Proposal: give Omarchy dotfiles automatic history, easy restore, and optional sync with mise

[jdx]

Proposal: let Omarchy remember every version of your personal config files, show what an update changed, restore an earlier version from the menu, and optionally share your setup with your other machines.

Keep editing files where they are, with the config menu, your editor, or an agent. A background service saves their history in Git, without moving them or turning them into symlinks. Omarchy already ships mise, which does the saving.

Status: mise 2026.10.5 has everything this needs, and #14452 implements the Dots plan on top of it. That release adds per-machine files (jdx/mise#14062), safe setup of a machine that already has history (jdx/mise#14065), and history that never leaves the machine (jdx/mise#14082). I'll maintain the mise side.

What it does

• History as you edit. An audited list of files (Hyprland configs, shell.json, hooks, menu extensions, terminal configs, .bashrc, starship.toml, .XCompose) is saved by a watcher. Browser profiles, tokens, caches, plugins, and themes are left out.
• Undo for updates and resets. Migrations and omarchy refresh … run between two labeled snapshots. Setup > Dots > Last Change shows what the last one changed, and Restore File (also under Update > Config) takes a file back to any saved version. Restoring saves the current version first. .bak files keep working.
• The same setup on several machines. omarchy dots push connects a private repository (creating one with gh), and omarchy dots pull <url> sets up another machine from it. Nothing is shared without a push. Setting up a machine that already has its own history saves its files before replacing them, so mise dot undo brings them back.
• Machine-specific files stay put. monitors.lua keeps its own history on each machine and is never applied on another. It is still backed up with the rest, so a reinstalled machine can restore its own layout.
• Stands down for Stow, chezmoi, and yadm users (omarchy dots enable --force overrides that), and turns off with omarchy dots disable.

New installs get it at setup, and existing installs through a migration that never blocks an update.

The one decision to make

The plan squash-publishes only the present state, so a token you deleted never leaves the machine. mise publishes the saved history itself, which is what lets every machine restore earlier versions and resolve conflicts with shared ancestry. The PR takes mise's approach: the boundary is the tracked list, mise skips credential-named files, and the repository must be private.

For files that must never leave the machine at all, mise now has track-local: a file's history is kept in a separate store on that machine, and nothing about it reaches the shared history or a push. That gives the plan's guarantee per file, without a state-only publishing mode. The plan's open question about input.lua and hardware quirks such as dell-haptic.conf comes down to choosing which of the two each file gets.

Try it today with mise

With mise 2026.10.5 or newer:

mise dot track ~/.bashrc ~/.config/hypr/bindings.lua
mise dot track --machine ~/.config/hypr/monitors.lua   # its own version on every machine
mise dot track --local ~/.config/hypr/input.lua        # history that never leaves this machine
mise dot save
mise dot history
mise dot rollback ~/.config/hypr/bindings.lua --dry-run
mise dot capture --label "omarchy update" -- omarchy-update   # then: mise dot history diff --operation --patch

For automatic saves, add [bootstrap.services.mise-history] with builtin = "history-watch" to ~/.config/mise/config.toml, then run mise bootstrap services apply. To share, connect a private repository on any Git host with mise dot origin set <url> --sync manual, then run mise dot sync and mise dot pull. On another machine, run mise bootstrap --adopt <url> --take-remote-all, which saves that machine's differing files before taking the repository's. The setup guide covers encryption, conflicts, and adoption, and Dotfiles That Save Themselves explains the approach.

AI-assisted — Tool: Claude Code; model: anthropic/claude-opus-5-5; version: 2.1.289.

[shawnyeager]

Would love to see this. Out of the box is already excellent. Being able to trivially clone my tweaks is the next step.

[jdx]

If you get a chance to use it inside omarchy I'd love your input

[shawnyeager]

Have a brand new XPS 14 I'm working to setup now. Is there an early release I can test? If I read you correctly, it's not in GA yet?

[jdx]

Yes! You can try it today with the latest mise release. The dotfile history and sync features shipped in 2026.9.2; what’s still a proposal is the built-in Omarchy integration—menus, automatically selecting files, and capturing updates. Sorry, I should have made that distinction clearer.

My blog post explains the approach, and the setup guide walks through testing it and connecting another machine.

For a small test on your XPS, check mise --version and update mise if needed, then:

mise bootstrap dotfiles track ~/.bashrc

Add this to ~/.config/mise/config.toml:

[bootstrap.services.mise-history]
builtin = "history-watch"

Then start the background service:

mise bootstrap services apply
mise bootstrap dotfiles status

Keep editing normally. It saves changes locally, and you can inspect or restore them:

mise bootstrap dotfiles history --path ~/.bashrc
mise bootstrap dotfiles rollback ~/.bashrc --dry-run
mise bootstrap dotfiles rollback ~/.bashrc

For cloning your tweaks, follow the guide’s sharing steps on your existing machine first, then adopt that repository on the XPS. Use a private repository, since sync includes saved history.

I’d start with aliases, keybindings, and terminal preferences. Keep the XPS’s monitor and trackpad settings separate initially, since those may differ from your other machine. Track individual personal files rather than all of ~/.config.

It’s newly released, so I’d love feedback on where the setup feels rough—especially getting your existing tweaks onto the XPS.

AI-assisted — Tool: Codex; model: OpenAI/GPT-6; version: unavailable.

[CaffeinatedTech]

I've just set up mise dotfiles sync between my desktop and my laptop including an encrypted file. It works well once you get it set up.

the docs need a bit more explaining around what actually goes in the recipients array when setting up encryption and how to generate the age files, as well as generating the recovery file and storing is some place safe like your password vault.

I'd like to be able to use a different git provider like my gitea instance instead of trusting a private repo in github for syncing my dotfiles.

I know you've been working on this in mise, and I'm not on the latest version yet, as Omarchy hasn't adopted it yet, I'm still on 2026.9.7. So the docs mention using mise dot sync for example while the version I have it is still mise bootstrap dotfiles sync. I much prefer the new command :)

The adopt command on my laptop threw a huge warning about the two files I started with .bashrc and ~/.config/mise/config.toml - existing files. The warning wasn't clear about what I had to do to force adopt those remote files. That could have changed in newer versions.

Is there, or will there be a way to add a new encrypted file to track from the cli instead of adding it manually in the config with the encrypt = true

I'm excited to get my neovim configuration properly synchronising, and I can't wait for full Omarchy adoption of this.

[jdx]

Thanks for trying this across both machines, including encryption! The setup friction you describe is useful feedback. You're right that the docs need a clearer walkthrough of generating age keys, what goes in recipients, and storing a separate recovery key in a password vault. recipients takes public recipient strings, not key-file paths or private keys; the private identities stay local and outside tracking.

A few answers and updates:

• Your Gitea instance already works. mise accepts Git remote URLs and uses your Git authentication; GitHub isn't required. The background watcher needs access to those credentials too. Since you already have shared history, preserve that history when moving repositories so both machines retain the same ancestry.

• mise dot arrived in 2026.9.8. On 2026.9.7, mise bootstrap dotfiles is still the right spelling, and it remains supported in newer releases.

• Encrypted enrollment is now available in 2026.9.9: with [history.encryption].recipients configured, run:

  mise dot track ~/.config/app/credentials --encrypt

  That writes encrypt = true and encrypts the first checkpoint. Adding encryption to a previously tracked file doesn't remove older plaintext history.

• Adoption also improved in 2026.9.9. Identical existing files can adopt the incoming history without an unrelated-history error. For differing files, mise dot status shows what needs attention, mise dot conflicts PATH shows the comparison, and mise dot pull --take-remote PATH selects the repository's version. Resolve all reported conflicts, then run mise bootstrap if adoption paused. If the problem is genuinely unrelated local history that you intend to discard, mise bootstrap --adopt <url> --replace-history --dry-run previews that separate decision; it isn't needed for ordinary file conflicts.

Please upgrade both machines to 2026.9.9 or newer before continuing sync. That release fixes a race that could record untouched files as deleted and sync those deletions to the other machine. After upgrading, run:

mise bootstrap services apply
mise dot status

This also handles stale history watchers using the wrong store. If you've seen unexpected deletions, the files can be restored from an earlier checkpoint. Details are in the 2026.9.9 release notes.

I've updated the proposal above with the current commands and a clearer distinction between the mise features you can use today and the Omarchy integration still to build. I'd love to hear how the Neovim setup goes.

AI-assisted — Tool: Codex; model: OpenAI/GPT-6; version: unavailable.

[CaffeinatedTech]

Please upgrade both machines to 2026.9.9 or newer before continuing sync.

I believe the Omarchy package repository is still on mise version 2026.9.7, and I'm on the edge channel. So I think I'll have to remove mise with pacman, then re-install it with the mise.run script. I hope it doesn't tear out my configuration when I remove it.

[jdx]

i believe it's set to auto-bump every 24h

[CaffeinatedTech]

i believe it's set to auto-bump every 24h

Ah, thanks. I'll wait until tomorrow :)

[CaffeinatedTech]

I've got my neovim config syncing with mise. I installed the mason-lock plugin with a autocmd script for automatic Mason package installation and updates without trying to sync the ~/.local/share/nvim/mason directory. Here's a gist about it.

mise dotfile sync is working well, thank you.

[jdx]

Update: I'm working on the Omarchy integration now, including sync between machines.

The first piece is in mise: jdx/mise#14062 adds per-machine tracked files (variants = [{ machine = true }]). Files like monitors.lua keep their history on each machine but are never applied on another one, which is the "local" tier in the dots plan. Once that's in a mise release Omarchy ships, I'll open the Omarchy PR (as a draft until then) and update this proposal with the details.

AI-assisted — Tool: Claude Code; model: anthropic/claude-opus-5-5; version: 2.1.289.

[mrpbennett]

Amazing work here, this is going to make managing two systems, so much easier over using Stow where i currently manage my own .dotfiles repo with it, the symlinks can be a PIA to manage. Now I just need a 2nd machine to test it with.

Is it worth setting up mise dot / bootstrap alongside my stow setup?

I just got the following:

mise WARN dotfiles: ~/.zshrc is a symlink; history saves and syncs the link, not its contents. Its source ~/.dotfiles/.zshrc is not tracked for capture; track the source with mise dot track /home/pb/.dotfiles/.zshrc (and check any exclusions) to include its contents

when testing the .zshrc which I understand.

Question: If i track the ~/.dotfiles/.zshrc how will mise use this, or before i use mise will i have to removal all symlinks and keep the raw files in the places they should be? Hope that makes sense?

[jdx]

I wouldn't use them together, no

[mrpbennett]

looks like i have some migration to be doing, I love mise btw its a god send