Three months after its previous 25.08 release, Niri, a Wayland compositor known for its scrollable-tiling layout, where windows are arranged in columns on an infinite strip, rolls out a new 25.11 version, bringing many improvements.
The headline feature is the new Alt-Tab switcher, developed through multiple design iterations. It shows large live previews, fades long window titles, and properly masks windows blocked from screencasts.
Because Niri users often work with many terminal windows, the switcher operates on windows rather than applications, and it uses a debounce delay so that transient focus changes don’t pollute the recent-windows list. It can also scope switching to the current workspace or monitor.
I’m very glad I switched. One of the little improvements: IIRC last time I checked PaperWM didn’t have bindings to set a window to a specified width. It only had a cycle width option. With Niri I have shortcuts to set a window to ¼, ⅓, ½, ⅔, or ¾ of the screen width.
There are lots of other improvements. One of my favorites is the dynamic screen cast target.
Yes, I checked recently, and cycling widths is the only option, currently. Furthermore, there’s no way to set a default initial size, so some of my windows, like my Terminal emu, start at a small size. They’re not unusable, but it sometimes cuts info off, and it would be nice to have them start at a specific size without forcing them to stay that size (i.e. as it does with winprops).
Y’all are doing a good job selling it!