Pulsgeber

See it in action

Switch profiles from the Quick Settings, see the Control Center follow along, let the top bar show the active profile and set everything up in the preferences.

Watch the 75-second demo (MP4, 3 MB)

What it does

One toggle for all your profiles

A "TCC Profile" toggle in the Quick Settings shows the active profile, and its menu lists every profile from the TUXEDO Control Center. Click the toggle to switch between the default profile and the one you picked last, just like GNOME's own power mode.

AC power and battery at a glance

A profile you pick lasts until you plug in or unplug. The menu tells you what comes next, for example "Until on battery, then Cool and breezy". The Control Center shows every switch right away.

Know when the profile changes, and how hot it is

When the profile changes without you, for example because you unplugged the charger, GNOME shows the new profile on screen for a moment. While the menu is open, one line shows the CPU temperature, the fan speed and, where the device reports it, the power draw. Pulsgeber asks the Control Center for these values only while the menu is open. Both can be switched off in the preferences.

Icons that show the pace

One pulse for power saving, two for balanced, three for performance, and a pulse above a slider for profiles you created yourself. If you like, the top bar shows the icon while a non-default profile is active.

Made to fit in

Pulsgeber hides GNOME's power mode toggle, which would only fight with the Control Center, and can turn off power-profiles-daemon for good. It can also keep the Control Center tray from starting; the menu entry "TUXEDO Control Center" opens the app whenever you need it.

Your menu, your choice

In the preferences you decide which profiles appear in the menu and which icon each one gets. Pulsgeber speaks English and German and follows the language of your desktop.

Install

[!NOTE] A release on extensions.gnome.org is planned. For now, install the ZIP package from the Releases page.

Pulsgeber needs GNOME 50 or 51 and the TUXEDO Control Center with its service tccd (package tuxedo-control-center, included in TUXEDO OS).

1. Download [email protected] from the latest release.
2. Install it:

gnome-extensions install [email protected]

3. Log out and back in, then enable it:

gnome-extensions enable [email protected]

Questions

Do I still need the TUXEDO Control Center app? Only to create and edit profiles and to assign them to AC power and battery. The profiles are applied by the system service tccd, and that is what Pulsgeber talks to.

Why does GNOME's power mode toggle disappear? power-profiles-daemon and tccd write the same processor settings, and tccd puts its profile back within seconds. A change in GNOME's toggle would only last a moment, so Pulsgeber hides it.

Does it work without a TUXEDO notebook? No. Without tccd there are no profiles to switch.

Is Pulsgeber a TUXEDO product? No. It is an unofficial community project, not affiliated with TUXEDO Computers. TUXEDO provides no support for it; please report problems here.

On the blog

Pulsgeber has its own page on my blog Linux und Ich, with more details on the extension and news about upcoming versions. The project overview lists everything else I build for the Linux desktop. Questions, ideas or feedback that don't fit into an issue? Get in touch, I read every message.

More

• Project page on linuxundich.de: details, background and news
• Technical notes: tccd, the TCC tray, power-profiles-daemon, building from source
• Changelog
• Found a bug or want to translate Pulsgeber? Open an issue or add a po file in po/

The German word Pulsgeber means pulse generator, the device that sets the clock: a nod to CPU clock speeds, and to the profiles setting the pace of the machine.

Use of AI

Pulsgeber is AI-assisted. Most of the code, the icons, the translations and the documentation were written with AI assistance, directed by me: I set the requirements, made the design decisions (name, icon, behaviour), reviewed the results and tested the extension on my own TUXEDO notebook. Commits written with AI assistance carry a Co-Authored-By line.

License

Pulsgeber is free software under the GPL-3.0-or-later. It is a personal project, tested on a TUXEDO InfinityBook S 17 Gen6 with GNOME 51.1 and TCC 3.1.1.