palc (palitra in C)

wallpaper palette generator, in C, no dependencies beyond imlib2.

reads an image, extracts its dominant colors with k-means clustering and prints them as a terminal table, json, plain hex or osc escape sequences. can also render template files and recolor running terminals live.

build

make
make install PREFIX=$HOME/.local

needs imlib2 and its headers (imlib2-devel / libimlib2-dev).

usage

palc              palette of the current wallpaper
palc -n 8         exactly 8 colors
palc -m           one hex per line, for scripts
palc -j           json output
palc -e           osc sequences for live terminal recolor
palc -R           reset terminals to the saved original theme
palc -T tpl -o out    render template with {color0}..{color31},
                      {background}, {foreground}
palc -h           help
palc -v           version

without an argument palc finds the current wallpaper itself ($WALLPAPER, wallpaper daemons, desktop settings, common config files).

the auto-theming hook (palc-hook) lives in your wallpaper picker: see ~/.config/palc/rc to enable or disable it. it renders ~/.config/palc/templates/*.tpl (ships havoc.cfg.tpl and foot.ini.tpl) and applies them: havoc gets a live config reload, foot is written to ~/.config/foot/foot.ini so every new window starts themed.

license

isc, see LICENSE