Nearly two months after the previous 0.52 release, Hyprland, a favorite among fans of eye-pleasing tiling window compositors, has just rolled out version 0.53.
The most significant change is the complete overhaul of the window rule system. The syntax has been rewritten from the ground up, making existing configurations incompatible without manual updates.
In light of this, users are required to migrate their rules using the new format documented in the project’s wiki. Alongside this, fullscreen behavior has been reworked, with the previous options replaced by a new unified misc:new_window_takes_over_fs setting that simplifies how fullscreen inheritance is handled.
On the feature side, the release expands configuration and usability options across multiple areas. Keybinding management gains a universal submap flag, enabling more flexible, consistent keybind behavior. Locale configuration is now supported directly, and the group bar can optionally use blur effects.
The renderer adds support for zooming with a detached camera and introduces the quirks:prefer_hdr option to improve HDR activation for affected applications. Tablet users also benefit from a new option to hide the cursor when needed. Tooling has been improved as well, with new flags in hyprctl, enhanced plugin metadata in hyprpm, and better Nix integration.
Moreover, this update fixes a large number of crashes, including startup crashes on FreeBSD, null dereferences in multiple Wayland protocols, compositor crashes related to workspace and surface handling, and rendering crashes under specific scaling and layout conditions.
Input handling has been tightened, too, to avoid incorrect keyboard activation states, cursor inconsistencies, and keybind regressions triggered by scroll events. Rendering fixes address fractional scaling artifacts, HDR and color management issues, and edge cases affecting screen sharing and layered surfaces.
Internally, according to the devs, the compositor has undergone extensive cleanup and restructuring. Reserved area handling has been rewritten and better tested, desktop elements have been unified under a cleaner view model, and window and rule application logic has been simplified and made more predictable.
Animation handling has also been improved, particularly in multirefresh-rate setups, and several long-standing edge cases around grouped windows, fullscreen transitions, and focus behavior have been resolved. Build and CI infrastructure has also been streamlined, with Meson support dropped, CMake detection improved, and Nix workflows simplified.
Finally, localization sees major expansion in this release, with new and updated translations across dozens of languages, including Arabic, German, Finnish, Hindi, Dutch, Russian, Portuguese, and more. Translation quality has also been improved in several existing locales to ensure more natural phrasing and consistency.
For more details, refer to the announcement or review the full changelog.
