Niri – A scrollable-tiling Wayland compositor

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

A new Wayland compositor called Niri is drawing attention for its “scrollable tiling” model, where each workspace is a horizontal strip of windows you pan across instead of a fixed grid. Long‑time users of i3, Sway, xmonad and Hyprland report that this approach often fits better with workflows that group many related windows per topic, especially on ultrawide displays, praising Niri’s polish, configurability, and improving Wayland support. Critics question the cognitive load of hidden off‑screen windows, the default use of animations, and lingering Wayland/NVIDIA edge cases, while noting that panels, notifications and “scratch” overlays still require separate shells or scripts.

Scrollable-tiling model & workflows

  • Many users say Niri “clicked” after years on i3/sway/xmonad: workspaces become “topics” containing long horizontal strips of related windows (editor, browser, terminals, etc.) instead of a few tightly packed tiles.
  • Common pattern: keep a main app centered, with partial “peeks” of neighboring windows, and quickly open ephemeral terminals/browsers to the side without reflowing the layout.
  • The scroll plus “overview”/mini‑map and subtle “struts” (visible slivers of adjacent windows) help people maintain a spatial mental model.

Comparisons to other WMs

  • Former i3/sway/xmonad users highlight:
    • Less cognitive load from not constantly re‑tiling or adding workspaces.
    • Ability to have “unlimited” windows per workspace while still grouped by topic.
  • Hyprland:
    • Some prefer Hyprland’s paged model and richer floating/split options.
    • Others switched to Niri citing better stability, fewer breaking changes, and a more cohesive scroll-first design than Hyprland’s hyprscrolling plugin.
  • PaperWM:
    • Niri is seen as a more polished, native implementation of the same idea; PaperWM is described as quirkier within GNOME.

Wayland, hardware, and platform issues

  • Multiple reports that Wayland “finally works” well, even with NVIDIA, though some still hit show‑stoppers (sleep/wake multi‑monitor bugs, tablet orientation, screensharing edge cases).
  • Niri is praised for good screen sharing, power savings (letting GPUs sleep), and Xwayland integration via xwayland‑satellite.
  • Packaging is easiest on Arch/Fedora/Nix; Debian/Ubuntu users may need to build from source or use derivative distros.

Features, configuration & ecosystem

  • Appreciated features: floating windows, tabbing/stacking, scratch‑like workflows via scripts, window rules (per‑app sizes/behavior), IPC for external launchers, overview mode, shaders/animations.
  • New support for config includes/overrides makes sharing dotfiles across machines easier.
  • Ecosystem: bars/shells (DankMaterialShell, Noctalia, waybar), launchers (Vicinae, fuzzel), helpers (niriswitcher, niri‑float‑sticky).

Critiques & mixed reactions

  • Some find horizontal scrolling unnatural or worry about “losing” windows; overview and good habits mitigate this but don’t eliminate concern.
  • One user notes ending up with hundreds of forgotten terminals; others see this as a “tmux without tmux” style feature.
  • Animations are polarizing: some see them as distracting fluff, others say fast transitions are essential for orientation in a scrolling layout.
  • A scratch/floating overlay layer (for chat/media) is still a desired first‑class feature.

MacOS and ethics side threads

  • Several commenters lament macOS window management, sharing tools like Yabai, Hammerspoon + PaperWM, Aerospace, and flashspace as partial approximations.
  • Brief debate around an Arch‑based distro (Omarchy): some avoid it due to the creator’s politics; others argue FOSS use should be separable from personal views.