[HN Gopher] Niri - A scrollable-tiling Wayland compositor
___________________________________________________________________
Niri - A scrollable-tiling Wayland compositor
Author : atlintots
Score : 411 points
Date : 2025-10-03 11:08 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| prein wrote:
| I switched from i3 to Niri a couple weeks ago, and I've been
| super happy with it.
|
| Niri feels like it lines up more naturally with the way I tend to
| use windows and workspaces. I'm working on one project per
| workspace, opening an occasional ephermeral terminal window or
| web browser to the right when I need to reference something or
| run a quick command. My other windows in the workspace aren't
| altered by these new ones, no reflow happens, and then I can
| close it when done.
|
| My only problem with Niri is that now I really want an Ultrawide
| monitor.
| kenanfyi wrote:
| I have a 49" monitor and tried Niri for a while. I had some
| issues regarding Wayland, I believe because of Nvidia and
| stopped using it. I could probably solve them, but I have been
| using X since years and I don't feel switching right now.
|
| Anyway, for that short amount of time I liked most of it on my
| ultrawide monitor. Except when you open just one application,
| it stays on the left-most part naturally and it honestly sucks
| to look at. I have no idea if I could modify the settings to
| launch apps with an offset and eventually occupy the complete
| screen estate. I'm planning to build a new AMD machine and will
| try Wayland compositors again for a longer period of time. Niri
| is my first candidate.
| christophilus wrote:
| You can. You can also center them by default, or toggle
| centering via keyboard shortcut, etc. it's pretty flexible.
| aeon_ai wrote:
| I've seen Niri floating around the conversation, but still find
| myself drawn to Hyprland. There's something about "pagination" vs
| a scrollable compositor that makes things feel much more targeted
| and organized.
|
| I use Omarchy, btw.
| antonyh wrote:
| I avoid anything to do with DHH for his views expressed on his
| blog. I'm sure Omarchy is nice and all, but there are other
| choices without the ethical baggage.
| aeon_ai wrote:
| I'm familiar with DHH's opinions -- Can you elaborate on how
| there are ethical implications/baggage associated with using
| FOSS?
|
| Must we leave the vicinity of people we don't always agree
| with?
| antonyh wrote:
| It's not the FOSS, it's the distribution. As far as I can
| tell everything in that distro is available elsewhere.
| exasperaited wrote:
| I am relaxed about the small potential downsides of not
| being in the vicinity of people who lionize Tommy Robinson.
| dismalaf wrote:
| Right now there's pro "Palestinian" "protests" on the
| streets of the UK celebrating the murder of 2 Jews in
| Manchester... Is that more acceptable than Tommy
| Robinson?
| exasperaited wrote:
| > Right now there's pro "Palestinian" "protests" on the
| streets of the UK celebrating the murder of 2 Jews in
| Manchester...
|
| That is a _disgraceful_ misrepresentation of the facts.
| So much so that it renders replying to any part of your
| point completely impossible.
| dismalaf wrote:
| https://x.com/SFaeze_Alavi/status/1973812507346416121?t=F
| otr...
| exasperaited wrote:
| That is an organised, scheduled protest in London, about
| longstanding actions in Gaza. Why should it stop,
| particularly?
|
| You (with the person who tweeted) are misrepresenting
| both this protest and the opinions of the people who are
| protesting.
| dismalaf wrote:
| People on the ground at many of these protests are saying
| that enough people are celebrating the attack. In London
| they were attacking the police. What % need to support
| the attack before it's a problem?
| fwip wrote:
| A higher % than "some people who hate the protesters say
| they definitely heard it happening."
| aeon_ai wrote:
| https://world.hey.com/dhh/as-i-remember-london-e7d38e64
|
| Is the above the post lionizing Tommy Robinson, or is
| there more full-throated support in X posts somewhere?
| gcoguiec wrote:
| Am I the only one that reads it as "I use monarchy, btw"?
| peyloride wrote:
| If I'm not mistaken, you can have the same workflow with niri.
| You don't need to use "scrollable" feature of Niri, you can
| attach screens to workspaces.
|
| I was a former Hyprland user but after I switch to Niri I
| didn't look back because I think it's kind of having best of
| two worlds.
|
| In my workflow, I have browser on workspace 1, code editor on
| 2, CCTV Viewer on 3 (we have a baby and babysitter so I
| occasionally check them).
|
| In the other monitor, I have slack, terminals etc.
|
| So when I need to switch between browser <-> code (or terminal)
| I can do quickly. Scrollable comes in handy when you need to
| check something quickly; for example you are trying to solve
| something and you need to run some commands in terminal. In
| that case I just open a new terminal next to browser, do my job
| and get rid of it.
|
| Also the Super+Tab view is awesome, you can easily see which
| window is where. Niri also some IPC features so you can find
| window id and make Niri focus to it. This comes handy if you
| use Vicinae (Raycast like launcher for Linux). I can switch
| windows with just using that.
|
| One final note, I highly recommend DankMaterialShell -
| https://github.com/AvengeMedia/DankMaterialShell/ along with
| Niri.
| aeon_ai wrote:
| That's fair -- Basically, you're saying you just add the
| feature of 'scrollable' to any workspace?
|
| DMS looks pretty slick.
| dismalaf wrote:
| I'm also on Omarchy. I use it somewhat like a scrollable
| compositor, in that I open a max of 2 windows, then move on to
| the next desktop, then just scroll through them all. But have
| the option for floating windows or a vertical split when needed
| (to run a command or something). Plus Hyprland is becoming more
| cohesive by the day.
| grimblee wrote:
| I feel the I use Arch btw is fair because with pure Arch you
| actually have to configure things, you know.
|
| But Omarchy is a fully pre-configured distro, there's no flex
| in that.
| aeon_ai wrote:
| I'd consider it just an opinionated distribution of Arch,
| with a lot of flex.
|
| Sure, I think if you disagree with the majority, you'd go
| Arch and rice your own from the base install (lot of folks
| who do), but if not, it's a very streamlined way to get off
| to the races with a community supporting the shared baseline
| 'opinions'
| sivakon wrote:
| Is there a way to run this in Ubuntu?
| __s wrote:
| Yes
| dddw wrote:
| I did it, lotta work. Easier on nix and arch I guess.
| maelito wrote:
| Interested as well. I'm unfamiliar with what it takes, just an
| apt install ?
|
| I'm using Regolith, which is installed in two commands.
| STKFLT wrote:
| I'm not sure what the process is like for Ubuntu, but if you
| just want something Debian-based then PikaOS has prebuilt niri
| ISOs.
| baq wrote:
| I'm basically fullscreen with everything all the time on macos,
| but not in the super-duper-fullscreen mode so cmd-tab/cmd-` works
| predictably. I want this on macos. I know I can't have it on
| macos. I also can't switch to Linux since macos is mandated by my
| employer.
|
| Nothing really to take out of it except that I feel like I'm not
| alone feeling stuck, knowing there are better workflows and not
| being able to do anything about it.
| i_am_proteus wrote:
| You are not alone.
| anotherpaul wrote:
| +1 Fullscreen Mac os but not the "Mac full screen" but normal
| full screen.
| antonyh wrote:
| I hate that I have to hold option everytime I maximise a
| window. All I want is to change the default to stretch windows
| and not use the fullscreen mode at all because of the other
| weirdness it brings.
| baq wrote:
| Rectangle's ctrl-opt-return has been a lifesaver
| Philip-J-Fry wrote:
| Just double click the top of the window? If I'm understanding
| right, that's what you want. I only ever double click windows
| on both Mac and Windows.
| diggan wrote:
| Was long time ago I used macOS in any professional
| capacity, but doesn't it just maximize the height of the
| window, not the width? I seem to recall some UX like that,
| but might have been a different action/button.
| skydhash wrote:
| Mac has a weird windows models based on contents, not the
| display. So the content can "suggest" maximum and minimum
| size when you double click the title bar. it fits within
| the document model (windows are tied to documents while
| the application oversees things, which is why the menus
| are global and closing a window does not exit the
| software).
| emaro wrote:
| Thanks for the insight. I have never thought about it
| that way and it explains the weird behaviors you
| mentioned and also why it works well for people who do
| mostly office stuff. As a dev, I heavily use browser,
| editor and terminal, which don't map as well to the
| document model.
| antonyh wrote:
| Yeah, that it does but I quite like the way it gets
| taller but keeps the width.
| Philip-J-Fry wrote:
| It's the same behaviour as Option + Maximize. Finder for
| example, that grows taller. Terminal for example, that
| goes full screen. My browser also goes full screen.
|
| Seems like the app decides what the behaviour is. But the
| point being it's the same behaviour as the Option +
| Maximize.
| antonyh wrote:
| Never tried a double click, thanks!
| dheera wrote:
| Just switch to Linux ... In Gnome just hit Windows+Right or
| Windows+Left it does exactly what you want. Install some
| Gnome plugins if you want 2x2 or 3x2 or other custom tiling.
|
| I genuinely don't get why so many devs use MacOS when Linux
| is already set up for devs, and the stuff you run in the
| cloud will also run locally with 1/100 the SSH keyboard
| latency.
| atlintots wrote:
| Very often it's not a choice, a lot of companies only let
| developers choose between Windows or MacOS laptops for
| work.
| dheera wrote:
| Sure, but I see a lot of devs who have MacOS as their
| _personal_ laptop and then complain about something in
| MacOS that is a non-issue in Linux.
| ktosobcy wrote:
| Hmm... what do you mean "predictable"?
|
| For me cmd+tab / cmd+` works brilianty - switching to last used
| app/window-of-the-app
| subjectsigma wrote:
| https://github.com/mogenson/PaperWM.spoon
| iLemming wrote:
| I use Yabai on Mac for a WM - it works great with my big
| screen, but I haven't figured out a good workflow for when I
| need to use just the laptop, then it becomes a bunch of spaces
| with one or two windows in each.
| exasperaited wrote:
| I _love_ the full-fullscreen mode for things like VSCode and
| FreeCAD on my 13 " MBP. Never have a real issue with alt-tab
| though I must say I do end up paying attention to it more when
| I am switching between three windows and not in a cyle.
|
| I have tried to get this in KDE Plasma 6 (with a global menu
| bar) and you just can't quite get there, so you have to settle
| for maximised but not full-screen apps, which is annoying.
|
| I understand the difference and the architectural history that
| is that "full-screen" on X/Wayland is essentially a
| kiosk/don't-interrupt-my-game mode, whereas on the Mac it is
| chromeless windows on a virtual desktop that you can't get
| _stuck_ in if you forget the restore keystroke.
|
| But it frustrates me I can't get that.
| gedy wrote:
| You might try Hammerspoon[0] with PaperWM.spoon[1] on macOS.
| This is what I use, and while it has quirks, it works better
| than not having it.
|
| [0] https://www.hammerspoon.org/ [1]
| https://github.com/mogenson/PaperWM.spoon
| tom_ wrote:
| Hammerspoon is quite easy to use, so attempting to cobble
| together your own thing (that does exactly what you want)
| might also be feasible. The documentation is decent and the
| iteration time is short.
|
| It took me about 30 minutes to replicate some
| Windows/AutoHotKey crap that I wrote myself and have been
| using for years, and it wasn't painful.
| incanus77 wrote:
| It's nice, but it doesn't support things like Safari tabs
| properly.
| gedy wrote:
| Yeah the tabs is biggest issue
| wrsh07 wrote:
| I'm pretty much the same fwiw I currently use stage manager and
| double click the top bar of the window to maximize (that's
| different than the green button)
| Gabrys1 wrote:
| don't you just love how many ways of going full screen there
| are in macOS
| wongogue wrote:
| Maximizing and Fullscreening are different modes in all
| operating systems.
|
| I use Niri and it has 3:
|
| 1. Use all width (windows are full height by default) and
| display system bar
|
| 2. Use the entire screen and hide the system bar
|
| 3. Same as 1 but make the app believe that it's in Mode 2
| f311a wrote:
| Give flashspace a try.
| bsnnkv wrote:
| I've been working on porting komorebi to macOS[1] over the past
| month and the scrolling layout[2] works pretty well
|
| It (the scrolling layout) is not exactly the same as Niri
| because the implementation is based on my personal preferences,
| but it does what it's supposed to on both platforms
|
| [1]: https://youtu.be/u3eJcsa_MJk?si=jSbDsAdLWQu0k1lZ
|
| [2]: https://youtu.be/b1yECfF7Qyg?si=VXMbQo0RqtdzuDjG
| sotix wrote:
| Aerospace[0] is by far the best window manager I've come across
| for Mac.
|
| [0]: https://github.com/nikitabobko/AeroSpace
| sprinkly-dust wrote:
| Seconding this, I've used alternatives like Amethyst, and I
| can't disable S.I.P for yabai, but Aerospace fills in that
| missing aspect from Linux when I am in want of it.
| f311a wrote:
| Try flashspace. It's a perfect solution when running apps full
| screen. You just bind your workspaces to keys and they switch
| instantly. Without any animations.
| WhyNotHugo wrote:
| > I know I can't have it on macos. I also can't switch to Linux
| since macos is mandated by my employer.
|
| I've had two employers with dumb rules like this and I just
| worked on a Linux VM running fullscreen on all monitors. It was
| technically macOS, so IT didn't have any issues, and it still
| ran all the security stuff that my employer wanted. At one job,
| my manager even provisioned a VMWare license for this.
| gbuk2013 wrote:
| How does it compare to Sway?
| nagisa wrote:
| Been using sway for many years before moving to niri last year.
|
| Outside of the fundamental window management differences, I
| find that a lot of stuff with niri is easier to make work, or
| just happens to work out of the box. Screen sharing with sway
| was always a problem for me[1], whereas for niri it works great
| (incl. sharing individual windows only[2].) I also found that
| niri is much better at letting hardware go to sleep (which
| saves 10W on my GPU.)
|
| [1]: https://github.com/swaywm/sway/issues/7898 etc.
|
| [2]:
| https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wlroots/wlroots/-/issues/3864
| tamimio wrote:
| I did try it, but hyprland is still the most usable/pretty ratio
| for me, I also use Vicinae launcher (I wish that name is changed
| it's hard to remember) so not sure how that will work with niri.
| atlintots wrote:
| I don't use vicinae, but I just tried it out on niri and it
| seems to work! I might check it out, it looks interesting.
| tamimio wrote:
| Glad to know it works with no issues on niri! And it's great,
| works with raycast extensions too!
| knoopx wrote:
| I'm using vicinae on Niri, no issues at all
| isopede wrote:
| Somebody sell me on these newfangled tiling WMs. I have been
| using basically the same xmonad configuration for 15+ years,
| pretty much updating it only on breaking or deprecated changes.
| What do all these new Wayland compositors have to offer except
| "tiling, but for wayland?"
|
| Does Wayland actually work now? I've tried it every few years for
| over a decade now and every time I ran into showstopper bugs
| (usually on nvidia cards).
| jzb wrote:
| I think "tried it on _what_?" is the question -- which
| distribution, etc.? I've been using Wayland on Fedora for years
| and don't have any complaints. My primary laptop/desktop has an
| Intel graphics chipset, but I've tested it on laptops w/NVIDIA
| and not had problems.
| isopede wrote:
| It's been a few years since I last looked at it, but I've
| tried daily running it probably 4 or 5 times over the last 15
| years. Usually on Arch, but also some Debian/Ubuntu-based
| distros. It's fuzzy now but I've tried probably every NVIDIA
| GPU generation since the GTX 500 series.
|
| I can't remember all the bugs, but I've definitely at least
| encountered all flavors of flickering bugs, stale updates,
| GPU crashes, failed copy and paste, failed screenshares,
| failed videoconferences...
|
| From comments on this thread, it sounds like things have
| drastically improved and its probably time to take another
| look.
| LeFantome wrote:
| The version of NVIDIA drivers that Debian ships with lacks
| explicit sync even now. Pretty much every other distro
| should work though.
| argiopetech wrote:
| In the same boat with you. Not quite the same configuration
| (some version change issues, lost it once in an 'rm' accident
| that followed a symlink to / [I learned that day...] and had to
| start from scratch, rewrote for fun once), but my sole desktop
| from '09 to '23 when I switched to Niri. My reasoning here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45462034
|
| This was on my Bonobo WS (PopOS) w/ 2x NVidia GTX 1080s,
| multiple screens (2 1080p, 1 4k at 2x scaling), etc. No issues
| other than app support.
|
| Highly recommend trying it. Very low barrier to entry.
| diggan wrote:
| Nvidia + Arch + Gnome3 + Wayland user here. I've tried Wayland
| on/off for the last couple of years, and made the switch I
| think late last year sometimes once I stopped seeing very
| obvious bugs/issues. Just about everything works fine nowadays
| in my experience.
|
| Mostly made the switch because Wayland seems to run a lot
| smoother and efficient, especially when it came to Firefox for
| some reason.
| mrweasel wrote:
| KDE, Gnome and others obviously do provide stacking windows,
| but you do get the impression that writing a stacking window
| manager/compositor is just extremely hard to do with Wayland.
| Someone is maintaining a list of compositors[1] and there do
| seem to be a number of stacking ones, they just don't really
| get much attention.
|
| 1) https://www.gilesorr.com/wm/table.html
| wongogue wrote:
| The audience of stacking wms is mainly serviced by the
| desktop environements. Both Gnome and Plasma are bigger than
| everything else combined.
| christophilus wrote:
| This is a scrolling WM (not tiling). I've been using it as my
| daily driver for over a year now, and it's awesome. I never
| liked tiling WMs because I do a lot of web work, and I often
| want a large code editor and a large browser window and a few
| terminals open. I don't like having stuff scrunched into a
| little rectangle, but I _do_ like having all of that related
| stuff grouped in a single workspace. This works perfectly with
| Niri. I can keep my editor in the center, a peek of my browser
| to the right and a peek of my terminal to the left, and easily
| flip between them, resize, stack, etc.
|
| I know it doesn't sound all that interesting, but once I used
| it for a while, I just couldn't go back.
| vergessenmir wrote:
| See my comment above (moved from i3wm) but my spec is
|
| RTX 3090, Pop OS 24.04 (beta), 4K 43" Monitor,
|
| Nvidia cards worked out the box with no problems
| kaffekaka wrote:
| I just setup Asus Rog G14 with nvidia 3060, I was skeptical
| against Wayland but basically got it working straight away with
| only setting drm.modeset (thanks chatgpt?).
|
| So two external monitors working, except if they are daisy
| chained I am logged out when (dis)connecting them. So I use one
| hdmi and one dp over usb-c and it works.
|
| So, not 100% but works better than X for me. Still too recent
| to have seen all the edge cases though.
| spookie wrote:
| Be careful. There are still showstoppers in wayland
| implementations, if you do anything that isn't common for a
| Linux user. Example: I am still unable to change the
| orientation of my drawing tablet.
|
| There are many like this. It mostly works, but it isn't as
| flawless as just using X11 (unless we are talking about
| displays and stuff).
|
| Nvidia works since driver 570.
|
| (Edit: grammar and Nvidia note)
| OtomotO wrote:
| Oh weird, I never had a problem like that with my drawing
| tablet, but then again I dumped Nvidia in 2011 when I
| switched to archlinux fulltime and had to fix my install
| twice because of the drivers not being compatible with the
| latest kernel.
|
| What I still miss is stuff like browser docks in OBS and such
| things that just work in X but are being dragged on for
| multiple years to be supported on Wayland now (CEF thing
| though)
| argiopetech wrote:
| Niri convinced me to give up xmonad. I ran xmonad exclusively for
| 14 years.
|
| Being able to have an unlimited number of windows on a desktop
| (without continually switching the tiling structure) makes them
| collections of topics rather than having multiple desktops
| bounded by what fits comfortably. What used to be a switch from
| the "editor and terminals" desktop to the "browser" desktop is
| now horizontal movement on the current desktop to the related
| browser window (general browsing is on a different desktop).
|
| Really low barrier to entry, works great out of the box. There
| were some wayland teething issues (application support, e.g., no
| Zoom), but nothing that couldn't be overcome (occasionally by
| falling back to X). Most of those have been resolved with time.
|
| Edits: Hardware: 2017 System76 Bonobo WS, 2x GTX 1080, multiple
| screens (4k @ 2x scaling + 2 1080p). PopOS.
|
| I'm running a 1-2 year old build of niri (because it isn't
| broken), so I've not experienced some of the fancier animations &
| etc. others dislike.
|
| I consider cloning and building from source to be low barrier to
| entry if it doesn't involve major setup effort (it
| doesn't/didn't), so I may be biased. Caveat emptor.
| atlintots wrote:
| Niri recently improved it's integration with xwayland-
| satellite, so it's easier to run programs that don't support
| wayland now: https://github.com/YaLTeR/niri/wiki/Xwayland
| argiopetech wrote:
| I'm still running an older version (ain't broke, won't fix),
| but I keep getting recommended the newer versions for
| features. I'll check them out eventually.
| silicon_laser wrote:
| can you paste a link?
| argiopetech wrote:
| I'm away from the computer at the moment, but I believe
| I'm on 0.1.3 [0].
|
| Noting the release notes, it does have many animations
| already enabled (but I have some or all of them disabled
| through config).
|
| I'm not recommending anyone run this in favor of newer
| versions, but it's working for me.
|
| [0] https://github.com/YaLTeR/niri/releases/tag/v0.1.3
| rjzzleep wrote:
| What does xwayland-satellite do that normal xwayland doesn't
| ?
| argiopetech wrote:
| This is addressed on the linked page.
|
| Quote:
|
| We're using xwayland-satellite rather than Xwayland
| directly because X11 is very cursed. xwayland-satellite
| takes on the bulk of the work dealing with the X11
| peculiarities from us, giving niri normal Wayland windows
| to manage.
|
| xwayland-satellite works well with most applications:
| Steam, games, Discord, even more exotic things like Ardour
| with wine Windows VST plugins. However, X11 apps that want
| to position windows or bars at specific screen coordinates
| won't behave correctly and will need a nested compositor to
| run. See sections below for how to do that.
| rjzzleep wrote:
| Kind of interesting about the X11 position issue, since
| that is exactly the issue that I have with Hyprland
| benoliver999 wrote:
| Yes same here but with i3, I ran it for over 10 years but niri
| was just an instant 'aha' moment for me.
|
| I will say, recent builds have a 'mini map' sort of zoom-out
| feature that I quite like - my one critique of niri was that I
| would sometimes get 'lost'.
| ducktective wrote:
| One of the advantages of tilling wm are that every window
| that is run, is visible too. Nothing invisible exists.
|
| But in this "endless horizontal tilling" scheme, the above
| principle would no longer hold, right?
| atlintots wrote:
| That's true, you do end up with some windows hidden or
| partially visible. Niri is still tiling, though, so with
| proper management you can avoid making too much use of the
| infinite strip (though that would defeat the purpose of
| niri).
| argiopetech wrote:
| This seems like a good place to note the "center window"
| keybinding for windows that don't fit well in the screen
| (e.g., 2/3 wide pane next to 2/3 wide pane, or 1/3 pane
| on the right end of the stack next to a full-screen
| pane).
|
| Vastly preferable to having to look at the edge of the
| screen.
| russelg wrote:
| That typically isn't true in practice right? It's fairly
| common to have multiple "desktops" when using a tiling WM.
| ducktective wrote:
| Yes, still on each workspace, everything is visible on
| i3. I wonder how scroll to the right differs from i3's
| tabbed panes.
| squigz wrote:
| I might give Niri a shot at some point, but yes, this is
| my thought too: this is more or less the same as having
| multiple tabbed panes, which enables the grouping GP
| refers to.
| cycomanic wrote:
| I was running i3 and sway foe years and tabbed tiles
| never really clicked for me the same way scrolling did.
| The first time I used a scrolling WM (I tried on of the
| plugins for sway or hyprland IIRC) it was an immediate
| revelation. However the sway/hyprland version were always
| a bit quirky, while niri "just works".
|
| For those on older niri versions I have to say the "zoom
| out" overview feature is definitely worth the upgrade. As
| another poster said it really fixes the one issue on
| scrolling/ tiling wms, which is getting lost.
| argiopetech wrote:
| Newly started applications receive focus, so they're
| visible by default. They are inserted right of the current
| view, so recovering the previous active pane is consistent
| ("left pane" keybinding, or the appropriate gesture).
|
| Things on other desktops are invisible in every WM.
|
| The only difference with niri is the possibility for things
| to be left or right of the current window. Overview helps
| with that, but I know what I expect to be on a specific
| desktop (it's related to the topic) and seldom need it.
| ducktective wrote:
| Like imagine editor is on ws2, you open a terminal to
| /tmp/ to check something quick, it scrolls to the right,
| then jump to ws3 for your file manager and other stuff
| and go back to your editor.
|
| Now you want to access that terminal on /tmp/ again.
| Where was it?
|
| In i3, I just spam-switch workspaces in this case, but at
| least I can find them. With scrollable wms, every ws can
| potentially hold that target app.
| argiopetech wrote:
| It's right of your editor, where it started.
|
| If you have (having had "Editor" focused, and just opened
| "TermT"): Editor | (TermT) | Term |
| Browser (FM) | Term | Browser | etc.
|
| (where pipe delimits a pane and parens are the active
| pane), if you go "next desktop" from "TermT" (the
| terminal at /tmp), that moves you down the stack of
| desktops. Moving up the stack of desktops returns with
| focus on "TermT". You'd then go "left pane" from "TermT"
| to get back to the editor.
|
| The answer (for me) is to think of desktops as topics.
| The terminal on /tmp is with the things that prompted its
| creation. If I needed to check some log output, for
| example, it's with the project that made that log output.
|
| Edit: Note that there's nothing keeping you from stacking
| those terms if you like, i.e., the appropriate keybinding
| goes from the previous to Editor |
| (TermT), Term | Browser (FM) | Term | Browser |
| etc.
|
| where the terms stack vertically in the ribbon of the
| desktop.
| bisby wrote:
| I think they aren't referring to "where does it go?" and
| more being forgetful.
|
| If you have something that would be reasonable to open on
| any workspace because it's ephemeral (they used a tmp
| terminal as an example), and you open it, navigate away
| from it, and then switch workspaces a few time, and then
| get pulled into a meeting or go to lunch, and come back,
| switch workspaces a few more times...
|
| "Where did I leave that terminal, I dont remember where I
| was when I opened it."
|
| In i3wm/sway etc, you can cycle all your workspaces and
| eventually one of them will have it visible. On Niri, as
| you cycle through all your workspaces you may never see
| it because you don't see all the windows in a workspace,
| unless you scroll through the workspace panes as you
| cycle workspaces.
|
| It's not a problem necessarily, but it is something to
| consider. It sounds like this doesn't affect your
| workflow, but it might affect others.
| argiopetech wrote:
| Fair enough. "Overview" [0] presumably solves this,
| though.
|
| [0] https://github.com/YaLTeR/niri/wiki/Overview
| wongogue wrote:
| It has overview. You can see all windows and workspaces
| in a scaled out view of your preference.
| carlhjerpe wrote:
| No, because every tiling WM has multiple workspaces.
|
| But yes, that wouldn't be true, though focus moves to fresh
| windows so it's not an issue.
| WhyNotHugo wrote:
| Tiling window managers have tabs, so not all windows are
| visible.
|
| You can see window titles on the tabs on the tab bar, but
| you can't even see the title of windows which are in a
| split container of a background tab.
| Shebanator wrote:
| Tabs, and workspaces.
| boomskats wrote:
| I drew that once in a github issue and next thing I knew it
| was there! https://github.com/YaLTeR/niri/discussions/352#dis
| cussioncom...
| ryukoposting wrote:
| I've been using i3 for 7 years now, and my immediate response
| to the scrolling thing was "why?" and after reading your
| comment, I'm still trying to understand. As one would expect
| for any tiling wm, the screenshots only show how pretty it can
| be, and don't really illustrate how it helps with productivity.
|
| Would you mind going into more detail on what actually happens
| when you move horizontally? What happens when you have a
| fullscreen editor, then slide over to a half-screen browser? Do
| you only see half the editor, or does the editor get squished?
|
| One thing I desperately want is a tiling wm that is also a
| browser. Like if surf ran a practical engine and was more
| deeply integrated into dmenu.
| jgtrosh wrote:
| The WM has no job being the browser, but yes we should be
| able to run firefox without tabs like it's surf (and stop
| doing part of the WM's job). But you cannot practically do
| that.
| NoGravitas wrote:
| > yes we should be able to run firefox without tabs like
| it's surf
|
| Can't you? You used to be able to show the tab bar only
| when there was more than one tab; I guess that has
| disappeared?
|
| You can do this: Put this code into your userChrome.css
| file:
|
| #tabbrowser-tabs .tabbrowser-tab:only-of-type, #tabbrowser-
| tabs .tabbrowser-tab:only-of-type + #tabbrowser-
| arrowscrollbox-periphery { display: none !important; }
|
| #tabbrowser-tabs, #tabbrowser-arrowscrollbox { min-height:
| 0 !important; }
| argiopetech wrote:
| Zen browser (which is derived from Firefox) does a really
| good job of making this the default (at the expense of
| mainly supporting vertical tab lists, which I've come to
| love).
| prmoustache wrote:
| just open new windows instead of tabs. Or am I missing
| something?
| argiopetech wrote:
| Re. pane size, it's normal tiling behavior. Panes can be take
| the full screen or some percentage (I like 1/2, 2/3, and
| 1/3). If the widths add to 1, both panes fill the screen.
|
| If the widths don't add to 1, there are two possible
| behaviors (configurable). Either the newly focused pane
| adheres to the size of the screen (e.g., scroll right from
| the full screen editor and the half-screen browser is on the
| right border with half the editor visible), or the newly
| focused pane centers on the screen. I prefer the first
| behavior, but I make significant use of the "center pane"
| keybinding.
|
| The Video Demo section in the README gives a pretty good
| demonstration of this behavior in the first 10-15 seconds.
|
| Edit: To add to this thought and address some comments
| elsewhere about losing windows, I use "struts", which show
| _P_ pixels of the panes to the left and right (when they
| exist) of the current view as a visual aid /reminder of where
| I am in the ribbon. These reduce the size of the tiled
| section of the screen and the calculation of pane size
| accordingly.
| cycomanic wrote:
| I was using i3/sway for years previously as well (and some
| awesome, qtile before that). The big difference is window
| size.
|
| Generally I believe most people like to order their
| workspacesroughly by topic, e.g. all work related Windows on
| one, browser or on another, some also do all terminals on
| one... Now with sway/i3 I often found myself in the situation
| where I was e.g. on the "browser" desktop and you read
| something you quickly want to try in, e.g. ipython, or you
| are working on a latex document and want to briefly open a
| PDF. In i3 that would reduce the size of your original
| window, so you end up switching to a workspace (or you
| manually switch to tabbed tiling) for me the mental overhead
| was significantly higher and I was ending up creating more
| and more workspaces just to hold temporary terminals.
|
| This is actually related to why I switched to i3 in the first
| place, I just felt vertical tiling is the only tiling that
| makes sense in 95% of the cases and that just worked best in
| i3. But that comes at the cost that you are limited to only
| 3-4 tiles per workspace (depending on screensize) now in niri
| I have infinite theoretically. Which means I spend less
| mental overhead when I want to open another window (which is
| really thebgoal of tiling wms in my opinion, reduce thinking
| spend on window management)
| ryukoposting wrote:
| Thank you for the explanation! Between your explanation and
| a Youtube video I found of someone using it, I think have a
| grip on the "why" now. Interestingly, it seems like I might
| use i3 a little differently than you did. A single working
| context for me can span many desktops, and I just work in a
| way that keeps my number of concurrent working contexts
| low. I only ever have 1-2 programs on any given desktop,
| and even 2 is unusual. I keep every window in tabbed mode.
| When I need a scratch "thing" (nautilus, terminal, localc,
| whatever) it opens as a new tab. If I need it side-by-side
| with that desktop's primary window, I pop it out using
| mod4+shift+left/right. This accomplishes a similar thing to
| that Niri is getting you, just with different ergonomics.
| It probably helps that I have good habits around closing
| unused tabs / programs.
| cycomanic wrote:
| Yes it seems like you're using i3 quite differently. I
| agree that if you good discipline about opening and
| closing windows in the right workspace/tile i3 can give
| you a more structured layout. I just found for myself
| even if I tried I could not keep the discipline up (I
| doesn't help that I often work on several things at the
| same time).
|
| I think that's the beauty of tiling WMs (and I consider
| scrolling WMs a subset), you can really adjust them to
| suit your work flow even if work flows might be very
| different. In contrast stacking WMs seem to be more a
| lowest common denominator type thing. They work with
| every workflow, but suboptimal.
| WD-42 wrote:
| The only thing I feel like is missing from niri is a scratch
| layer. There are some apps that just don't need to be tiled and
| it's nice to have access to them immediately no matter "where"
| you are. Perfect example is matrix client. If the wife texts me
| I want to become able to pop that sucker up immediately and
| reply, not find the "matrix client workspace". Plus it's tiny
| and doesn't need to be tiled. Same with media players.
|
| Paperwm on gnome has this.
| atlintots wrote:
| In my case I've found niri's workflow quite nice for these
| scratch windows, since every new window opens to the
| immediate left of the currently focused window, and doesn't
| affect the size or tiling of any other windows, they're just
| shifted to the right.
| WD-42 wrote:
| That only works for windows that you would be opening and
| closing, not persistent ones like chat apps or music
| players?
| cycomanic wrote:
| Many of those apps minimise when closed and reopen when
| calling, so often it is not really an issue (although
| it's sometimes annoying that you have to specifically
| tell the apps to exit when you do want to close).
| NoGravitas wrote:
| Yeah, I have been wanting this. The way it works on Sway is
| "okay", but it would be nice to have a floating workspace
| that can be shown or hidden on top of whatever your active
| workspace is. The workaround most people are using seems to
| be a named workspace for scratch.
| argiopetech wrote:
| I put those on the top or bottom desktop, but you could
| create a named workspace ( _scratch_ ) and set up a
| keybinding to navigate to it.
| ibizaman wrote:
| Would this scratch your itch?
| https://github.com/probeldev/niri-float-sticky
|
| I didn't try it myself though. I found it while scrolling
| https://github.com/Vortriz/awesome-niri
| WD-42 wrote:
| Dang that's a nice list
| colordrops wrote:
| Named workspaces bound to specific key combos does that.
| hagbard_c wrote:
| I've been running Xmonad for about 16 years and, having read
| the description and watched the video think I will keep on
| doing so. It looks to me like the cognitive load of the
| horizontally scrolling strip is higher than that of the paged
| approach used by e.g. Xmonad just like it is a lot harder to
| locate a specific section in a vertically scrolling unpaged
| ream of text than in a paged book. Especially on pages with
| many windows - 10 terminals on page 1 is more or less standard,
| 2 large ones stacked in the middle flanked by 4 smaller ones on
| each side - I keep track of which terminal goes where based on
| (among others) location. This works because all 10 of them are
| visible at the same time, it would not work if the display only
| shows one or two of them at a time. Am I missing something or
| is this WM/compositor more suitable to smaller displays which
| can not show all that many windows at the same time?
|
| Of course I also use X11 so this thing would not work for me
| anyway.
| 1337shadow wrote:
| Well it does look beautiful but I don't think I can go back
| to anything that's un-paged neither, after 17 years of dwm.
| Also, just watched a bit of an XMonad demo which reminded me
| how much I love the simplicity of dwm's tiling workflow based
| on having a master window per page (dwm's tag) because it
| completely removed the burden of window management for me
| with barely any configuration, I wonder how I'd do without it
| ... Probably going to try XMonad just to feel the difference,
| maybe I'll like it.
| cycomanic wrote:
| What do you mean by un-paged? I just looked at dwm and I
| don't see that it has anything that other tiling wms don't
| have. Xmonad, i3, sway... all have workspaces/tags.
|
| Niri also has named workspaces, but when I switched to
| niri, I realised I only want named workspaces for very few
| things everything else is just temporary.
| STKFLT wrote:
| > Am I missing something or is this WM/compositor more
| suitable to smaller displays which can not show all that many
| windows at the same time?
|
| IMO smaller screens are where it shines, but you can also
| vertically stack within a column in Niri for similar density
| compared to tiling if you want.
|
| > I keep track of which terminal goes where based on (among
| others) location.
|
| I think this is a pretty nice benefit of Niri actually,
| having a second dimension to work with makes it much easier
| for me to keep track of windows because I can reduce the
| total number of workspaces and instead rely in part of
| relative location to other windows without being forced to
| fit all of them completely on screen. When I don't need my
| full screen real estate I often set up splits so that a
| little bit of the offscreen window is still visible and it
| makes it effortless to remember whats there.
| colordrops wrote:
| Zoom works, it's just janky.
| beala wrote:
| For me, the appeal of i3/sway's model is that by having a
| desktop per topic (eg, one for browser, one for code, one for
| slack, etc) I can instantly jump to the topic I need with a
| single key press. The desktops I assign never change, so it's
| always Super+1 for my browser and Super+4 for Slack. It's all
| muscle memory, and I could do it in my sleep. When I jump to
| that desktop, everything is open and tiled. This was a
| revelation to me coming from MacOS, where I was constantly
| hunting for windows with Cmd+Tab or squinting at thumbnails in
| Mission Control. So I'm surprised to hear that you prefer
| Niri's scroll model, which to me sounds like hunting for
| windows all over again.
| Shebanator wrote:
| Niri has named workspaces, each of which has a scrolling
| model. So you can achieve something very very close to what
| you want.
| jzb wrote:
| I've been running niri for months now on my primary desktop, I
| wrote about it for LWN here: https://lwn.net/Articles/1025866/
|
| "Normal" tiling WMs / compositors just don't work for me, but the
| tiling model does. Before niri, I used PaperWM and GNOME -- but a
| GNOME extension can only do so much. I wish the folks doing
| COSMIC would add scrollable tiling, but unless/until they do I'll
| probably stick with niri.
| rirze wrote:
| Thanks, I wanted to know the difference with COSMIC
| detectd wrote:
| I wouldn't be surprised if the COSMIC folks add it after the
| 1.0 release. There's been a lot of feature requests for it. In
| the mean time, a System76 employee created this unofficial
| extension to let you use other compositors within COSMIC,
| including Niri.
|
| https://github.com/Drakulix/cosmic-ext-extra-sessions
| nylonstrung wrote:
| Cosmic with tiling would be so incredible. I love cosmic and
| that's the one thing I'm missing
| zem wrote:
| cosmic has tiling! that's the main reason i'm using it
| chrchr wrote:
| I also switched from PaperWM to niri, and I was reluctant to do
| it, because I really liked _not_ having to configure several
| different little apps to get a working desktop environment.
| GNOME comes out of the box with an app launcher, a basic
| configuration editor, a screen locker, widgets for controlling
| audio and network, etc. But ultimately, PaperWM was too quirky.
| For example, sometimes PaperWM and an app would disagree about
| what size the app 's window should be, and the window would
| resize itself repeatedly. The vertical sizing never worked very
| well either.
| NatKarmios wrote:
| I'm in a similar situation; I think QuickShell [1] could be a
| compelling option, particularly premade configs for it like
| DankMaterialShell [2] (which is intended for Niri).
|
| [1] https://quickshell.org/
|
| [2] https://github.com/AvengeMedia/DankMaterialShell
| hackerInnen wrote:
| Why all the animations? Not only for this WM, but hyprland, too,
| for example. They are just way too distracting, I don't
| understand why people like them.
|
| Yes, i know they can usually be deactivated, but it's stupid to
| have them as default
| diggan wrote:
| Better that they're there so they can be disabled, rather than
| not there any no one gets any choice?
|
| My pet-peeve is slow animations, as animations can help my
| eyes/attention to navigate to/from areas of the screen, but
| when they're too slow, it's just so damn frustrating that I
| prefer them off. But smooth, fast (nearly invisible) and clean
| animations seems to help me navigate better/focus faster than
| just being eye-candy.
| adamtulinius wrote:
| I think they can be a helpful hint about how things are
| positioned relative to each other.
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| I really like these animations. I can understand your opinion
| but I moved to something like cachyos hyprland and its dotfiles
| really interest me and to me seems like something that __just
| works__ for me and it was very easy to migrate too and I just
| needed to add some software and just change some keybinds and I
| didn't have to modify any hyprland animations on cachy by
| default as I liked it.
|
| Maybe there is a point to have them not be a default but that
| might be a hassle for people like me.
|
| There is a point to be made that maybe cachy and others could
| opinionate it themselves but the stock shouldn't have
| animations but if you know that they can be deactivated easily,
| its definitely a mixed bag of sorts.
|
| Like see neovim, people want to use that software with some
| saner defaults so they use things like lunarvim / nvchad etc.
| but even when I was on omarchy (which I stopped after reading
| https://jakelazaroff.com/words/dhh-is-way-worse-than-i-
| thoug...) neovim with these mods never really worked with LSP
| and so many other nice to have features and other things with
| me (maybe skill issue from my side but there was always one or
| two errors in that neovim and I just prefer micro nowadays, it
| just works)
| amonith wrote:
| > They are just way too distracting, I don't understand why
| people like them.
|
| Simply not all people get so easily distracted... It may be
| signs of mild ADHD.
| prein wrote:
| I used to feel the same way, but I found that I like the
| animations in Niri. It helps me to keep a mental model of where
| everything is located in the infinite strip.
|
| I did change the settings to speed them up significantly, which
| I think is a good middle ground.
| benoliver999 wrote:
| I notice that with niri even people who have never seen
| tiling WMs instantly 'get' it. I think the animations are a
| large part of that.
| talim wrote:
| I usually turn off animations in most applications and WMs, but
| they seem to functionally benefit this window management style
| to help the user orient and recognize where things are relative
| to each other.
|
| Before Niri I used PaperWM on Gnome with animations disabled
| and I found that it actually substantially reduces the
| usability of this sort of workflow for me. I'm not sure how to
| phrase it, but scrolling WMs feel a little more "physically
| grounded" and without the animations it was somewhat easy to
| become briefly disoriented whenever
| scrolling/opening/resizing/rearranging windows, at least once
| you start having 4+ workspaces and several screen widths worth
| of windows on each workspace.
|
| Turning on the animations quickly makes it all snap into place
| and I never have the brief moment of "feeling lost" after an
| operation, so it sees inherently important to this WM style.
| The animations are very fast out of the box and do not feel
| superfluous.
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| I was installing hyprland on cachyos and it seems that cachyos
| had niri as an option too in the calameres installer.
|
| It definitely had caught my attention and I might look at it too
| in the future.
|
| I am really distro hopping and trying out a lot of things
| recently as I have really cut down on the amount of software to
| just zen-browser with bitwarden and ublock origin,signal and
| micro and zed for the most part with some custom zsh script and
| hyprland cachy had a fish shell which looked gorgeous out of the
| box and very very similar to my zsh script but my zsh script
| always had problems with history and what not and it seems that
| they are fixed now so I am very very happy.
| nickjj wrote:
| One thing that was holding me back from trying Niri is its
| configuration was limited to 1 file with no way to override or
| include additional configs which is quite important IMO for
| having 1 main config that you slightly change on different
| devices if you want to make your dotfiles public. For example you
| can have gitignored "local" files on each device to handle
| overrides.
|
| Just the other day the author merged 2 PRs to handle both use
| cases https://github.com/YaLTeR/niri/pull/2482.
|
| It's not in a release yet but hopefully soon.
| atlintots wrote:
| Yes, this feature had been in the works for quite a bit since
| it required non-trivial changes to do it "the right way". Very
| excited to see these changes merged finally!
| ahoka wrote:
| Wow, they have added floating windows. Need to try again!
| vergessenmir wrote:
| Moved onto Niri yesterday after having to reinstall my PopOS and
| it just clicked. Like i3wm did all those years ago.
|
| I can focus for hours on end and spend zero mental energy on
| resizing a window. I had less of that with i3wm but you had to
| always readjust after a few windows were tiled to your workspace.
| That final bit of cognitive overload was removed with Niri.
|
| EDIT: Spec: RTX 3090, Pop OS 24.04 (beta), 4K 43" Monitor,
|
| Niri Installed from cargo build, super easy install, make sure
| you install xwayland-satellite so that you can run VS Code,
| Obsidian, Zoom, Blender and other strictly X11 applications
| evgpbfhnr wrote:
| My only complain about niri is that after a few weeks without
| reboot I end up with ~500 terms open, as I often open a new shell
| to check something, get distracted, and forget about it as it
| scrolls out of the view... (I usually notice at the 400-500 mark
| because this machine starts swapping noticeably, and closing it
| all is a chore that usually ends in pkill without checking...)
|
| Maybe a bit more self discipline would help :)
| desireco42 wrote:
| that is actually dream come true... let's keep everything open
| always :)
| amlib wrote:
| and then you reboot the machine with full session restore
| working (whenever that's available for wayland) and get 500
| terminal windows opening at the same time :)
| desireco42 wrote:
| This is what we all want, to be in control. I am OK to make
| a mess sometimes as long as it is my mess not because of
| magical system. So yeah I would be OK.
|
| Some kind of alert task that would tell you you have window
| open that you didn't visit in days would probably also be
| useful to your point.
|
| I am not against it, just I can see positives in this. This
| is like tmux without tmux.
| noisy_boy wrote:
| I don't use niri but I worked around this problem (feature?) by
| creating a bash script that by default checks if a terminal is
| already open and if so, brings it into focus. Then I attach it
| to my default shortcut to open terminal and then create one
| more shortcut that opens a new terminal every time. So now,
| depending on which shortcut is pressed, I can either keep
| reusing the existing terminal or open a new one. I'm sure we
| can have a script that can do more fancy logic like allowing
| new terminals upto a given number and after that just bring the
| latest one into focus. Plenty of possibilities.
| evgpbfhnr wrote:
| I have a script that allows searching for windows based on
| title; so e.g. if I know I had a shell open in directory X I
| could search for that and jump to it... But in practice I
| quickly have 5+ shells in a directory once I start working on
| something and at this point my script doesn't let me
| differentiate between these easily enough to be useful.
|
| Hmm, perhaps that could be made more interactive and allow
| cycling through these without closing the search overlay...
| I'll give that a try! :)
| jpeeler wrote:
| Wouldn't you have the same problem with changing workspaces?
| Sounds like you can't keep track of anything not currently
| present on the screen, which before the overview was a lot
| harder to deal with. One thing that could help is to create a
| "temporary terminal" keybinding to launch in floating mode so
| you'll never forget to close it. Or create a focus-or-launch
| bind that switches to an existing terminal (tools like Nirius
| can help minimize scripting). The other thing that may help is
| adjusting your struts so you can see that windows exist to the
| left or the right. More of general workflow tip than one
| related to just terminals.
| evgpbfhnr wrote:
| Yes and no; the difference with workspace is that I was
| limited to 0-9 with my old wm, so at some point I'd just run
| out of space and had to close some windows. (well, that, and
| X11 is apparently limited to 256 clients by default and I
| never changed that; but I rarely hit that limit :P)
|
| I do have some struts on the side, but I'm basically always
| juggling with at least 4 or 5 tasks so I always have things
| open; (I'm not using any right now but I do like the "quake
| terminals" temporary term styles... But for the same reason
| it's not always appropriate -- if I didn't close the term,
| it's because I wasn't done with it and mean to get back to
| it...)
|
| I started using niri before the overview, I think that could
| help if I get used to it. But better than overview, what I'd
| want is something always visible like some horizontal
| scrollbar indicator to remind me there's e.g. more than 3
| windows hidden or something. That might be possible to do
| with waybar and a bit of glue parsing the windows list...
| wongogue wrote:
| The latest release exposes information about windows list
| and positions via API. Someone can write a widget for
| waybar or any other bar.
| evgpbfhnr wrote:
| Oh! That didn't exist a few months ago, I need to update
| and do this then :D
| adrianmonk wrote:
| I guess you could do this: echo
| "TMOUT=$(units -t '7 days' seconds)" >> .bashrc
|
| If a shell has been sitting at the prompt for 7 days with no
| input, it's probably OK for it to close. I'm sure it'll be
| wrong sometimes, but it seems less bad than pkill en masse.
| jasperry wrote:
| Does this or any other scrollable-tiling WM remember your
| preferred size of windows per-application? For instance, if I
| open a new Firefox window, I always want it to be the same width
| and full height. If I open a terminal, I want it to be half-
| height and the width I've set for terminals.
|
| Ideally, I'd want to set that in a configuration, so if I made
| adjustments to a window one time it wouldn't change the default
| sizes.
| atlintots wrote:
| Yes, please see this page:
| https://github.com/YaLTeR/niri/wiki/Configuration:-Window-Ru...
| jasperry wrote:
| Wow, very nice. I didn't know how long the project had been
| around, I wasn't expecting it to be this fleshed out.
| exasperaited wrote:
| Every time I read about Wayland compositors, I find myself
| thinking the same thing: don't Wayland compositors have too many
| responsibilities?
| dismalaf wrote:
| Maybe. But X11 was an unmaintainable mess that was mostly
| abandoned by its own devs so we get what we get.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| My understanding is that Wayland compositors have fewer
| responsibilities than _either_ an X11 window manager or X11
| compositor despite doing the job for _both_.
| joshcsimmons wrote:
| Wow this is pretty. Windowing systems were a primary drive for me
| switching to Linux.
| carlhjerpe wrote:
| Niri is currently being "hugged to death", if you want to
| contribute: Donate to Ivan or review others PRs before making
| your own, the project has no commercial backing and he's
| "overloaded" by the projects recent success.
|
| I've been using it for years now and it's obvious that Smithay
| and Niri are high-quality projects, I haven't had any issues
| other than missing features (more of which has become available
| over time).
| squigz wrote:
| Link to support: https://github.com/sponsors/YaLTeR
| rendaw wrote:
| How much does random people reviewing other people's PRs help
| in practice?
|
| As a maintainer I'd still want to review PRs myself before
| merging, no matter how many random people did it before me.
|
| As a contributor, I'd hate for a random with shallow
| understanding of the problem/project to come in and tell me I
| had to change stuff or say my PR's no good, in the chance that
| the maintainer is easily influenced by strong internet
| opinions.
| carlhjerpe wrote:
| Drive-by contributions of all kinds suck for the most part,
| don't contribute if you're not going to do it properly. At
| some point there's got to be more than one person able to
| review PRs (if the project scope mandates it).
|
| Linus Torvalds doesn't review all changes he merges, how do
| you become a comaintainer if not assisting with maintenance?
|
| If you can't review, don't make a PR (or something).
| knoopx wrote:
| I second this, if you are daily niri user, show your
| appreciation, I already did! Here's my personal setup, hope it
| inspires someone to try it https://github.com/knoopx/nix
| 3abiton wrote:
| As a hyprland user, why should I switch to Niri? Is the appeal
| based on the "inifinite windows" feature
| carlhjerpe wrote:
| "written on rust" is one pro, the other is the native
| scrolling thing, I appreciate workspaces with a bit of
| leeway. If you're already on hyprland it'll be an easy switch
| sasvari wrote:
| In that context:
|
| https://github.com/dawsers/scroll
|
| niri concept implemented in sway.
| evertedsphere wrote:
| i tried niri for a few months earlier this year
|
| ultimately it turned out that after years of i3/sway scrollable
| tiling doesn't feel natural at all (and neither do dynamic
| workspaces, but that's less significant). when i resurrected my
| desktop a couple of months into the experiment i found it also
| lagged quite badly on my desktop with an nvidia card (a 3090,
| tried both drivers) and i couldn't be bothered to figure that one
| out so that was the final straw and i went back to sway
|
| i was quite impressed with the level of thought that went into
| the ux and the amount of polish in everything though. it already
| feels like a serious, well-made piece of software, and it's not
| even that old yet
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| I still find it frustrating there's no debian packagers for niri,
| after all these years, but seems to be some for almost every
| other distribution?
| vergessenmir wrote:
| Package situation on anything that isn't Arch (and I think
| Fedora) is pretty rough. I installed it from source. It helps
| that it is a rust application and was up and running in no time
| thesuitonym wrote:
| Neat idea, it's not for me but I see the appeal.
|
| But if I may, I'd like to see just one implementation of a
| vertical bar where the text is rotated, especially if it's going
| to display the time. I mean, I want to see it, but not enough to
| actually _DO_ anything about it.
| ge96 wrote:
| Is there a small icon that tells you the layout so you know which
| way to swipe?
|
| Oh maybe it's just up and down
| atlintots wrote:
| Sorry, I don't understand what you mean. The infinite strip
| extends to the right, so you scroll left-right. Workspaces are
| up-down. If that's what you meant?
| ge96 wrote:
| I just wasn't sure how you'd know where you are if you can go
| in any direction
|
| I suppose if it's built like top-left is 0,0 you could just
| scroll up/left to get to the beginning
|
| If you imagine there are 4 windows and are arranged 2x2 then
| I was thinking you'd have an icon somewhere like
|
| [ ] [*]
|
| [ ] [ ]
|
| So you'd know you're at the top right position
| atlintots wrote:
| You can't go in "any" direction, the infinite strip has a
| fixed height and extends infinitely to the right, so you
| scroll left-right. Then you have workspaces which are
| up/down but they are like separate strips entirely.
|
| Maybe the video of the overview on this page will help:
| https://github.com/YaLTeR/niri/wiki/Overview
| ge96 wrote:
| Ahh okay yeah I watched the 2 min one on the main readme
|
| This does have the dots (vertical position) on the right
| bar
|
| Long as the windows stay fixed, it annoys me how Mac will
| just randomly re-arrange your virtual desktops or
| whatever you call em
|
| I use i3 personally at this time regarding this topic but
| yeah although I used to only care about it because I had
| crappy computers at the time so not having a full desktop
| meant saving 400 MB of RAM at idle for example
| metalliqaz wrote:
| This is the first time I've seen this concept in window
| management. It's pretty cool.
| dinkleberg wrote:
| I was daily driving Niri for a few months a while back and it was
| the first WM that worked nicely OOTB on a big ass ultrawide
| monitor. There is a nice hotkey to center your active window.
| I've found it was quite the hassle on other WMs to work nicely on
| a wide monitor. The traditional split view means nothing is
| directly in front so you're always turning. Or you have to spend
| a bunch of time customizing it to suit the monitor. Niri is the
| way to go in these cases IMO.
|
| That being said, these days I prefer floating windows so I just
| use GNOME.
| lhl wrote:
| I'd previously been giving Hyprland a try, but after lots of
| customization work, there were still a bunch of things I wasn't
| happy with and ended back on GNOME as a "just let me get work
| done" thing (I use multiple workspaces, have always have dozens
| or hundreds of browser windows open, depend on a bunch tray
| extensions). That being said, GNOME just updated versions and
| broke all my extensions _again_ so I 've decided to recommit to
| work on fixing anything that isn't working for my workflow and
| ditching GNOME forever (I was previously much happier on Openbox,
| but well, Wayland).
|
| With this latest go I gave River, QTile, and Niri a try. After a
| bit of swapping back and forth, I've settled on Niri and am
| slowly adding functionality I'm missing.
|
| - I like multiple dynamic workspaces (grouped by function) and
| don't see much point beyond a split or two so Niri worked pretty
| well, and I was able to largely config all the keyboard shortcuts
| to something that made sense to me
|
| - I'm using waybar and swaync for my other DE bits
|
| I've also been using long running Claude Code/Codex in a
| workspace to build a number of custom scripts:
|
| - niri-workspaces - dynamically generate a workspace display on
| my waybar showing windows, activity
|
| - niri-workspace-names - integrate w/ fuzzel to let me rename
| workpaces
|
| - niri-alttab - getting app cycling working in a way that makes
| sense to me, this is a larger project probably if I want live
| thumbnails and the like
|
| - niri-terminal-below - I often want to have a new vertical
| terminal split and it's a bit hacky but works (have to punch out
| a new terminal, then bring it below, and move back if on the
| right side)
|
| I haven't gone through all the docs, done much looking around,
| but one nice thing with these new coding agents is that they can
| just go and do a passable job to tweak as I want.
| atlintots wrote:
| Re: app cycling, you might also be interested in
| https://github.com/isaksamsten/niriswitcher.
| lhl wrote:
| Looks great, thanks for the suggestion!
| uberduper wrote:
| Niri convinced me Scrolling is The Way.
|
| I really want windows to be able to span columns. So if I have 1
| column with two windows and focus on the bottom window then
| create a new window/column to the right, I want that new window
| to be on the bottom half of column 2. I want the window from the
| top of column 1 to stretch across columns 1 and 2. If I again
| create another window/column to the right, that top left window
| should stretch across columns 1-3. So I should have one very wide
| window across the top of the screen and 3 windows across the
| bottom.
|
| I've started playing with this idea in the hyprland hyprscrolling
| plugin but I'm kind of an idiot and don't have much free time
| these days.
| Symmetry wrote:
| I've been happily running xmonad as my window manager from within
| Gnome since (checks git) 2011. Is there a reasonable way to run
| Niri inside one?
| atlintots wrote:
| I'm not sure, but I doubt it. You could try PaperWM [0] inside
| Gnome to get a feel for the scrolling WM workflow, and see if
| it's worth switching to niri proper for you.
|
| [0] https://github.com/paperwm/PaperWM
| bilkow wrote:
| You can run niri from within other DEs, but I'm unsure whether
| it works well for your use-case. From the docs[0]:
|
| "You can also run niri inside an existing desktop session. Then
| it will open as a window, where you can give it a try. Note
| that this windowed mode is mainly meant for development, so it
| is a bit buggy (in particular, there are issues with hotkeys)."
|
| IIRC in this case the Mod key is by default Alt instead of
| Super.
|
| [0] https://yalter.github.io/niri/Getting-Started.html
| xvrqt wrote:
| I love Niri; finally a compositor that has an easy way to inject
| shaders.
|
| Also: - Rust - Great Nix Flake (thx Sodiboo) - Wayland
| squigz wrote:
| What do you mean by shaders?
| wongogue wrote:
| You can write your animations in niri. A shader is a
| basically a program that runs on the GPU.
| stephen wrote:
| I want to use/try Niri, but have been staying on Hyprland from my
| safety blanket of Omarchy [1], and really liking its
| hyprscrolling plugin:
|
| https://github.com/hyprwm/hyprland-plugins/tree/main/hyprscr...
|
| Imo Hyprland should merge this hyprscrolling plugin into the main
| project, and just ship it as the default (only?) layout option --
| it just scales to "more than 4 windows" so much better than
| either of Hyprland's master/dwindle layouts.
|
| [1] I tried vanilla arch + archinstall + sway/niri/etc but really
| couldn't make it work from scratch, vs. the contrast of Omarchy
| which was "wow this all works" :shrug:
| jadbox wrote:
| This also reminds me of Karousel on KDE:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/kde/comments/1f7bq31/also_loving_ka...
| Outnumber7855 wrote:
| Finally Niri getting the love it deserves! It's way better than
| Hyprland in terms of performance and stability. The code is much
| easier to read too (Rust vs CPP).
| tracker1 wrote:
| Have to admit, my first thought seeing the title was, "Really?!
| Do we need yet another tiling, or any desktop/wm?" but after
| seeing this one, I'm genuinely tempted to give it a try.... I've
| been running the COSMIC Alpha/Beta for about 6 months now and
| overall happy with it... but given my display and zoom level (45"
| 3440x1440 @ 125%) I'm mostly pinning a single app left/right
| anyway. This WM approach is pretty close to exactly what I want
| anyway.
|
| I usually have VS Code, Terminal, Web Browser and maybe Email,
| Teams, Discord etc open depending on if it's work or personal.
| While I can't use this at work (Windows), I may give it a shot on
| my personal desktop.
| LeFantome wrote:
| I have one laptop where I use Niri along with COSMIC panel and
| COSMIC term. Niri is amazing.
| gundamdoubleO wrote:
| Love this WM. Been using it as a daily driver for months now and
| couldn't be happier.
| OGEnthusiast wrote:
| Niri is phenomenal. Outstanding example of high-quality software.
| lelorax wrote:
| Would it be possible for something like this to work on MacOS? Or
| does it fall outside of what is possible given the system's
| "configurability"?
| NatKarmios wrote:
| There's this, based on the PaperWM GNOME extension.
| https://github.com/mogenson/PaperWM.spoon
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-10-03 23:00 UTC)