English | العربية
Website: https://kawaro.sbarah.com/
Kawaro
Select files in your file manager, open Kawaro from the right-click menu,
and pick an action from the hive. The result is saved next to the original,
which is never modified.
Everything runs on your machine: no uploads, no servers, no telemetry.
Illustration drawn from the app's own geometry and design tokens.
What it does
- Images: convert between PNG, JPEG, WebP, AVIF, GIF, BMP, TIFF and ICO;
resize, rotate, flip, grayscale, compress, strip metadata, and combine
several images into one PDF.
- Video and audio (v0.2, needs FFmpeg): convert to MP4, WebM and GIF,
extract the audio track, convert audio between MP3, OGG, FLAC, WAV, M4A and
Opus, compress video.
- Documents and PDF (v0.2, needs LibreOffice and Ghostscript): Office and
ODF documents to PDF, DOCX and ODT both ways, compress, merge and rotate
PDFs, turn pages into images.
The hive only offers what fits the selection: file kind, file count, and the
tools installed on your system.
The name
Kawaro comes from «كوّارة» (kawwara), an old Arabic word for a beehive. The app is a hive of actions, so we took the word and shortened it to a name that reads the same in Arabic and Latin script: ka-wa-ro. The mark is a saguaro cactus built from many hive cells on the honeycomb lattice; the single hexagon with the cactus cut out is the app icon.
How it works
- One service shows UI.
kawarod holds the hive, the job queue, the tray and the engines; kawaro is a thin client.
- Heavy engines are separate processes (FFmpeg, LibreOffice, Ghostscript), killed with their whole tree on cancel.
- A new format is one TOML file in
actions/ plus a small adapter (diagram).
- The hive picks its surface at every show (diagram) and updates are signed (diagram).
- The diagrams are generated by
python3 design/diagrams/build.py from design/tokens.json. The full contracts are in docs/architecture.md.
Download and install
Get the latest release from the releases page, or from kawaro.sbarah.com.
| System | File | How |
|---|
| Windows 10 and 11 | kawaro-<version>-windows-x64.msi | Double click. Installs for your user, no administrator rights. |
| Fedora | kawaro-<version>-1.x86_64.rpm | sudo dnf install ./kawaro-*.x86_64.rpm |
| Ubuntu, Debian | kawaro_<version>_amd64.deb | sudo apt install ./kawaro_*_amd64.deb |
Every release has a SHA256SUMS file to verify your download. Package channels and what is live (apt and Scoop are live, WinGet waits for review, AUR and COPR wait for accounts): distribution guide. After installing, reopen your file manager and right-click a file.
Windows warning. The Windows files are signed with a self-signed test certificate, so SmartScreen warns on first run: click "More info", then "Run anyway" (details). On Windows 11 the Kawaro item is under "Show more options". A trusted certificate is not available to the project for now; WinGet and Scoop are the other install routes.
Updates. Kawaro checks for new versions and updates itself: Settings, Updates shows the installed version, "Check for updates" and "Update now". The command line does the same with kawaro update.
Linux extras. The package adds Kawaro to the right-click menu of Dolphin, Nautilus and Nemo and starts the service with every session. Nautilus needs nautilus-python (Fedora) or python3-nautilus (Ubuntu). Opening from the clipboard needs wl-clipboard on Wayland or xclip on X11.
From source (Rust 1.85 or newer, Linux):
git clone https://github.com/M7MMAD-OMAR/kawaro
cd kawaro
./scripts/install.sh # your user only, no root; remove with ./scripts/uninstall.sh
Engines. FFmpeg, LibreOffice and Ghostscript are not bundled; install the ones you need. A missing engine gives an error that names it. On Windows Kawaro looks in PATH, then in the usual install folders.
Platform support
| Platform | Tested | What works |
|---|
| Windows 10 and 11 | Installed and run in a Windows 11 virtual machine | MSI, right-click menu, tray icon, drop hive |
| Hyprland 0.56 | Tested | Works as a layer at the pointer, with drop and long press |
| KDE Plasma 6 (KWin 6.7) | Tested | Works as a layer, with focus, drop and the shortcut |
| GNOME 50 | Tested | Works as a centred window |
| Fedora 41 and later (RPM), Ubuntu 22.04 and 24.04, Debian 12 (DEB) | Tested | The packages install and run |
| Sway and wlroots | Not tested | Expected to work as a layer |
| X11 | Tested in a virtual X server with xfwm4, not on a real desktop yet | Hive at the pointer, drop with kawaro drop |
| macOS | Not supported yet | Planned |
Windows
Right-click a file in Explorer and choose Kawaro. To convert while you drag, drag the file with the right mouse button: the hive opens at the dragged file. No key is held, so Explorer keeps its own drag behaviour, and a drop outside the hive copies, moves or links as usual. The original file is never touched. Stop the service from the tray icon menu (Quit); uninstall from Settings, Apps. The tray icon, the global shortcut and the end-of-job notification are still being checked on real machines.
Command line
kawaro convert --to webp photo.png # convert here, no service needed
kawaro actions *.jpg # what the hive offers for these files
kawaro open --from-clipboard # open the hive for copied files
On Hyprland you can bind Super plus right-click to open the hive for the
selected files directly; see
the Hyprland guide.
To show the hive while you drag a file, bind kawaro drop to a shortcut,
Super+Z by default; GNOME, KDE and Hyprland steps are in
Drop shortcut.
Settings
Open Settings from the Kawaro tray icon. It has pages for general options (language, theme), conversion (output place, quality), notifications and integration, updates, and About with the version and the website. You can also edit config.toml: ~/.config/kawaro/config.toml on Linux, %APPDATA%\Kawaro\config.toml on Windows. Your own actions go in actions/*.toml next to it. The Windows service log is %LOCALAPPDATA%\Kawaro\logs\kawarod.log.
hold_ms is the long press, in milliseconds, before kawaro drop --hold shows the hive: 400 by default, accepted from 100 to 2000. It is read at every press and is not in the settings window; edit the file.
Contributing
Read CONTRIBUTING.md and docs/architecture.md first.
Security reports: see SECURITY.md. Release history: CHANGELOG.md. A new
format is one TOML file in actions/ plus a small adapter in
crates/engines/.
Website and docs
Guides, formats, releases and downloads: https://kawaro.sbarah.com/ (Arabic and English). The pages are built from docs/guide/, actions/ and CHANGELOG.md by scripts/build-site.sh.
Support
Kawaro is free and built in the open. If it helps you, you can support its development:
Distribution and signing
Current release: 0.5.0. apt and Scoop are live and update on every release. The WinGet package (Sbarah.Kawaro) passed all automated checks and waits for a volunteer moderator since 2026-10-27, so it is not installable yet. AUR and COPR wait for accounts that only a person can create. The maintainer has no code signing certificate available, so the Windows build stays self-signed and SmartScreen warns; the Microsoft Store and SignPath are parked, not planned for now. Details: distribution status and the code signing policy.
License
GPL-3.0-or-later. See LICENSE.
