Here is a good kind of retirement. Tom Ballard (@tcballard) has ended feature work on Familiar Desktop, the popular Omarchy plugin that added a dock, minimize, window controls and other mouse-friendly habits. His README says he made the call on October 13 “after Omarchy incorporated much of its mouse-friendly desktop functionality into Core.”
Per Omarchy Central, the Core version is a dock for floating workspaces with app launching, minimizing and window cycling, plus titlebars built into the floating workspace flow.
Don’t rush it
Timing matters. As of October 14 the replacement is merged into Quattro development, and Ballard is blunt: “This is not a claim that it is available in stable Omarchy or on your installed desktop.” Core will not import your Familiar settings, pins or layout automatically. Existing installs keep working, the repo is not archived, and the code stays MIT. He just cannot promise compatibility with future Omarchy updates.
The last release, v0.1.7 (October 13), is a small security fix: a running app can no longer turn its app ID into a remote icon download. The planned v0.2.0 and the rest of the roadmap are off the table.
When you do switch
Do not just run omarchy plugin remove — the README says that skips Familiar’s cleanup. Run the bundled script from your normal desktop session, as your own user, no sudo:
bash "$HOME/.config/omarchy/plugins/io.github.tcballard.familiar-desktop/uninstall.sh"
It restores journalled windows, stops if minimized windows remain, resets Familiar’s config, and only removes the plugin once cleanup succeeds.
This is how community plugins should end. Prove the idea, get it pulled upstream, leave a clean exit. Thanks, Tom.
Have a blessed day! And Happy Hacking!