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Little Stereo

by Erik Abelsson

Stereo reversal, balance, and custom names, remembered for every audio output.

GitHub

Security review

Potentially dangerous behavior detected · 3 findings

Deterministic scan — not a security guarantee

High
Risk level
High
Analyzed commit
69c1df8
Scanned
1 month ago
  • high persistence scripts/little-stereo:362

    Registers scheduled or boot-time system tasks.

    systemd-run --user --collect --quiet --property=Type=exec \
  • high persistence scripts/little-stereo:439

    Registers scheduled or boot-time system tasks.

    systemd-run --user --collect --quiet --property=Type=exec \
  • Docs persistence README.md:85

    Registers scheduled or boot-time system tasks.

    systemd-run --user`, `quickshell`, and `bluetoothctl`

Automated analysis only — not a security guarantee.

AI advisory review

No obvious issues detected

Language-model assessment · ~deepseek/deepseek-v4-flash-latest — advisory only

Low
AI risk level
Low
Recommendation
install
Model
~deepseek/deepseek-v4-flash-latest
Analyzed commit
69c1df8
Reviewed
1 month ago

The plugin is an audio control widget that manages per-output settings, including channel swap, balance, and custom names. It uses systemd-run to restart user-level services (WirePlumber and the shell) when toggling channel swap, which is a legitimate operation explained in the README. No malicious code, network access, or persistence beyond user config files was found.

  • The deterministic scan flagged systemd-run usage as persistence, but it is used to restart user services after changing WirePlumber configuration, not to install persistent tasks.
  • The script modifies WirePlumber config and restarts services, which could temporarily disrupt audio, but this is expected behavior for the plugin's functionality.
How this check works

This review combines the deterministic scan (the rule-based results above) with an independent look at the plugin's code by a language model. The model reads a trimmed sample of the repository's files, the manifest, and the README, then gives a plain-language risk level and a recommendation: install (no notable danger), review (look closer first), or avoid (clearly dangerous).

It runs on the same analyzed commit as the deterministic scan and is strictly advisory — it is not a security guarantee and never blocks a plugin by itself. A human moderator still reviews plugins before they are listed.

AI advisory only — automated analysis, not a security guarantee.

Install
$ omarchy plugin add https://github.com/erikabel/little-stereo --enable
Widgets #bar #media #system

Little Stereo

Little Stereo adds stereo reversal and balance controls to Omarchy's audio panel. Each output device keeps its own settings, so switching between speakers, headphones, and Bluetooth devices does not require setting them up again.

The name comes from the song Little Stereo by the Swedish band Teddybears.

Renaming outputs snuck in as well. It has nothing to do with stereo, but nobody has ever looked at a list of speakers and thought ah yes, U32R59x, so that itch got scratched too.

Main functionality

  1. Reverse stereo — Turn on Reverse Stereo Channels when your left and right speakers are physically arranged the other way around. It also works with Bluetooth outputs. Expect audio to cut out and the bar to disappear for a second or two while the change is applied; see How it works.
  2. Balance — Move the balance slider toward the audible left or right side. The selected master volume stays stable, including when stereo is reversed.
  3. Memory and status per output — Little Stereo remembers reversal and balance separately for every output device. Icons beside an output show its saved state at a glance: the swap arrows indicate reversed channels and the balance scales indicate an adjusted balance.

Select an output to view or change its settings. When you return to that device, Little Stereo restores them automatically.

Little Stereo audio controls

Extra feature

Nothing to do with stereo, and no apology offered.

  1. Rename an output — Hover an output and a pen appears on the row. Click it, or press r, and the name becomes editable. Enter saves, Esc cancels, and submitting an empty field goes back to the name the device reports for itself. Names are capped at 24 characters, and an emoji counts as one of them, so U32R59x can become Samsung Screen, or Loft 🎧 if the mood takes you.

Renaming an output

Hovering the name or the icon of a renamed output shows what it was originally called, so a screen full of nicknames can still be traced back to real hardware.

Names are remembered per output like everything else here, and the cleanup command below removes them along with the rest.

Install

omarchy plugin add https://github.com/erikabel/little-stereo --enable --yes

Little Stereo replaces the built-in audio widget rather than sitting beside it. Enabling it takes over omarchy.audio's exact place in the bar, and disabling or removing it puts the built-in back where it was, so there is nothing to switch over by hand.

Remove

Reset Little Stereo's saved settings and generated WirePlumber configuration before removing the plugin:

~/.config/omarchy/plugins/io.github.erikabel.little-stereo/scripts/little-stereo cleanup
omarchy plugin remove io.github.erikabel.little-stereo

Balance is held in the output's own per-channel volumes, so cleanup levels every output it skewed back to centre before forgetting the settings that say it did — otherwise the imbalance would outlive the plugin that caused it. It then removes the generated WirePlumber rule and restarts WirePlumber and the Omarchy shell, so the built-in widget comes back on the normal audio path immediately.

Runtime requirements

Little Stereo runs inside the Omarchy shell with the logged-in user's permissions. It uses four of Omarchy's own audio helpers (omarchy-audio-output-sink, omarchy-audio-output-set-default, omarchy-audio-input-set-default, and omarchy-audio-sink-availability), PipeWire/PulseAudio's pactl, WirePlumber, and standard user-session tools (systemctl --user, systemd-run --user, quickshell, and bluetoothctl for Bluetooth outputs). It does not require sudo, root access, a separate Quickshell process, or a remote installer. Stereo reversal restarts the user's WirePlumber service and the Omarchy shell; cleanup removes only Little Stereo's saved files and its generated WirePlumber rule.

Built and tested against Omarchy 4.0.1. Little Stereo is based on the built-in audio panel and declares omarchy.clonedFrom in its manifest to take that widget's place, so a shell release that reworks either one may need a matching update here.

How it works

Settings are saved under ~/.config/omarchy/audio. Stereo reversal is applied with a generated WirePlumber filter rule, upstream of the selected physical or Bluetooth output. Balance uses per-channel PipeWire volume while preserving the chosen master level.

Reversal is the one setting that cannot be applied in place. WirePlumber only reads that filter rule when it starts, so turning reversal on or off restarts WirePlumber, which tears down and rebuilds every audio node. The bar is stopped first and brought back afterwards, deliberately: a running shell has been seen to crash when the audio graph is replaced underneath it. Balance, volume and output switching all apply immediately and leave the bar alone.

This project is based on Omarchy's built-in Audio plugin and is distributed under the MIT License.