The development pace had slowed down a little, so I've tagged an alpha release for niri: https://github.com/YaLTeR/niri/releases/tag/v0.1.0-alpha.1
Also made a COPR for the occasion, if you're on Fedora: https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/coprs/yalter/niri/
A month has passed and a number of important additions have landed in niri, so here's a second alpha release: https://github.com/YaLTeR/niri/releases/tag/v0.1.0-alpha.2
Highlights include relative-pointer and pointer-constraints which let Xwayland masterfully handle 3D games mouse look, and popup unconstraining which prevents popups from opening off-screen. I actually made popups place within their window with some padding, which looks quite nice.
Aaahhhhhh another difficult refactor down and niri now does multi-GPU! By which I mean that monitors plugged into secondary GPUs will now light up and work. All the screenshot UI and screencast portal stuff also works just fine. Wouldn't be able to do this as quickly without Smithay's MultiRenderer support and lots of help from @drakulix 😄
I went for the easier strat of always rendering on the primary GPU, but you can also pick render GPU dynamically, which apparently cosmic-comp does, cool!
Tagged niri v0.1.0-alpha.3 with multi-GPU support, borders and other improvements! Multi-GPU was one of the bigger things I wanted to get done before going out of alpha so I guess I'm slowly getting there.
Turns out that if you implement xdg-decoration in your compositor but tell clients that you want CSD, then SDL2 + libdecor clients will break due to a bug. The bug is already fixed, but the fix hasn't made it to any SDL2 release yet, let alone all the runtimes and vendored copies.
Hiding xdg-decoration from clients it is then
I added text rendering to niri using pangocairo, which turned out to be surprisingly simple. It basically "just worked". This unlocks a lot of features, beginning with a hotkey overlay, which should help people get started (suggested by @ju).
I've tagged niri 0.1.0-beta.1 which includes the overlay along with many more improvements: https://github.com/YaLTeR/niri/releases/tag/v0.1.0-beta.1
I'm now happy enough with the feature set so in a week I'll release 0.1.0. Time to finally catch up on other projects I've been neglecting.
Well, I'm happy to release the first stable version of niri, my scrollable-tiling compositor: https://github.com/YaLTeR/niri/releases/tag/v0.1.0
Very satisfied with the current state, even though there's plenty left to do. Took a lot of time and work but I've certainly learned a lot, and I'm glad to have contributed a bit to Smithay too!
Before adding more animations into niri, I'm making a "visual tests" application. It shows a set of hardcoded scenarios which I can quickly go through and visually check that everything looks right.
It uses solid color rectangles as "windows", but otherwise this is the real niri layout code and real niri + Smithay rendering code, drawing to a GTK GL area.
For example, on the last test you can see that my offscreen code currently clips CSD shadows (during the open animation).
The window opening animation is now live as part of niri v0.1.2: https://github.com/YaLTeR/niri/releases/tag/v0.1.2
I'm really looking forward to more animations, but wow they sure do need a lot of care to get right in all the edge cases.
Also, I added a way to programmatically invoke compositor actions, and turns out that's quite useful for making video demos!
Tagged niri v0.1.3: https://github.com/YaLTeR/niri/releases/tag/v0.1.3
This one has much improved touchpad gestures with inertia, springs, rubberbanding and everything else I copied from libadwaita, my primary source for things that feel good 
Also thanks @alice for helping and giving feedback on the gestures and for giving a try to the touch support!
Implemented this idea. It means rendering each monitor 3 times always for the screenshot but maybe it's fine? On this laptop 3 monitors × 3 renders takes 2 ms, and there's some unnecessary blocking I forgot to remove.
On the video, note how for me the screenshot UI has Secrets visible, but on the recording afterwards it's always blocked out.
Amidst all the fires being put out, niri 0.1.4 which can block out windows from screencasts! https://github.com/YaLTeR/niri/releases/tag/v0.1.4
And also gamma control, focus follows mouse, warp mouse to focus, wheel and touchpad scroll bindings, xdp-gnome 46 support.
Also, every single config option is now documented on the wiki! Which took like an entire week of work (even though I was reusing a lot of my previously written docs in the config). Check it out here: https://github.com/YaLTeR/niri/wiki/Configuration:-Overview
Took the whole yesterday and a bit of today, but I've got window closing animations working! These turned out to be tricky because they need storing a snapshot of the surface render tree to draw once the app is gone.
Some apps may start destroying their subsurfaces before the main surface, like alacritty with its sctk CSD, making it very easy to miss parts of the window in the snapshot, and therefore in the closing animation.
Also, windows closing to the left no longer shift the view!
Definitely one of the most complex animations yet: window resizing.
Just the crossfade effect itself took a while to get working with all the window geometries and buffer offsets, and then there's the whole multiple window orchestration with Wayland's asynchronous nature. (I don't do animation transactions yet, that'll be a whole other level of complexity on top.)
Happy with the result though, and it's cool that it seamlessly works with block-out-from screencast.
Window movement across columns is now animated too!
These weren't complex per se, but very *finicky*. Spent quite a bit of time chasing down all the offsets and coordinates to add and subtract to avoid jumps, but it seems to all work well now!
All the animations, plus VRR, today in niri 0.1.5: https://github.com/YaLTeR/niri/releases/tag/v0.1.5
I also remade the demo video to showcase the animations and some of the newer features!
Another tricky feature, rounded corners! Took several days, but I believe I've got a pretty complete implementation.
You (manually) set the window corner radius and whether to force-clip the window. You can set radius per-corner to match GTK 3 apps. It works correctly with subsurfaces, blocked-out windows, transparency, gradient borders, resize and other animations.
Optimization-wise, opaque regions and even overlay plane unredirection work where possible!
https://github.com/YaLTeR/niri/discussions/325Added (stole from GNOME Shell as usual) a screen transition action, so now I can finally switch between dark and light in style
(of course, it works with blocked-out windows)
Okay, time for an actually useful feature: interactive mouse resizing (yes, finally). This was, as it goes, quite fiddly to implement, especially since niri has to negotiate with the window during the process.
I also added a double-resize-click (i.e. trigger a resize twice quickly) gesture to reset the window height or to toggle full width. Suggested by FreeFull on our Matrix and worked out very well! Really starting to feel quite nice with mouse.
(still no transactions yet)
Since I'm in a mouse gesture mood today: hooked up the horizontal touchpad swipe to Mod + middle mouse drag and omg it feels so good with the spring deceleration and all
(of course it also correctly avoids the touchpad scaling, so that when using the mouse gesture, the cursor location is always exactly anchored to the view position)
Now for something fun. I'm experimenting with the ability to set custom shaders for animations. Today I added custom shader support for window-close, which lets me make this cool falling down animation!
This is entirely optional of course, and there's no performance impact if you don't use it. Also, custom shaders, like the rest of the niri config, are live-reloaded, making it easy to play around with them.
Been fixing quite a bit of interactive resize jank and other small stuff since the last time, but also added custom shader support for window-open, thus completing it for all three main window animations (open, close, resize).
Now I didn't actually have any good idea of what I might want in a window open custom shader (I like the default), so I made a simple expanding circle animation to showcase it.
Niri 0.1.6 with interactive window resizing, rounded corners, named workspaces, mouse view scrolling, animation custom shaders, screen transition!
https://github.com/YaLTeR/niri/releases/tag/v0.1.6
Didn't realize quite how many release notes there would be this time; even had to use an extra level of headings. 😅
Over the past few weeks I've been working on fractional scaling for niri. A simple implementation took about a day, but to do it *properly* I had to refactor the entire layout code to work in floating-point.
The result is well worth it though. Borders, gaps and windows are always physical-pixel aligned, and not restricted to integer logical pixel positions. There's no blur or position-dependent +-1 px jank. Fractional-scale-aware clients remain crisp at any scale.
Phew, finished the initial implementation of window screencasting in niri! Complete with stream resolution change on window resizing.
Some details are still iffy regarding frame timing and frame callbacks, especially to obscured windows, but it *should* work decently fine for now.
niri v0.1.7 is out with fractional scaling, window screencasts and many smaller improvements!
Oops, looks like niri had outstarred PaperWM on GitHub 🙈
PaperWM introduced me to (and made me fall in love with) scrollable tiling. It's a solid implementation on top of GNOME, so you get all the benefits of running a stable and well-supported DE (and Xwayland). PaperWM is also a very direct inspiration for many parts of niri!
Implemented the thing where you can toggle the mouse pointer on the screenshot after the fact (by pressing P). Gonna add a help panel here soon to remind you of this.
Much better
key repeat + scrollable tiling = fun
One of the niri users has contributed a gradient interpolation color space setting! Now you can do pretty gradient borders in srgb-linear, oklab and oklch (in all four hue directions).
I made a COPR for git builds of niri: https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/coprs/yalter/niri-git
Apparently this is a thing you can do; relatively easily, even. It's fully automatic, triggers on a webhook from GitHub.
Thanks Michael (my4ng) from our Matrix channel for showing me the relevant docs and doing the initial work!
Spent a better part of today, but I've got dmabuf modifier negotiation fully working in my pipewire screencasting code in niri! This happens to finally fix screencasting on NVIDIA GPUs. Still haven't got any GStreamer pipeline working though, maybe needs a pipewire update.
Apparently, my AMD selects a BGRA format modifier that has two planes. Some out of band info I suppose. And on Intel a preferred BGRA modifier has three entire planes!
My Wayland compositor, niri, turns one today! 
Here's v0.1.8 with bind key repeat, screenshot UI pointer toggle, gradient color spaces, wlr screencopy v3 and output management, and lots of other improvements: https://github.com/YaLTeR/niri/releases/tag/v0.1.8
omg, my friend drew a birthday nirik 
i recorded a demo video for the focus-follows-mouse section to showcase it lol
Several days and a lot of hair pulling later, I *think* I got resize transactions working?? Maybe? Hopefully?
Resize transactions is when all windows that must resize together, resize together, with no mismatching frames in between. For example, all windows in a column must add up to the full screen height.
This requires correct configure acks on the client (looking at you, Blender) and very careful state update delaying and resize throttling on the compositor side.
narrator: there was still one case where it didn't work due to a bug
okay, surely this time it definitely works for all correctly written clients
Here's one mainly for people who disable animations: window closing now runs in a transaction with the other windows resizing. This means, no background flicker.
There's been another logo discussion in the niri Matrix room with some quite interesting concepts emerging. Here's one by Endg4me_ with edits by bluelinden and myself, and inspiration from a concept by ElKowar.
What do you think?
I'm working on an "event stream" IPC for niri where you get notified about events as they happen. For example, "workspace switched" or "keyboard layout changed".
To give it a good test, I actually started implementing native niri support in Waybar. You can give it a try too: https://github.com/YaLTeR/niri/pull/453#issuecomment-2317110904
I finished the initial event stream IPC implementation for niri. My Waybar fork implements a decent amount of the modules niri/workspaces, niri/window, niri/language. Please give that a try, also anyone who makes IPC scripts or bars please give a try to the event stream IPC itself so we can find any design flaws before merging.
The PR you will need: https://github.com/YaLTeR/niri/pull/453#issuecomment-2321730996
Waybar fork is linked from there.
The other day, Christian Meissl finished updating and publishing the libdisplay-info bindings [1]. This is quite exciting because, unlike edid-rs, it can parse the manufacturer/model/serial from pretty much any monitor.
So, today I spend a few hours integrating the manufacturer/model/serial monitor addressing all throughout niri: config, IPC, niri msg, screencast output selector. You should now be able to write/use "SomeCompany CoolMonitor 1234" everywhere!
Set up CI rustdoc publishing for niri-ipc: https://yalter.github.io/niri/niri_ipc/
This has the entirety of the niri IPC documented, including the new event stream events.
While trying to make this work, I realized that this is the time when I *really really* want to be able to test this stuff. So I got on a sidetrack adventure to write testing infra for running real Wayland clients inside unit tests.
I've got it working! In these tests, I'm creating a new niri instance along with test clients, all on the same test-local event loop. No global state, no threads needed.
What's really cool is that this lets me test the weirdest client-server event timings.
This morning I worked on remembering the size for floating windows when they go to the tiling layout and back.
The whole sizing code must be at the top by logic complexity in niri. I have to juggle, all at once:
- new size I haven't sent to the window yet,
- size changes I sent, but window hasn't acked yet (0, 1, or more in-flight),
- size change window acked but hasn't committed for yet,
- size change window acked and responded to with a commit (maybe with a different size entirely).
The diff is 85 lines of change and 243 lines of new tests, and I already found a few weirder edge cases that I've missed. No way I could do this well without that client-server testing setup that I posted about yesterday.
Btw I pushed the testing setup if you're curious, along with the entirety of 1215 snapshot files for a powerset of new window workspace/output target settings: https://github.com/YaLTeR/niri/commit/771ea1e81557ffe7af9cbdbec161601575b64d81
The WIP floating branch caused them to update in several commits already.
The big 1215 snapshot test powerset (actually it already grew to 1695) continues to prove its worth. Just finished a big +495 -508 cleanup of the window opening code, and verified that not a single of those 1215 window opening configurations changed its outcome. I will be sleeping well tonight
After three weeks of hard work, I am undrafting the floating window PR in niri. Please give it thorough testing and report any bugs or issues!
I spent today figuring out the remaining layer-shell keyboard focus problems, and I've got it all working! Pop-ups now render above windows, and bottom/background layers can receive on-demand focus.
Effectively, this makes the desktop icons components from @LXQt or @xfce just work on niri!
Alright, I think I got all of the important things in for the next niri release. Today I updated Smithay for the DRM compositor changes, and added a workaround for a panic when you have two monitors with exactly matching make/model/serial.
I'll give it a week of testing (if you run niri-git, please report any problems) and if all goes well, tag next Saturday.
There are a few PRs I'll try to review in time, but they're fairly self contained.
After a full day of writing release notes (god how'd it take so long 😫), niri v25.01 is out with Floating Windows and Working Layer-Shell Desktop Icons and Layer-Shell Screencast Blocking Out and so many more improvements! Yes, you read that right, we finally escaped zerover! I feel that niri is now ready to graduate from v0.1 
Read here and download when your distribution package updates: https://github.com/YaLTeR/niri/releases/tag/v25.01
something odd about these windows
Looking for testing and feedback for server-side shadows: https://github.com/YaLTeR/niri/pull/990
ppl from our niri matrix playing around with the new compositor-side shadows! These screenshots are from @r4hulrosh4n and calops (no fedi)
Added shadow support for layer-shell surfaces!
Though unfortunately layer-shell has no way to signal the visual geometry, so this only looks right if the layer surface doesn't have its own margins.
https://github.com/YaLTeR/niri/wiki/Configuration:-Layer-Rules#shadow
I'm adding tabs to niri. Instead of some separate mode, they're just changing how a column is displayed. This means all your hotkeys and everything works exactly the same with tabs. Which was a wonderful UX idea by @elkowar!
I've got a draft PR going with some design and UX questions, please feel free to try it and give feedback: https://github.com/YaLTeR/niri/pull/1085
A ton of changes in the tabs PR over the past few days. Mainly various options (tabbed display by default, tab indicator position, etc.).
Just finished with a big one: you can now place the tab indicator within the column rather than "outside". This is needed for thicker tab bars, since otherwise they overlap adjacent windows.
I merged tabbed columns into niri! Now you can play around with them using your nearest niri-git package. With working animations and all
Noticed tabs can sometimes be useful for comparing windows without taking screenshots. Here for example I'm running the Adw demo from F41 vs. nightly Flathub, showing the slight color difference and apparently a 1 px layout shift.
Another cool suggestion by @elkowar: you can now match windows recorded by an active window screencast. For example, to highlight the casted window with a different color.
You can now (finally) customize the important hotkeys list: https://github.com/YaLTeR/niri/wiki/Configuration:-Key-Bindings#custom-hotkey-overlay-titles
@VBB hey, you can use my COPR: https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/coprs/yalter/niri
That'll give you a few utilities like fuzzel (app launcher) and swaylock (screen locker), but no bar and no xwayland-satellite. So you'll still need to do some configuring for a comfortable session (though, everything else will work out of the box, including portals, etc.).
There are some COPRs for xwayland-satellite, haven't tried them: https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/coprs/fulltext/?fulltext=xwayland-satellite
@ryanabx they use the same thing as border and focus ring, which is unfortunately simply a window rule for geometry corner radius. If you don't window rule it, it will assume that the window has square corners. And if you do set a corner radius with the window rule, the shadow will also use the correct corner radius.
A Wayland protocol for toplevels to tell what their CSD corner radius is would be real nice here
@YaLTeR Hell yea, congrats!!
I feel like celebrating leaving zeroVer, when your solution is just fully moving to calver, is... funky lmao
@tbernard I remember you asking if it will work for the window dragging to target the mosaic tiling layout when the window is close enough to a tiling position, and to remain free-floating otherwise.
I tried this in niri at first, but quickly realized it's annoying. When you drag a tiled window, you likely want to put it back to tiling, and vice versa.
I came up with a gesture instead: while dragging a window, you can right click to change whether it "targets" tiling vs. free-floating.
@YaLTeR I'd have to try it, but yeah how to make the tiling/floating switch explicit in a nice way is a bit of an open research question.
I think it needs to be more obvious than a mystery gesture, but you're right that it shouldn't be in the way either. One idea we had at some point was a literal drop area labelled "move to floating", but no idea if that's viable...
@chfkch yeah it's a bit weird; I left a comment about it in a different test.
What I suspect is happening is that since niri sends its configures at the very end of its event loop iteration, it frequently happens that the client receives and processes the roundtrip response right before that configure.
For some reason it happens quite frequently with many threads. I'm not sure what's thread dependent, but two roundtrips should guarantee against this particular problem at least.
Ivan Molodetskikh
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Tau 🏳️🌈
Areskul
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huilong 
Alonely0 🦀 🇪🇺
Doggie 
fluke
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lhp
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Psyhackological
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