compare March 13, 2026 22:24

bbedward requested changes Mar 16, 2026

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Summary

Motivation

Changes

Go backend (core/internal/server/tailscale/)

QML frontend

Integration

Dependencies

Daemon lifecycle handling

Test plan

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Purian23 commented Mar 1, 2026

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Gdetrane commented Mar 1, 2026

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Gdetrane commented Mar 1, 2026

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mecattaf commented Mar 4, 2026

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Gdetrane commented Mar 19, 2026

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