Niri

Niri
Initial release	2023-11-26
Status	Active
Operating System	Linux, FreeBSD
Language(s)	Rust, GLSL
License	GNU General Public License v3.0 only
External links
GitHub	YaLTeR/niri
Documentation	Official wiki, niri-flake

Niri is a scrollable-tiling Wayland compositor.

Installation

Simply enable programs.niri:

❄︎ /etc/nixos/configuration.nix

programs.niri.enable = true;

Note: Niri can be enabled without installing a custom flake such as niri-flake. niri-flake is only necessary if you want to use a very recent version of Niri or if you want to write configurations in the Nix language, although as of 2025 this repository is listed near the top in search engines.

⚠︎

Warning: Without #Configuration or #Additional Setup, or in other words after fresh installation, you may unable to launch apps because of missing Alacritty and fuzzel. Press Super+Shift+E to exit Niri and proceed to one of them.

Configuration

The configuration path for Niri is $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/niri/config.kdl. Therefore Home Manager can be used for configuration:

❄︎ ~/.config/home-manager/home.nix

xdg.configFile."niri/config.kdl".source = ./config.kdl;

You might want to start from the default configuration file described at [1].

See the wiki for configuration options for Niri.

Additional Setup

As described in Example systemd Setup (Niri wiki), you might want to set up some additional services including Swayidle, Swaylock, Waybar, Polkit and Secret Service as follows to complement the functionality of a regular window manager. Some of the these settings are also required to enable all the features of the default configuration file.

❄︎ /etc/nixos/configuration.nix

security.polkit.enable = true; # polkit
services.gnome.gnome-keyring.enable = true; # secret service
security.pam.services.swaylock = {};

programs.waybar.enable = true; # top bar
environment.systemPackages = with pkgs; [ alacritty fuzzel swaylock mako swayidle ]

Or using Home Manager:

❄︎ ~/.config/home-manager/home.nix

programs.alacritty.enable = true; # Super+T in the default setting (terminal)
programs.fuzzel.enable = true; # Super+D in the default setting (app launcher)
programs.swaylock.enable = true; # Super+Alt+L in the default setting (screen locker)
programs.waybar.enable = true; # launch on startup in the default setting (bar)
services.mako.enable = true; # notification daemon
services.swayidle.enable = true; # idle management daemon
services.polkit-gnome.enable = true; # polkit
home.packages = with pkgs; [
  swaybg # wallpaper
];

Troubleshooting

IME not working on Electron apps

There is a general workaround to set NIXOS_OZONE_WL as described in Wayland#Electron_and_Chromium:

❄︎ /etc/nixos/configuration.nix

environment.sessionVariables.NIXOS_OZONE_WL = "1";

However, since Niri does not support text-input-v1, sometimes enabling text-input-v3 by manually adding --wayland-text-input-version=3 flag is necessary for IME to work:

slack --wayland-text-input-version=3

Alternatively, if the package supports commandLineArgs, the following may be used instead:

(pkgs.vscode.override {
  commandLineArgs = [
    "--wayland-text-input-version=3"
  ];
});

Installation

Configuration

Additional Setup

Troubleshooting

IME not working on Electron apps

See Also