How Is niri This Good? Live Demo + Config
After 25 years of using different environments I landed on niri and generally it's been really good.
Quick Jump:
Sometimes you find a tool that aligns with you so much that it makes you happy to use it. This is how I feel about using niri in my day to day. It’s a scrollable tiled window compositor for Wayland.
Here’s a few things it supports and why I like it:
- Fast, efficient, smooth, flexible, customizable, good docs, creator is helpful
- It checks all of the boxes and runs great on my 2014 hardware
- Scrolling, tiling and floating windows
- Lots of tools / workflows at your disposal to set things up however you want
- Tab groups
- For vertically stacked windows you can optionally toggle them into tabs
- Multiple workspaces (dynamic and fixed / named)
- Dynamic but you can also assign static workspaces and load apps onto them
- Flawless multiple monitor support
- Each monitor gets its own set of workspaces out of the box
- Quickly move windows or workspaces across monitors
- Optimized for the keyboard, mouse and trackpad
- Everything “just works” in the best way possible
- Drag / drop support
- No problem dragging files, images, etc. across apps / browsers, etc.
- Screensharing (full display, specific window, dynamic casting focused window)
- Capture any of the above in recording tools and sites
- It all works great with OBS, Google Meet, Zoom, etc.
- IPC socket for communicating with it programmatically
- Handy for opening, moving, positioning or interacting with windows in tools
- Seamlessly run Wayland and X11 apps through XWayland
- You mostly don’t have to think about it unless a specific app has errors or unexpected side effects, they will launch in their supported way by default but you can override this as needed
Ok, less talk more action. The video below demos using niri and how I have it configured.
# Demo Video
Timestamps
- 1:03 – Fast scaling
- 1:35 – Scrolling
- 3:30 – Tiling on demand
- 4:25 – Workspaces
- 5:33 – ALT-TAB and the overview
- 7:10 – Resizing windows and columns
- 7:45 – Tabs
- 10:09 – Floating windows
- 11:43 – Does it scale?
- 13:41 – Centering windows
- 14:15 – Starting niri with uwsm and spawning apps
- 15:29 – Config inputs
- 16:26 – Auto-reload and validate config
- 16:51 – Behaviors and aesthetics
- 19:52 – Window rules
- 21:27 – Including files (themes, etc.)
- 22:46 – Key binds
- 27:19 – Include device specific files
- 29:47 – It runs well
What do you like or dislike about niri? Let me know below.