Niri

Niri is a Wayland compositor with an unusual and pleasant idea: windows tile in an infinite horizontal strip of columns. New windows open to the right instead of shrinking everything to fit, and you scroll the strip left and right. Nothing ever gets squeezed — it's tiling without the jigsaw puzzle.

Pick Niri in the installer, or install it later and select the Niri session at login.

Where the config lives

~/.config/niri/config.kdl

Niri uses the KDL format and reloads automatically the moment you save. Check a config is valid before relying on it:

niri validate

Finding your keybinds

Keybinds are in the binds { } block of config.kdl — open it and read them, or:

grep -A1 'Mod' ~/.config/niri/config.kdl

The modifier is Mod (Super/Windows). Niri's shipped defaults follow a left/right mental model — Mod + Left/Right moves focus between columns, Mod + Shift + Left/Right moves the current column, Mod + T opens a terminal, and Mod + Q closes a window — but the well-commented default config is the source of truth for your install.