This month, a lot is happening for people interested in testing different Wayland compositors. A few days after Miracle-WM made some progress toward its first stable release, another new entrant, Niri, released version 0.1.5.
Haven’t heard of Niri? That’s perfectly normal, considering the project is still in its infancy. In short, it is a new scrollable-tiling Wayland compositor heavily inspired by GNOME’s PaperWM extension. And now, let’s see what its latest update has to offer.
Niri 0.1.5 Highlights
Niri 0.1.5’s main focus is on refining animations. The compositor now brings to life many user actions, such as window movement, resizing, and closing through smooth animations.
These enhancements not only make the user experience more visually engaging but also improve the compositor’s functionality. The animations maintain their quality even during screencast blocking.
For those who prefer a more static environment, the new release allows users to disable or tweak individual animations, with guidance on Niri’s wiki page.
In addition to aesthetic improvements, Niri 0.1.5 introduces “spring animations” that are more robust. These have been fine-tuned to clamp values and durations more effectively, ensuring smoother transitions and avoiding unwanted transparency during window bounces.
Another exciting development, still in the basic stages, is the support for Variable Refresh Rate (VRR), which aims to enhance the smoothness of animations on compatible displays. Users can enable this feature through the output config settings.
On the technical side, improvements to the Niri messaging system include new commands that enhance compatibility checks and error handling, which are essential for developers and power users who rely on scripting and automation.
Lastly, Niri 0.1.5 brings several user-friendly features and bug fixes. These include using spawn key bindings even when the session is locked, restoring previous view positions upon unfullscreening a window, and enhancing touchscreen interactions such as hiding the mouse cursor.
The update includes a refreshed demo video available in the README on Niri’s GitHub repository for those interested in seeing the changes in action. Additionally, check out the release announcement for more information about all novelties in the new version.
