niri
A scrollable-tiling Wayland compositor that arranges windows on an infinite horizontal strip.
Loved for its scrolling layout, which keeps adding windows to an endless horizontal strip,1234 and for pairing easily with desktop shells like Noctalia and DankMaterialShell.5678 The most common caveat is limited X11 support through xwayland-satellite,91011 and some find its spatial window model hard to adjust to.1213
Why people recommend it
Scrolling layout · 3
Commenters say the unbounded horizontal scroll fits how they think and helps focus.
“recently switched to niri and really, really like it”
“I switched to Niri at the end of last year after over a decade on i3.”
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“I switched to Niri (https://github.com/niri-wm/niri) about six months ago and I find it does wonders for focus.”
Desktop shell pairing · 3
Pairing it with Noctalia or DankMaterialShell gives a status bar, notifications and suspend without extra fiddling.
“I use niri with the “dank material shell” desktop shell and get status bar, notifications, clock, suspend/resume, etc. all “out of the box.””
“I recently switched to niri after bouncing off it about a year ago, and this time it stuck.”
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“I’ve been using Niri with Noctalia for months now, and I’m continuously delighted”
Multi-monitor workspaces · 3
Each monitor gets its own workspaces, which move back when a monitor is reconnected.
“I only switched to it the other week, and was using sway/i3 before then”
“Seems almost like what I want. It's a bit smarter too, I guess I'll give it a try”
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“The past month switched to Niri + DMS and I'm extremely happy”
Smooth and fast · 3
Users describe it as smooth, fast and zippy, including on large external monitors.
“The Wayland window manager Niri is amazing – so smooth and fast, now with alt-tab in the latest release.”
“I run Silverblue with niri and Noctalia Shell and it is very zippy”
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“I use Noctalia with Niri and it's a smooth ride.”
Readable config · 3
Its KDL config is easy to read, reloads on save, and can be as simple or complex as wanted.
“I like niri's approach.”
“Niri on the other hand is as complicated as I want it to be.”
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“I only switched to it the other week, and was using sway/i3 before then”
Replaces tmux · 2
Some users say they no longer need tmux after switching.
“Until I switched to niri (https://github.com/niri-wm/niri) ... since then I haven't used tmux at all.”
“Niri is a perfect window manager approach, in my opinion.”
Caveats and dissent
X11 compatibility · 3
X11 apps need xwayland-satellite, which lacks drag and drop between X and Wayland programs.
“I switched to Niri at the end of last year after over a decade on i3.”
“Especially as I used Niri as the tiling window manager”
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“I use niri, and had to install both Xwayland and xwayland-satellite”
Learning curve · 2
Some users found the spatial window model hard to get used to at first.
“I used Niri on a Framework laptop a few months ago, and it was Okay.”
“I recently switched to niri after bouncing off it about a year ago, and this time it stuck.”
Missing scratchpads · 1
An i3/sway user missed scratchpads and could not stop partially cropped windows from showing.
“I tried Niri but found the following points a little bit uncanny”
Often compared with
3 moved from Sway to niri
1 moved from Hyprland to niri
1 moved from i3 to niri
1 moved from niri to KDE Plasmabspwm3 comments mention both
1 moved from bspwm to niri
2 moved from Windows to niri
Who recommends it in their own words
Threads where it came up
- Niri 26.04 was just released (scrollable-tiling Wayland compositor) 6 mentions
- Moving Back to a Tiling WM – XMonad 4 mentions
- Make Tmux the OS 2 mentions
- Ideas on modernizing the open-source desktop 2 mentions
- Omarchy: Any User Process Can Escalate to Root 2 mentions
- Hyprland 0.55 announced the switch to Lua for its config files 2 mentions
Also written as Niri. Data: niri.json. Quotes are verbatim; the verdict and theme labels are written by a model from these comments, and every clause links to its sources.
All comments 42
“I use Niri and launch Foot terminals all the time as part of my workflow”
“I use Noctalia with Niri and it's a smooth ride.”
“Until I switched to niri (https://github.com/niri-wm/niri) ... since then I haven't used tmux at all.”
“recently switched to niri and really, really like it”
“I use Niri and love it.”
“I use niri with the “dank material shell” desktop shell and get status bar, notifications, clock, suspend/resume, etc. all “out of the box.””
“I have my own opinionated Arch / niri set up”
“niri is so good”
“Niri on the other hand is as complicated as I want it to be.”
“I like niri's approach.”
“A full desktop environment I put together based on niri boots at 1.1 GB of memory.”
“Fedora + Niri + Foot + Podman + Neovim is better with each release.”
“Niri is a perfect window manager approach, in my opinion.”
“I’ve been using Niri with Noctalia for months now, and I’m continuously delighted”
“a niri based opinionated set of configuration on top of CachyOS (or vanilla Arch)”
“I'm using Niri and Noctalia as my desktop setup”
“It's a wonderful environment on 2014 era hardware.”
“Maybe this time I'll try to get Niri running on this desktop.”
“I reported it to niri but it hasn't gotten traction”
“I use Niri as my desktop environment on linux”
“I run Silverblue with niri and Noctalia Shell and it is very zippy”
“Taking Niri as a real desktop example, it's just so good”
“I added a desktop environment based on using niri and Arch Linux.”
“I tried Niri but found the following points a little bit uncanny”
“Seems almost like what I want. It's a bit smarter too, I guess I'll give it a try”
“I used Niri on a Framework laptop a few months ago, and it was Okay.”
“I recently switched to niri after bouncing off it about a year ago, and this time it stuck.”
“I switched to Niri at the end of last year after over a decade on i3.”
“Niri is so good. I've switched to using it about 5 months ago”
“now I am on niri on my desktop. I recommend you to test it out within a virtual machine”
“I switched to Niri (https://github.com/niri-wm/niri) about six months ago and I find it does wonders for focus.”
“What are your thoughts on going even further than Niri?”
“Especially as I used Niri as the tiling window manager”
“I switched to niri a few months ago, and while I like it for the most part, it feels too... busy for my taste.”
“I switched to Niri while waiting for it to happen”
“I use it to navigate Niri”
“As far as I know niri enables direct scanout by default.”
“This only happens to me with niri”
“I use a 4k monitor and the window manager niri”
“niri is great because it gives you the best of all worlds.”
“The past month switched to Niri + DMS and I'm extremely happy”
“I use niri, and had to install both Xwayland and xwayland-satellite”