Multi user: Login with any system user
dms sync: Sync settings with dms for consistent styling between shell and greeter
niri or Hyprland: Use either niri or Hyprland for the greeter's compositor.
Custom PAM: Supports custom PAM configuration in /etc/pam.d/dankshell
Session Memory: Remembers last selected session and user

Installation

Arch Linux

Arch linux users can install greetd-dms-greeter-git from the AUR.

paru -S greetd-dms-greeter-git
# Or with yay
yay -S greetd-dms-greeter-git

Then in your /etc/greetd/config.toml enable dms-greeter by replacing the greeter command with dms-greeter.

# hyprland and sway are also supported as compositors
command = "/usr/bin/dms-greeter --command niri"

See dms-greeter --help for full options including custom compositor configurations.

Once installed, you should disable any existing greeter (such as gdm, sddm, lightdm), and you can configure the greeter to run at boot with:

sudo systemctl enable greetd

Syncing themes

To sync wallpapers, colors, and other settings from the logged in user, you can add your user to the greeter group and symlink the shell configurations.

sudo usermod -aG greeter <username>
# LOGOUT and LOGIN after adding user to group


ln -sf ~/.config/DankMaterialShell/settings.json /var/cache/dms-greeter/settings.json

ln -sf ~/.local/state/DankMaterialShell/session.json /var/cache/dms-greeter/session.json

ln -sf ~/.cache/quickshell/dankshell/dms-colors.json /var/cache/dms-greeter/colors.json

Automatic

The easiest thing is to run dms greeter install or dms for interactive installation.

Manual

Install greetd (in most distro's standard repositories) and quickshell
Clone the dms project to /etc/xdg/quickshell/dms-greeter

sudo git clone https://github.com/AvengeMedia/DankMaterialShell.git /etc/xdg/quickshell/dms-greeter

Copy assets/dms-greeter to /usr/local/bin/dms-greeter:

sudo cp assets/dms-greeter /usr/local/bin/dms-greeter
sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/dms-greeter

Create greeter cache directory with proper permissions:

sudo mkdir -p /var/cache/dms-greeter
sudo chown greeter:greeter /var/cache/dms-greeter
sudo chmod 750 /var/cache/dms-greeter

Edit or create /etc/greetd/config.toml:

[terminal]
vt = 1

[default_session]
user = "greeter"
# Change compositor to sway or hyprland if preferred
command = "/usr/local/bin/dms-greeter --command niri"

Enable the greeter with sudo systemctl enable greetd

Legacy installation (deprecated)

If you prefer the old method with separate shell scripts and config files:

Copy assets/dms-niri.kdl or assets/dms-hypr.conf to /etc/greetd
Copy assets/greet-niri.sh or assets/greet-hyprland.sh to /usr/local/bin/start-dms-greetd.sh
Edit the config file and replace _DMS_PATH_ with your DMS installation path
Configure greetd to use /usr/local/bin/start-dms-greetd.sh

NixOS

To install the greeter on NixOS add the repo to your flake inputs as described in the readme. Then somewhere in your NixOS config add this to imports:

imports = [
  inputs.dankMaterialShell.nixosModules.greeter
]

Enable the greeter with this in your NixOS config:

programs.dankMaterialShell.greeter = {
  enable = true;
  compositor.name = "niri"; # or set to hyprland
  configHome = "/home/user"; # optionally copyies that users DMS settings (and wallpaper if set) to the greeters data directory as root before greeter starts
};

Usage

Using dms-greeter wrapper (recommended)

The dms-greeter wrapper simplifies running the greeter with any compositor:

dms-greeter --command niri
dms-greeter --command hyprland
dms-greeter --command sway
dms-greeter --command niri -C /path/to/custom-niri.kdl

Configure greetd to use it in /etc/greetd/config.toml:

[terminal]
vt = 1

[default_session]
user = "greeter"
command = "/usr/local/bin/dms-greeter --command niri"

Manual usage

To run dms in greeter mode you can also manually set environment variables:

DMS_RUN_GREETER=1 qs -p /path/to/dms

Configuration

Compositor

You can configure compositor specific settings such as outputs/displays the same as you would in niri or Hyprland.

Simply edit /etc/greetd/dms-niri.kdl or /etc/greetd/dms-hypr.conf to change compositor settings for the greeter

Personalization

Wallpapers and themes and weather and clock formats and things are a TODO on the documentation, but it's configured exactly the same as dms.

You can synchronize those configurations with a specific user if you want greeter settings to always mirror the shell.

The greeter uses the dms-greeter group for file access permissions, so ensure your user and the greeter user are both members of this group.

# For core settings (theme, clock formats, etc)
sudo ln -sf ~/.config/DankMaterialShell/settings.json /var/cache/dms-greeter/settings.json
# For state (mainly you would configure wallpaper in this file)
sudo ln -sf ~/.local/state/DankMaterialShell/session.json /var/cache/dms-greeter/session.json
# For wallpaper based theming
sudo ln -sf ~/.cache/quickshell/dankshell/dms-colors.json /var/cache/dms-greeter/dms-colors.json

You can override the configuration path with the DMS_GREET_CFG_DIR environment variable or the --cache-dir flag when using dms-greeter. The default is /var/cache/dms-greeter.

The cache directory should be owned by greeter:greeter with 770 permissions.