Dankscale

A DankMaterialShell (Quickshell) plugin that manages your Tailscale network from the bar — a Linux stand-in for the macOS menu-bar app and settings utility.

Features

Bar widget — Tailscale icon showing connection state, with a shield badge when an exit node is active and an error badge when login is required or tailscaled is down.

Drop-down (click the bar icon)

• Connect / disconnect toggle
• Current account, one-click switch to the next account
• Current exit node, one-click disable
• Device list — click any device to copy its Tailscale IP (or MagicDNS name) to the clipboard, or hover and hit the send button to share files via Taildrop
• Check-for-incoming-files button (when auto-accept is off)
• "Open Manager" button

Manager (popup)

• Devices — filterable list of every device on the tailnet with online status, OS, owner, subnet/exit-node badges; click to copy address, or use the send button to share files via Taildrop
• Exit Nodes — pick or clear the exit node, allow-LAN-access toggle, advertise this device as an exit node
• Routes — accept-routes toggle, advertise subnet routes from this device, list of subnet routers on the tailnet
• DNS — "Use Tailscale DNS" toggle, current DNS configuration (MagicDNS state, suffix, this device's DNS name, search domains, split-DNS routes), and a DNS lookup tool that resolves names through the tailnet resolver
• Accounts — switch between logged-in accounts, add a new account (opens browser sign-in)

Taildrop (file transfer)

• Send — hover any online device (in the drop-down or the Manager's Devices tab) and click the send button; a dialog lets you add files and send them with tailscale file cp
• Receive — turn on Auto-accept incoming files to save arriving files to your download folder automatically, or leave it off and use the drop-down's check-for-files button to pull them on demand
• Requires Taildrop to be enabled for your tailnet in the Tailscale admin console — it's an alpha, off-by-default feature. Until it's on, the send/receive controls stay hidden.

Control center tile — Tailscale toggle in the DMS control center.

Requirements

• DankMaterialShell ≥ 1.4.0

• tailscale CLI with tailscaled running

• Your user set as the Tailscale operator so no root prompts are needed:

  sudo tailscale set --operator=$USER

Install

From the plugin browser — search for Dankscale in DMS Settings → Plugins and install it.

Manually — clone into your DMS plugins directory:

git clone https://github.com/dwright134/dms-dankscale ~/.config/DankMaterialShell/plugins/Dankscale

Then enable Dankscale under Settings → Plugins.

Settings

• Refresh interval — how often tailscale status is polled (default 5 s)
• Click copies — Tailscale IPv4 (default) or MagicDNS name
• Show offline devices — include offline devices in the drop-down list
• Auto-accept incoming files — receive Taildrop files in the background (default off)
• Download folder — where received files are saved; blank uses your ~/Downloads

How it works

Everything is driven by the tailscale CLI — no daemons, no external helpers:

• tailscale status --json — device list, connection state, exit node
• tailscale debug prefs — accept-routes, advertised routes, exit-node and accept-dns prefs
• tailscale dns status --json — MagicDNS state, suffix, search domains, split-DNS routes
• tailscale dns query <name> [type] — DNS lookup tool
• tailscale switch --list / tailscale switch <account> — accounts
• tailscale up / down — connect / disconnect
• tailscale set --exit-node=… --accept-routes=… --advertise-routes=… --accept-dns=… — settings
• tailscale login — add account (auth URL opens in your browser automatically)
• tailscale file cp <files> <device>: — send files with Taildrop
• tailscale file get [--loop] <dir> — receive Taildrop files (auto-accept runs it with --loop)

License

MIT