Decided to try writing a Wayland compositor for fun.
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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.
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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
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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
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something odd about these windows
this is a completely normal screenshot. nothing unusual here
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this is a completely normal screenshot. nothing unusual here
Looking for testing and feedback for server-side shadows: https://github.com/YaLTeR/niri/pull/990
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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)
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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
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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
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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
Why would you even want tabs in niri? Occasionally it's quite useful. For example, when streaming programming, I increase the font size, so I can no longer fit editor + terminal on the screen at once. Scrolling back and forth gets annoying, and tabs feel just right for this.
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Why would you even want tabs in niri? Occasionally it's quite useful. For example, when streaming programming, I increase the font size, so I can no longer fit editor + terminal on the screen at once. Scrolling back and forth gets annoying, and tabs feel just right for this.
We just hit 5000 stars!
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We just hit 5000 stars!
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.
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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.
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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.
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You can now (finally) customize the important hotkeys list: https://github.com/YaLTeR/niri/wiki/Configuration:-Key-Bindings#custom-hotkey-overlay-titles
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You can now (finally) customize the important hotkeys list: https://github.com/YaLTeR/niri/wiki/Configuration:-Key-Bindings#custom-hotkey-overlay-titles
Today in *very long* overdue features (looks like I opened the issue even before v0.1.0): moving the mouse against a monitor edge now scrolls the view during drag-and-drop.
(before this change, you had to use the keyboard for this, and yes it was very awkward)
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Today in *very long* overdue features (looks like I opened the issue even before v0.1.0): moving the mouse against a monitor edge now scrolls the view during drag-and-drop.
(before this change, you had to use the keyboard for this, and yes it was very awkward)
Another neat new thing: a bind to expand column to available width. Basically, "expand to fill empty space".
But, a bit smarter: with scrollable tiling we can have windows partially off-screen. This bind ignores such windows, making it easy to position things to exactly fill the screen, even in the middle of a scrolling layout.
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Another neat new thing: a bind to expand column to available width. Basically, "expand to fill empty space".
But, a bit smarter: with scrollable tiling we can have windows partially off-screen. This bind ignores such windows, making it easy to position things to exactly fill the screen, even in the middle of a scrolling layout.
Today I'm releasing niri v25.02 with tabs, shadows, DnD view scrolling, and a ton of other improvements! Read the release notes at https://github.com/YaLTeR/niri/releases/tag/v25.02 and @ your distro to update the package.
[[honestly wtf how did so much stuff happen, it's been barely over a month]]
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Today I'm releasing niri v25.02 with tabs, shadows, DnD view scrolling, and a ton of other improvements! Read the release notes at https://github.com/YaLTeR/niri/releases/tag/v25.02 and @ your distro to update the package.
[[honestly wtf how did so much stuff happen, it's been barely over a month]]
This is not on main yet, but I've heavily reworked how offscreening works in niri.
Offscreening is when you render a group of elements to a separate texture, then draw that texture to the final render. In niri it's used for window opening and resize animations, and now also for full-tile opacity changes.
Before, it was very simple: every frame create a new texture and render it from scratch. The new code caches textures and does full damage tracking both "inside" and "outside" the offscreen.
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This is not on main yet, but I've heavily reworked how offscreening works in niri.
Offscreening is when you render a group of elements to a separate texture, then draw that texture to the final render. In niri it's used for window opening and resize animations, and now also for full-tile opacity changes.
Before, it was very simple: every frame create a new texture and render it from scratch. The new code caches textures and does full damage tracking both "inside" and "outside" the offscreen.
In practice this means much less texture re-creations and much less redrawing.
The main reason to do this was to unlock using offscreens for more persistent visuals. E.g. it's fine to do some extra rendering for a 150 ms animation, but it's not fine to do it for something that can last seconds or minutes.
In particular, I can finally make windows semitransparent while dragging them in the tiling layout! Which needs an offscreen since it's a stack of border + window + subsurfaces.
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In practice this means much less texture re-creations and much less redrawing.
The main reason to do this was to unlock using offscreens for more persistent visuals. E.g. it's fine to do some extra rendering for a 150 ms animation, but it's not fine to do it for something that can last seconds or minutes.
In particular, I can finally make windows semitransparent while dragging them in the tiling layout! Which needs an offscreen since it's a stack of border + window + subsurfaces.
Still testing this one: a window rule to set the xdg-toplevel Tiled state.
By default niri matches it to prefer-no-csd, because the Tiled state currently happens to be the best way to ask always-CSD windows to square their corners.
With this tiled-state window rule you can override it, for example to get title bars (for easy mouse-only gestures) together with square corners (if you're going for a square style with borders, like mine here). You can also e.g. limit it to tiled windows.
