Almost three months after its previous 25.02 release, Niri, the scrollable-tiling Wayland compositor, rolls out a new 25.05 version, unveiling many new features and improvements.
The main highlight of this release is the Overview, a zoomed-out mode that fans out every workspace so users can glance at the entire session, shuffle windows across columns, or simply regain their bearings.
Additionally, the compositor now spawns Waybar by default, and the Overview can be summoned via a configurable key bind, the new top-left hot corner, or a four-finger swipe on the touchpad.
Once inside the Overview, familiar shortcuts continue to function, yet pointing devices become markedly more intuitive:
- Mouse: left-drag to move windows, right-drag to scroll workspaces horizontally, and wheel-scroll to hop between workspaces—no modifier key required.
- Touchpad: two-finger scrolling emulates the compositors’ existing three-finger gestures.
- Touchscreen: one-finger scroll or a long press-and-drag to relocate windows.
Moreover, each workspace now has its own backdrop, which zooms out alongside windows and layer-shell surfaces. Administrators can fine-tune backdrop colors globally or per output or place custom layers, such as a blurred wallpaper, within the backdrop itself.
The screenshot tool now respects tablets and touchscreens for drawing selection rectangles and offers a handy capture button in its bottom panel.
Keyboard aficionados also benefit from familiar move-window and resize shortcuts that manipulate the selection region just like a floating window. Plus, a new show-pointer flag determines whether the cursor appears in saved images.
On the notification front, window urgency comes to Niri, complete with customizable border, focus-ring, tab colors, and IPC exposure so status bars can mirror urgency indicators. Users may forcibly toggle urgency through toggle-urgent, set-urgent, or unset-urgent.
Regarding window management, new actions such as focus-monitor and move-window-to-monitor now accept monitor names; column-centric commands (focus-column, move-column-to-index) aid advanced layouts; and move-window-to-workspace --focus=false lets users shuttle a window elsewhere without following it.
Plus, the new center-visible-columns action, a companion to the last release’s expansion binds, visually centers all fully visible columns.
For input devices, settings have expanded to cover tap-and-drag behavior, touchscreen enablement, left-handed trackpoints, custom Mod keys, automatic Num Lock, and additional pointer-warping modes. Niri also supports designating a preferred monitor to receive focus at startup and now centers the mouse there on launch.
Under the hood, a redesigned offscreening pipeline reuses intermediate textures, prunes unnecessary redraws, and applies transparency during interactive moves without incurring previous performance penalties.
The change also eliminates blending artifacts in tabbed-column animations. Furthermore, the infamous red flash while invoking screen lockers is gone: Niri now waits for the lock surface before rendering the locked session.
Lastly, many smaller fixes round out the release—from gesture refinements and crash guards for Smithay updates to cosmetic polish like negative shadow spread and side-aligned floating defaults.
Check out the release announcement for more information about all novelties, where you will also find a few videos showing the new features of the Niri 25.05 scrollable-tiling Wayland compositor in action.
