Small change on niri-git for people using the foot terminal with CSD, or other apps that constrain their sizes to a grid: niri will now match the default column width to a preset width when a window opens. So opening foot sized "proportion 0.5" and then pressing Mod+R will switch you to the next preset width, even if foot actually opened slightly smaller to match its terminal grid. Before the change, the first Mod+R would pick the same "proportion 0.5" in this case and "do nothing".

#niri

Also, experimenting with this interaction tweak on a branch: what if dragging tiled windows horizontally scrolled the view instead of dragging them "out"? This makes it possible to scroll the view mouse-only without going through the Overview (the zooming gets quite tiring when it's frequent), and makes it possible to scroll the view touch-only. To drag the window out of the layout, you can still drag it downward.

#niri

Added a small "Quick Start" to the niri docs that gets you going with niri + DMS in three commands:

https://yalter.github.io/niri/Getting-Started.html#quick-start

Tested the Fedora ones on a fresh VM, worked out nicely, getting me into a session with a very functional desktop shell.

#niri

Currently in the middle of finishing up the Alt-Tab PR for niri: https://github.com/YaLTeR/niri/pull/1704

Got most things working as I'd like, though still plenty of fixes and clean-ups left. Fully live window previews with block-out-from support and fading title labels.

There's some interesting design differences compared to other desktops: on niri I expect it's common to have multiple terminals open, so Alt-Tab must go by windows (not by apps) and must show previews big enough to pick the right one.

#niri

We've hit 15k stars on the niri repo!!

#niri

Just merged Alt-Tab to main, shortly arriving at your nearest niri-git. Comes with plenty of ways to tweak it if you want [1], and a focus timestamp in the IPC [2] that lets shell devs make their own recent windows switchers.

[1]: https://yalter.github.io/niri/Configuration%3A-Recent-Windows.html
[2]: https://yalter.github.io/niri/niri_ipc/struct.Window.html#structfield.focus_timestamp

#niri

Did some work on the TTY backend in niri over the past few days. Merged PR for DisplayLink dock support, added "panel orientation" property read, and, based on cosmic-comp code, implemented the necessary logic to avoid screen blanking. Finally, both at niri startup and when switching TTYs, your screen won't flicker, as long as resolution/refresh rate stay the same.

Even when the screen does blank, it'll go faster, as there's now just one modeset instead of two (clear then draw frame).

#niri

Took some fighting but I think I've managed to teach the new Alt-Tab to speak to the screen reader

#niri

I finished and merged the horizontal drag interaction tweak from a previous post. It's very handy but can also be annoying when you want to move windows across monitors, so on mouse I restricted it to headerbar dragging (so, not Mod+LMB and not in the overview).

On touch however, it works for both headerbar dragging, and for Mod+Touch, so you can now easily scroll the view around.

I also added the thing where you can touch with another finger to switch between floating and tiling.

#niri

DankMaterialShell folks set up builds for Debian, Ubuntu and OpenSUSE, so now it's super easy to try niri & DMS on those systems.

I added Ubuntu commands to the niri quick start guide: https://yalter.github.io/niri/Getting-Started.html

Debian and OpenSUSE here: https://build.opensuse.org/project/show/home:AvengeMedia:danklinux

#niri