niri AlternativesOnly apps categorised as Wayland Compositors

The best Wayland Compositor alternative to niri is Hyprland, which is both free and Open Source. If that doesn't suit you, our users have ranked more than 50 alternatives to niri and many of them are Wayland Compositors so hopefully you can find a suitable replacement. Other interesting Wayland Compositor alternatives to niri are Sway, river, Wayfire and Cardboard (Wayland compositor).

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niri alternatives are mainly Wayland Compositors, but if you're looking for Window Managers you can filter on that. These are just examples - use the filter bar below to find more specific alternatives to niri.
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Alternatives list

  1. Hyprland icon
     46 likes

    An independent tiling Wayland compositor written in C++. Noteworthy features of Hyprland include dynamic tiling, tabbed windows, a clean and readable C++ code-base, and a custom renderer that provides window animations, rounded corners, and Dual-Kawase Blur on transparent windows.

    31 Hyprland alternatives

    Cost / License

    Platforms

    • Linux
    • BSD
    • openSUSE
    • Arch Linux
    • Gentoo
    • Fedora
    • Ubuntu
    • Debian
    • FreeBSD
    • Alpine Linux
    • Slackware
    • Wayland
     
  2. Sway icon
     23 likes

    Sway is a Tiling Wayland Compositor and a drop-in replacement for the i3 window manager for X11. It works with your existing i3 configuration and supports most of i3's features, plus a few extras.

    52 Sway alternatives

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Open Source (MIT)

    Application type

    Platforms

    • Linux
     
  3. river icon
     4 likes

    Wayland compositor featuring dynamic tiling and Master&Stack layout, offering configuration through riverctl tool with tag system for window management, customizable with rivertile and user layout generators, allowing flexible workspace setup without traditional workspaces.

    Cost / License

    Platforms

    • Linux
     
  4. Wayfire icon
     7 likes

    Wayfire is a 3D Wayland compositor, inspired by Compiz and based on wlroots. It aims to create a customizable, extendable and lightweight environment without sacrificing its appearance.

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Open Source (MIT)

    Platforms

    • Linux
    • FreeBSD
     
  5. Cardboard is a unique, scrollable tiling Wayland compositor designed with laptops in mind. Based on wlroots.

    Cost / License

    Application type

    Platforms

    • Linux
    • Wayland
     
  6. SwayFX icon
     3 likes

    Sway is an incredible window manager, and certainly one of the most well established wayland window managers. However, it is restricted to only include the functionality that existed in i3. This fork ditches the simple wlr_renderer, and replaces it with our fx_renderer, capable...

    71 SwayFX alternatives

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Open Source (MIT)

    Application type

    Platforms

    • Linux
    • Arch Linux
    • Gentoo Linux
    • Fedora
    • Nix Package Manager
    • Sway
    • FreeBSD
    • Wayland
     
  7. Japokwm icon
     2 likes

    A dynamic tiling Wayland compositor (forked from dwl) that makes it a breeze to create custom layouts with a simple configuration. 🚀

    Cost / License

    Application type

    Alerts

    • Discontinued

    Platforms

    • Linux
     
  8. mangowc icon
     1 like

    wayland compositor base wlroots and scenefx(dwm but wayland).

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Open Source

    Application type

    Platforms

    • Wayland
    • Linux
     
  9. Miriway icon
     1 like

    Miriway is a starting point for creating a Wayland based desktop environment using Mir.

    Cost / License

    Application type

    Platforms

    • Linux
    • Wayland
     
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