Plank Reloaded: Desktop Dock App for Cinnamon

At one time, Linux dock apps were a plentiful species, with innovative ‘panel painters’ like GNOME Do/Docky to unashamed bling-kings AWN, DockBarX and Cairo Dock. Yet it was the modest Plank which stayed the course and outlived them.

Thing is, the Plank dock hasn’t seen any major development effort in years, and though it still works, there’s scope for some modern improvement, surely?

One developer thinks so, and they’ve decided to do something about it.

Enter, Plank Reloaded.

Plank Reloaded: Plank Fork

The original Plank in action

Plank Reloadedis a new fork of the original Plank Linux dock, albeit with a twist: it’s focused on improving compatibility with the Cinnamon desktop environment.

“Like its predecessor, it aims to be the simplest dock on the planet, providing just what a dock needs and absolutely nothing more. It remains a library which can be extended to create other dock programs with more advanced features,”says its developer.

Plank (proper) is technically still maintained but it’s last major release was back in 2016, with only the occasional compatibility bump pushed out to keep the app ticking over (i.e., build and work on newer Linux distributions).

That upstream version is stale but it is also something of a stalwart: in use across a multitude of Linux desktop environments, distros, and setups by a great many users. Steering development of the original project to satisfy just one DE wouldn’t please everyone.

Which is a reason why forks happen.

Plank Reloaded is still Plank: the same APIs, Docklets, and theme system, it’s just focused on making those APIs, docklets, and themes work in Cinnamon.

Plank Reloadedadds a calendar to the Clock Docklet

This includes tweaks and updates to Docklets: Clock settings dialog functions, the digital clock style updates, and it now shows a calendar on-click; Battery adds UPower integration; and an ‘Anchor Docklets’ setting added to pin them to the end of the dock.

Improved ‘Matte’ and new ‘Matte Light’ themes also feature, clearly aiming to better ape the look of the Cinnamon DE. Most users will stick with the default theme (a thin bar) that is synonymous with Plank, especially since the ‘matte’ themes don’t ‘float’.

Beyond that, Plank Reloaded has cleaned up the code, fixed a bunch of outstanding bugs (including making per-workspace behaviour work as expected), and begun scouting feedback from users on what sort of features could be added next.

Want to try Plank Reloaded?

Plank Reloaded adds a new ‘Matte Light’ theme

If you use Ubuntu Cinnamon or Linux Mint and you want to try Plank Reloaded out, you can: it made its first public release recently, and a DEB package is available to download from the GitHub project page.

Be aware that Plank does not support Wayland, but as Linux Mint doesn’t default to Wayland yet, and Cinnamon’s own support for it a work in progress, that shouldn’t be an issue for the target audience.

Important: If you have Plank (proper) installed, remove it first:
sudo apt remove plank libplank-common libplank1
Download the latest DEB packages from the project repo release’s page and double-click on the DEB package to install.

Then, open Plank Reloaded from your preferred applications menu and it will appear at the bottom of the screen (it can be moved later), likely hidden by the bottom panel (if you have one).

Access the dock’s settings by right-clicking on an empty part of the dock (taking care not to activate an item). The preferences panel offers appearance, behaviour and docklet options so that you can reposition, re-style, and add extras to suit your needs.

When testing it in Linux Mint 22.1, Plank Reloaded worked reliably enough, and it was great to see the battery docklet (incongruous icon provided by Mint-Y aside) working. The Applications docklet (app menu appears on right-click) did duplicate entries, though.

It is just the start.

With an active developer keen to revive this app, and the possibility of Wayland support to come (as Cinnamon’s own Wayland support matures), Plank Reloaded offers potential.