Decided to try writing a Wayland compositor for fun.
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today's overview progress: some rendering and input fixes, plus implemented built-in hot corner, and workspace switch on drag-and-drop hold. which means that now you can perform an entire drag-and-drop to a different workspace mouse-only!
spent many hours today trying to make the combined exit overview + switch workspace animation monotonic. This is hard because zoom and vertical movement are separate axes, and you can e.g. "catch" one of them with a touchpad gesture, while the other must continue animating (so you can't easily convert this into rect interpolation).
Ended up working out a correction formula for the workspace Y positions when both axes have matching animations. Appears to behave so far from my testing
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spent many hours today trying to make the combined exit overview + switch workspace animation monotonic. This is hard because zoom and vertical movement are separate axes, and you can e.g. "catch" one of them with a touchpad gesture, while the other must continue animating (so you can't easily convert this into rect interpolation).
Ended up working out a correction formula for the workspace Y positions when both axes have matching animations. Appears to behave so far from my testing
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today I opened a draft PR for the Overview, and request everyone to test it and report issues: https://github.com/YaLTeR/niri/pull/1440
also, today's new overview feature: drag-and-drop into a new workspace between/above/below!
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Today: added touch support to the Overview. Somehow, the entire thing just worked first try.
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After some more fixes, and a long rebasing session, I merged the Overview! Please give it more testing using your nearest niri-git package.
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Ppl naturally want to put something in the Overview backdrop, like a blurred version of the wallpaper (see how popular Blur My Shell is). Orthogonally, some ppl want the wallpaper to be static, rather than move with workspaces (it can be distracting).
I'm not prepared to dive head-first into image rendering and blur shaders yet, so I made it possible to put a layer surface into the backdrop. This enables both of those cases, likely even more cool things!
https://github.com/YaLTeR/niri/wiki/Overview#backdrop-customization
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Ppl naturally want to put something in the Overview backdrop, like a blurred version of the wallpaper (see how popular Blur My Shell is). Orthogonally, some ppl want the wallpaper to be static, rather than move with workspaces (it can be distracting).
I'm not prepared to dive head-first into image rendering and blur shaders yet, so I made it possible to put a layer surface into the backdrop. This enables both of those cases, likely even more cool things!
https://github.com/YaLTeR/niri/wiki/Overview#backdrop-customization
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Today, screenshot UI updates! Implemented tablet and touchscreen input for area selection (at long last). And, added a small clickable capture button, so screenshots can now be confirmed tablet-, touch-, or mouse-only!
After long 3 months of work, I'm glad to release niri v25.05 with the Overview, screenshot UI tablet and touch support, dynamic screencast target and windowed fullscreen, IPC pick-window and pick-color, window urgency, and lots of other things!
Release notes prepared for your reading pleasure as always: https://github.com/YaLTeR/niri/releases/tag/v25.05
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After long 3 months of work, I'm glad to release niri v25.05 with the Overview, screenshot UI tablet and touch support, dynamic screencast target and windowed fullscreen, IPC pick-window and pick-color, window urgency, and lots of other things!
Release notes prepared for your reading pleasure as always: https://github.com/YaLTeR/niri/releases/tag/v25.05
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Tagged a niri v25.05.1 hotfix, fixing kitty quick access terminal, numlock, and some jank with hidden cursor.
Alright after some much needed rest, I set out to deal with the thing everyone has to bump into when setting up niri: some way to use Xwayland. I am still very much *not* planning to integrate Xwayland directly, but with this PR (and an accompanying xwayland-satellite PR), niri will create the X11 sockets and autostart xwl-s on demand, all out of the box with zero configuration. So, it'll work just like other compositors, but with xwl-s instead of direct Xwayland.
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Alright after some much needed rest, I set out to deal with the thing everyone has to bump into when setting up niri: some way to use Xwayland. I am still very much *not* planning to integrate Xwayland directly, but with this PR (and an accompanying xwayland-satellite PR), niri will create the X11 sockets and autostart xwl-s on demand, all out of the box with zero configuration. So, it'll work just like other compositors, but with xwl-s instead of direct Xwayland.
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In niri v25.05, the screenshot UI learned to respond to some keyboard window movement bindings by moving the screenshot selection. Now it supports several more movement commands, including moving across monitors. It works similarly to a floating window: the selection origin is preserved relatively, and the size is adjusted by the monitor scale difference. Under the right conditions, it'll match a floating window exactly.
Also, holding Space will now let you move the selection origin!
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In niri v25.05, the screenshot UI learned to respond to some keyboard window movement bindings by moving the screenshot selection. Now it supports several more movement commands, including moving across monitors. It works similarly to a floating window: the selection origin is preserved relatively, and the size is adjusted by the monitor scale difference. Under the right conditions, it'll match a floating window exactly.
Also, holding Space will now let you move the selection origin!
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...and now moving also works with on a touchscreen with a second touch
Got this idea from how in osu! you can drag with one finger and press with second/third to "click". -
apparently niri is on the GH trending page today: https://github.com/trending Amidst a sea of LLM repos
Today I implemented most of the ext-workspace protocol [1] in niri. It lets desktop components (i.e. bars) show workspaces and do some basic operations on them.
The two bars with ext-workspace that I know of are sfwbar and xfce4-panel. Unfortunately, I seem to have surfaced several problems in their implementations. I opened issues in sfwbar; would be great if someone took a look from Xfce. Also if there are other clients I missed?
https://github.com/YaLTeR/niri/pull/1800
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Today I implemented most of the ext-workspace protocol [1] in niri. It lets desktop components (i.e. bars) show workspaces and do some basic operations on them.
The two bars with ext-workspace that I know of are sfwbar and xfce4-panel. Unfortunately, I seem to have surfaced several problems in their implementations. I opened issues in sfwbar; would be great if someone took a look from Xfce. Also if there are other clients I missed?
https://github.com/YaLTeR/niri/pull/1800
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Everyone who dislikes GitHub Wiki: I finally made a write-down of my requirements/wishes for a replacement. Please feel free to chime in with suggestions: https://github.com/YaLTeR/niri/discussions/1830
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Update on ext-workspace:
- sfwbar fixed all outstanding issues!
- the waybar ext-workspace PR also fixed all issues!
- quickshell impl is on the wayOut of curiosity, I tried running Orca on niri, and apparently it sort-of works for some apps (I expected nothing to work at all; idk anything about screen readers). However, compared to GNOME Shell, there's quite a few missing or broken things. I documented what I found here: https://github.com/YaLTeR/niri/issues/1904
Is there some "Integrating Orca to Wayland desktops" docs? Like, what the compositor needs to do, who handles the hotkeys and how, etc.
(not actively working on this, just curious)
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Out of curiosity, I tried running Orca on niri, and apparently it sort-of works for some apps (I expected nothing to work at all; idk anything about screen readers). However, compared to GNOME Shell, there's quite a few missing or broken things. I documented what I found here: https://github.com/YaLTeR/niri/issues/1904
Is there some "Integrating Orca to Wayland desktops" docs? Like, what the compositor needs to do, who handles the hotkeys and how, etc.
(not actively working on this, just curious)
Should've done this a while ago, but I finally wrote contributing guidelines for niri:
https://github.com/YaLTeR/niri/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md
With many new users, the stream of issues, discussions and pull requests is quite overwhelming.
You can help! And the contributing guidelines outline the various ways how.I would especially appreciate help reviewing PRs, though I understand it's the more complex task out of these.
Big thanks to people already answering questions and helping others!
