Privacy & Anonymity
Going Dark
Sometimes the right amount of network is none. You’re about to open a sample you don’t trust, you’re walking into a room where nothing should be transmitting, or you just want to know for certain that the laptop isn’t talking to anything. Turning off Wi-Fi isn’t enough for that: Bluetooth is still on, the ethernet cable is still plugged in, and a mobile modem may be quietly connected too.
Going dark turns all of it off at once, and turning it back on restores exactly the state you had, not a guess at it.
The bar switch
Going dark lives on your Quickshell bar (installed via the godark plugin), next to
the Tor and MAC panels.
- Middle-click the icon to go dark, or come back, right away.
- Left-click to open the panel. It shows the current state, an on/off switch (on
means dark), and every link the machine has: networking, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and any
other radio. Anything still on while you’re dark is shown in red. Press
dor space to flip the switch,rto refresh.
The icon always shows the real state:
| Icon | Meaning |
|---|---|
| dim | connected, normal |
| red | dark: networking and every radio off |
| bright | partly back on — say, Wi-Fi turned on by hand while dark. Click to cut it again |
There’s no password prompt. Your desktop session is already allowed to switch radios and networking on its own machine, so going dark is instant.
What it cuts
- Every radio: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, mobile data, NFC, GPS and ultra-wideband, whichever your machine has.
- All networking: ethernet, USB tethering, VPNs, and every other connection your system’s network manager runs.
Coming back
Before cutting anything, going dark remembers what was on. Coming back turns on exactly those things and nothing else, so if Bluetooth was off before, it stays off.
Dark survives a reboot. If you restart while dark, the machine comes back up dark, with nothing reconnecting behind your back, and the switch still knows what to restore.
If the bar isn’t running, the same switch works from a terminal:
~/.config/omarchy/plugins/oniomarchy.godark/godark lightgodark status shows the state of every radio and link, godark dark cuts them, and
godark toggle flips between the two.
What it can’t do
Going dark is honest about its limits rather than claiming more than it can deliver:
- A network connection your system’s network manager doesn’t run can’t be cut this way. Instead of pretending, the panel shows it in red, so you’re never told you’re dark when you aren’t.
- A USB GPS dongle has no off switch it can reach, and stays on. GPS only receives, so nothing leaks while you’re dark, but an app could record your position and send it once you’re back online. Unplug it if that matters.
- A radio turned off by a hardware switch counts as dark, but can’t be turned back on by software. Flip the switch yourself when you come back.
When to use it
Going dark is the bluntest layer: where Tor changes where your traffic appears to come from and MAC randomization changes which device the network sees, this makes sure there’s no traffic at all.
- Opening a file you don’t trust, where nothing should be able to phone home while you look at it.
- Air-gapping the machine while you work with sensitive findings.
- Walking into a space where nothing should be transmitting, without hunting for each radio’s toggle separately.