Developer mode

Singularity keeps its developer and experimental tools out of the way by default. Two switches in the system settings turn them on.

Turning it on

In the system settings, under an Experimental section, there are two toggles:

• Preview features makes experimental, still-in-progress features visible.
• Developer mode adds a Developer page to the settings.

In development

These are development and diagnostic tools. The features they expose are works in progress, and the live numbers they show may not be accurate yet.

The Developer page

With developer mode on, a Developer page appears, gathering a set of tools:

• Debug. Verbose logging, a floating HUD overlay of live stats, and switches to keep the sidebar, the overview, or the workspaces open, handy for taking screenshots.
• GTK rendering. Open the GTK inspector, toggle animations, and overlay accent-colored borders on every widget.
• App system. The current focused app, open windows, and running apps, with a button to force a refresh.
• Wallpaper. The current wallpaper path and a reload button.
• Tiling. Turn on auto-tiling and apply the layout now.
• Hot corners. Trigger any of the four corners by hand.
• Desktop resources. Live CPU and memory for the shell’s own processes: the shell, the compositor, and the polkit agent.
• Notifications. Send a test notification that bypasses Do Not Disturb.
• XDG portal. Check the portal backend and trigger a screenshot or app-chooser request.
• Window preview. Capture a preview of the first window.
• Diagnostics. A live tail of the shell log, with clear, restart, and a restart-shell button.

Experimental features and tiling

Tiling is one of the experimental features. You can turn it on from the window management settings, or as auto-tiling from the Developer page, and re-tile with Super and R, but it is still in development and may not behave consistently yet. Other features behind the preview-features switch are at a similar stage: useful to try, not yet finished.