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
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!
POV: GoPro mounted on the xwayland-satellite
Today: added touch support to the Overview. Somehow, the entire thing just worked first try.
After some more fixes, and a long rebasing session, I merged the Overview! Please give it more testing using your nearest niri-git package.
The Eee PC rocking the Overview
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
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
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.
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!
...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
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
Update on ext-workspace:
- sfwbar fixed all outstanding issues!
- the waybar ext-workspace PR also fixed all issues!
- quickshell impl is on the way
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! 
Today I implemented fetching keyboard layout options from org.freedesktop.locale1, used by things like distro installers to configure the layout:
https://github.com/YaLTeR/niri/pull/2052
I guess this is the closest thing to global cross-desktop keyboard layout configuration, so it should also help environments like LXQt integrating niri.
Also recently merged: niri now sets a logind session locked hint, useful for e.g. idle tools that put the PC to sleep, but only once the lockscreen is fully up.
Gathering thoughts on reconciling communities between Matrix and Discord: https://github.com/YaLTeR/niri/discussions/2069
This is a problem I expect we'll face reasonably soon, so if you have some ideas please write in the discussion!
About finished implementing org.fd.a11y.KeyboardMonitor in niri, necessary for correct screen reader function:
https://github.com/YaLTeR/niri/pull/2060
I tested it with Orca more or less, seems to work, but I'm very new to screen reader workings, so it's possible I've missed something.
This makes Orca announce keys everywhere in niri, and makes grabs work (both modifier with double-press passthrough and keystrokes). Making Orca actually say niri dialogs will be a separate effort.
Finally finished making niri screencasts asynchronously wait for rendering completion before handing the buffer over to PipeWire. This fixes screencast flickering problems on NVIDIA setups.
https://github.com/YaLTeR/niri/pull/2175
This is not PW explicit sync; I can now finish that too (OBS and PW released their fixes), but it'll act more as an optimization on top of the current code (since only OBS can use it for now, and not on its Flathub build (PW is too old there)).
Quite comprehensive desktop shell for niri released today: https://github.com/bbedward/DankMaterialShell
Based on QuickShell; made by the same people who started the niri Discord server.
Checking it out now, looks very cool! Though not without a few rough edges to iron out of course
Yesterday dove into one of the older animation jank bugs in niri: quickly resizing a window back and forth would cause adjacent windows to jump. This problem is hard to trigger unless you're specifically trying to (then it's easy), but it was causing "downstream" problems for more complex actions.
The fix was simple enough, but I imagined enough "interesting" cases around it and decided to write a whole bulk of tests. Check this out, all thanks to our layout and clock code!
Merged the "window positions and sizes in IPC" PR. Please test and report if anything's broken or missing, we have time to fix it until the next release.
https://yalter.github.io/niri/niri_ipc/struct.Window.html#structfield.layout
Here's a quick quickshell test I threw together that draws floating windows as rectangles.
Thanks yrkv for getting the PR mostly complete!
With massive thanks to cutenice, we have a new wiki site!!! With good search!
https://yalter.github.io/niri/
Make sure not to miss the new Since: annotations 
The site uses Material for mkdocs, and we retained full compatibility with GitHub Wiki, meaning all existing links keep working.
Also thanks everyone for several suggestions and test wikis in the GitHub discussion!
Rearranged and expanded quite a bit the design principles page on the wiki: https://yalter.github.io/niri/Development%3A-Design-Principles.html
Give it a read if you're curious about my thinking process about various niri behaviors and such
Implemented basic AccessKit integration for niri based on @DataTriny's proof-of-concept. I have little experience with screen readers, and also had several questions, so I would appreciate more eyes and testing on the PR:
Supersedes #2042. Implemented screen reader support for: exit confirmation dialog screenshot UI, overview (it'll just say when these are focused) config parse error announcement workspace swit...
niri v25.08 is now released with a logo, xwayland-satellite integration, basic screen reader support, NVIDIA screencast flickering fix, window positions and sizes in IPC, and many other improvements!
Read the notes here: https://github.com/YaLTeR/niri/releases/tag/v25.08
now i need at least a month off from any release notes preparation 😴
Screen reader announcement demo bc apparently you can't attach video and image at once
Fullscreen refactor pt. 1: track pending vs. current fullscreen state for columns, avoid vertical jump when waiting for window to commit a new buffer.
Fullscreen refactor pt. 2: added un/fullscreen animations. This one involved quite a lot of moving parts actually, so looking for testing.
Fullscreen refactor pt. 3 turned out to be a refactor of a good chunk of core Smithay xdg-shell/layer-shell/session-lock logic, making it more correct. The fullscreen PR in niri now includes that Smithay refactor, and needs testing even more than before 
https://github.com/YaLTeR/niri/pull/2333#issuecomment-3263990200
Specifically, the refactor makes Smithay correctly track the last acked configure for each commit, also enforces the "must ack before committing first buffer" protocol rule.
The first part of the PR splits Column is_fullscreen into is_pending_fullscreen and is_fullscreen() like Tiles always were, and changes the relevant places to use the correct one of the two. This f...
With the fullscreen refactors in place, I got started on the thing that I wanted to do all along: maximize.
Niri didn't support normal Wayland maximize because it's very similar (yet slightly different) to our full-width columns—and can't be bound to our full-width state either. However, after plenty of requests, and thinking about it, I reconsidered. Henceforth, the maximize buttons and double-clicking on the titlebars will do the expected thing.
Details in PR: https://github.com/YaLTeR/niri/pull/2376
My Smithay refactors were merged: the big one mentioned above, plus a fix for popup stacking order (e.g. open popup, then open tooltip also from the toplevel itself), plus a fix for root popup grabs from Qt layer-shell surfaces. All of this along with fullscreen refactors and animations is now merged to niri main. (maximize is still wip)
There's been a long-standing request to add config includes to niri. They're useful for config organization, but also for custom desktop shells to be able to change colors without having to edit the main user's config.
Today I finished the first step towards this: a many-days-long refactor that makes the main config part, layout, mergeable, i.e., able to be combined from multiple parts. And building on this, per-output/workspace overrides.
https://github.com/YaLTeR/niri/pull/2449
Testing wanted here!
Our config system is declarative, rather than command-like, which means that we parse the config into a tree of data types instead of reading lines and applying them one-by-one. This design requires a lot of work to properly support includes, but in turn we get atomic and selective reloading (if output part of the config didn't change, we don't override your transient output adjustments), better error messages and no problems with things like "spawn-at-startup" that should only work once.
After several more days of work, I fully finished config includes. All config sections merge together, live-reloading watches all included files (even if they fail to parse), error messages work across files, documentation is written.
https://github.com/YaLTeR/niri/pull/2482
Once again, this needs testing! There must be NO breakage to existing configs, so if something breaks, I want to know about it to fix it.
I merged config includes, along with per-output and per-workspace layout config overrides. Play around with them at your nearest niri-git package.
- https://yalter.github.io/niri/Configuration%3A-Include.html
- https://yalter.github.io/niri/Configuration%3A-Outputs.html#layout-config-overrides
- https://yalter.github.io/niri/Configuration%3A-Named-Workspaces.html#layout-config-overrides
Also merged ignore-drm-device which should let you passthrough a GPU to VMs: https://yalter.github.io/niri/Configuration%3A-Debug-Options.html#ignore-drm-device
After a detour to config includes and, again, several days/weeks of work implementing all edge cases and expected behaviors, true window maximize is ready and merged to main. Tricky cases like: windows requesting fullscreen and maximize after opening; windows failing to match the full maximized size; transparent windows with the niri border behind them.
https://yalter.github.io/niri/Fullscreen-and-Maximize.html
Give it a try! Ngl I mostly switched to maximize just because I'm too lazy to reach the keyboard for Mod+F.
One cool thing I noticed about true maximize is that apps like GIMP or Inkscape or Blender, that really want all available space, maximize themselves at startup, so you don't have to window-rule them manually in your config
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".
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.
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.
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.
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
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).
Took some fighting but I think I've managed to teach the new Alt-Tab to speak to the screen reader
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.
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
@YaLTeR sad, I would have liked to have it in Mod+LMB but oh well, I understand the use case of multiple monitors
I barely had enough money for one monitor, so I have no idea what it's like to have several
@YaLTeR nice. In my workflow the preference will be to switch by windows, and not applications as well.
However, can you imagine that this is a preference specific to a user cohort, and is not generic for this environment? If yes, then switching by window will make the experience surprising to the rest of users.
Will switching by application be also available on a different (configurable) key combination, maybe Super-(Shift)-Tab?
Or by-window switching to e on Ctrl-Tab and limited to an application windows?
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