Configuration: Miscellaneous

Overview

This page documents all top-level options that don't otherwise have dedicated pages.

Here are all of these options at a glance:

spawn-at-startup "waybar"
spawn-at-startup "alacritty"

prefer-no-csd

screenshot-path "~/Pictures/Screenshots/Screenshot from %Y-%m-%d %H-%M-%S.png"

environment {
    QT_QPA_PLATFORM "wayland"
    DISPLAY null
}

cursor {
    xcursor-theme "breeze_cursors"
    xcursor-size 48

    hide-when-typing
    hide-after-inactive-ms 1000
}

hotkey-overlay {
    skip-at-startup
}

spawn-at-startup

Add lines like this to spawn processes at niri startup.

spawn-at-startup accepts a path to the program binary as the first argument, followed by arguments to the program.

This option works the same way as the spawn key binding action, so please read about all its subtleties on the key bindings page.

spawn-at-startup "waybar"
spawn-at-startup "alacritty"

Note that running niri as a systemd session supports xdg-desktop-autostart out of the box, which may be more convenient to use. Thanks to this, apps that you configured to autostart in GNOME will also "just work" in niri, without any manual spawn-at-startup configuration.

prefer-no-csd

This flag will make niri ask the applications to omit their client-side decorations.

If an application will specifically ask for CSD, the request will be honored. Additionally, clients will be informed that they are tiled, removing some rounded corners.

With prefer-no-csd set, applications that negotiate server-side decorations through the xdg-decoration protocol will have focus ring and border drawn around them without a solid colored background.

Note

Unlike most other options, changing prefer-no-csd will not affect already running applications. This mainly has to do with niri working around a bug in SDL2 that prevents SDL2 applications from starting.

Restart applications after changing prefer-no-csd in the config to apply it.

prefer-no-csd

screenshot-path

Set the path where screenshots are saved. A ~ at the front will be expanded to the home directory.

The path is formatted with strftime(3) to give you the screenshot date and time.

Niri will create the last folder of the path if it doesn't exist.

screenshot-path "~/Pictures/Screenshots/Screenshot from %Y-%m-%d %H-%M-%S.png"

You can also set this option to null to disable saving screenshots to disk.

screenshot-path null

environment

Override environment variables for processes spawned by niri.

environment {
    // Set a variable like this:
    // QT_QPA_PLATFORM "wayland"

    // Remove a variable by using null as the value:
    // DISPLAY null
}

cursor

Change the theme and size of the cursor as well as set the XCURSOR_THEME and XCURSOR_SIZE environment variables.

cursor {
    xcursor-theme "breeze_cursors"
    xcursor-size 48
}

hide-when-typing

^{Since: 0.1.10}

If set, hides the cursor when pressing a key on the keyboard.

cursor {
    hide-when-typing
}

hide-after-inactive-ms

^{Since: 0.1.10}

If set, the cursor will automatically hide once this number of milliseconds passes since the last cursor movement.

cursor {
    // Hide the cursor after one second of inactivity.
    hide-after-inactive-ms 1000
}

hotkey-overlay

Settings for the "Important Hotkeys" overlay.

Set the skip-at-startup flag if you don't want to see the hotkey help at niri startup.

hotkey-overlay {
    skip-at-startup
}