feat(phone-operate): Panel redesign and minor bug fixes

[brightestautumn]

Plugin

• Id: icefish/phone-operate

• New plugin
• Update to an existing plugin (version bumped in plugin.toml)

What it does

• Provides a new panel with proper ui
• Fixed cast card's inability to go back to main card and media controls not working
• Removed unnecessary pair feature as cast feature was doing same thing so unified both
• Removed volume controls as KDE connect usually lacks the ability to control volume of an Android device
• Made phone numbers saveable for faster use
• Search bar for saved contacts
• Feature to connect with devices you've already paired with
• Changed the thumbnail

The bugs/issues I encountered

• The cast card and media control issue I mentioned before
• Volume controls being unsupported
• No way to connect directly to a paired device
• and some minor issues which were mostly consequential and I didn't give attention to.

I apologise but I had to take help of AI to understand some stuff and translate the comments to English as I don't understand mandarin so I let the comments be in English.

External dependencies

same as the original plugin

Testing

• Tested on Niri
• Tested on Hyprland
• Tested on Sway
• Tested on another compositor:
• Noctalia version tested against: v5 stable
• Plugin API level: 22

Screenshots / Videos

video_20260909_002101.mp4

Checklist

Ready-for-review requirement: Every box in this section must be checked. If any statement is not true, keep the
pull request as Draft. An explanation does not replace a required check.

• The directory name matches the part of id after the / in plugin.toml exactly.
• It ships plugin.toml, README.md, thumbnail.webp, and translations/en.json.
• README.md follows the
  README template, documents
  every entry id and dependency, and includes exact panel IPC commands and launcher prefixes where applicable.
• thumbnail.webp is present and relevant; for a new plugin I created it with the thumbnail generator, and for an update I regenerated it with the generator if the visual identity or user-facing appearance changed.
• version follows semver and is bumped in this PR; plugin_api is the oldest API level this plugin requires.
• Every non-English translation in this PR uses a locale supported by Noctalia core, and I can read, write, and
  understand that language well enough to review and maintain it (no unreviewed machine/LLM translations).
• I did not edit catalog.toml; CI generates it.
• This PR touches exactly one plugin directory.

Code review attestation

Plugins run as trusted, unsandboxed Luau in the user's session. Confirm:
Ready-for-review requirement: Every attestation below must be checked.

• The code is readable and not obfuscated, minified, or generated.
• It does not download and execute remote code.
• Every network call, filesystem write, and spawned process is something the description above accounts for.
• I have the right to publish this code under the license declared in plugin.toml.

[Noctalia-CI]

CC @CSY2569: this pull request was automatically moved to draft until you have had a chance to look at it. It will be marked ready for review automatically once you reply here.

[CSY2569]

Tested the redesign locally (niri, panel toggle, cast card back-navigation, media controls, saved contacts). Looks good — merging. Thanks for the contribution!

[CSY2569]

Hi @brightestautumn — I tested your redesign locally (niri) and approved the PR. It looks great, thank you! 🎉

The PR is currently a Draft because the Noctalia-CI moved it to draft for me to review. Since I can't mark it ready from my account, could you flip it to ready-for-review so the maintainers can merge it?

[brightestautumn]

Thanks a lot! It automatically marked it as ready for review I guess

Also, for the Chinese translation, I added the keys with English labels just so you wouldn’t have to go through the trouble of finding and adding them yourself. You might just need to change those labels to Chinese.

[ItsLemmy]

Translations should be edited on https://i18n.noctalia.dev
Suppressing keys or editing an existing one from JSON will not work.