snowarch/iNiR v2.25.2

v2.25.2 - Performance, polish, process scoping

on GitHub

[2.25.2] - 2026-05-27

Performance and polish release. Boot time dropped ~31% (QML parsing 2.83s → 1.95s) by splitting qs.services into core + deferred modules and deferring 17 singletons past the first frame. The shell now auto-dims when power saving kicks in, launched apps stop showing up as "inir" in task managers, and most UI transitions got the organic morphing treatment — nothing pops in or out anymore.

Added

• MemoryPressureService (#164): self-healing garbage collection for the JSGC heap leak. Monitors RSS at 5-minute intervals, triggers a gc() sweep when growth exceeds 40 MB between samples, and notifies the user instead of auto-restarting — they decide when to restart. IPC target memory for external integration.
• Shell desaturation effect: new Appearance.shellDesaturation token (0.0–1.0) that applies a configurable grayscale effect to all shell panels. Desktop widgets show a visual desaturation when paused by the power manager, so the user can tell at a glance which surfaces are sleeping.
• Widget power management: desktop widgets now pause expensive operations (blur, cava, animations) when compositor windows overlap them. New Settings → Power Saving section in both families lets users control the behavior. WidgetSurface blur layer is gated on visibility to skip offscreen FBO passes entirely.
• Boot greeting screen: a short branded splash on first frame while deferred services load in the background. Fades out once Tier 2 services are ready.
• Shared CavaService (#160): single cava process shared across all visualizer widgets instead of spawning one per widget. Gated on playback state — process only runs when music is actually playing. Drops expensive bitmap fonts from the cava config.
• App process scoping (#167): all apps launched from the shell (ShellExec, AppLauncher, setup recipes, overlay actions) now run inside their own systemd-run --user --scope unit. Mission Center, systemd-cgls, and other process inspectors correctly attribute them instead of lumping everything under inir.service.
• Centralized monitor visibility (#154): Settings → Modules now has a unified panel for enabling/disabling shell surfaces per monitor. Replaces the scattered per-panel visibility toggles.
• Niri xdg-activation focus-stealing fix: migration 027 adds debug { honor-xdg-activation-with-invalid-serial } to the niri config, fixing focus not transferring to newly launched apps. Also baked into defaults for fresh installs.
• Split desktop entries: inir.desktop split into separate entries for the shell session and the standalone settings window, so app launchers show both options.

Changed

• Boot pipeline: services split into qs.services (61 core singletons — loaded immediately) and qs.services.deferred (17 singletons — loaded after first frame). Panel loading uses source: + activeAsync: instead of blocking active:, and four tiers (T0 core, T+0 panels, T+500ms deferred, T+1500ms late) replace the old two-phase boot. Net: QML parsing from 2.83s to ~1.95s, total boot from ~3.2s to ~2.77s.
• Settings UI redesign: category nav rail with animated selection indicator, directional page transitions (slide left/right based on navigation direction), search field morphs into results view, no-results state uses a pill instead of blank space, loading states morph into content.
• Organic morphing pass: overview entrance/exit uses opacity + scale + translate instead of instant show/hide. Alt-switcher active indicators animate between positions. Selection chips, dock dots, taskbar indicators, and the clock hour hand all use squish morphing. Family transitions are now continuous — no frames where both families are visible simultaneously.
• Wallpaper blur gating: blur layer is now disabled entirely when the wallpaper is hidden behind fullscreen windows, and the QML blur pass is skipped when the compositor already provides equivalent blurring. Saves ~30 MB VRAM on average.
• VRAM reductions: blur downsampling factor increased, unused FBO passes eliminated, WidgetSurface blur layer only allocates when both visible and enabled.
• ABI mismatch handling: in service mode, the shell now attempts a noninteractive rebuild before failing, and shows manual instructions when sudo isn't available. Conflicting packages are removed before quickshell-git installs. Doctor shows full build progress during interactive ABI rebuilds.
• Distribution: Fedora 44+ and Debian package lists updated. Arch awww package name corrected. millennium-bin moved to optdepends on the dist path too (already done for inir-shell in 2.25.1).

Fixed

• GTK4 theme parser warnings (#170): CSS generation now uses @define-color custom properties instead of inline color functions. Removed !important declarations and alpha() calls that GTK4's parser doesn't support — no more Broken CSS warnings in the journal.
• Clock second hand missing (#166): secondPrecision was a gate for the smooth-sweep animation, not for showing the second hand at all. The hand now always renders when the clock style includes it; secondPrecision only controls whether it ticks or sweeps. Bar digital clock no longer shows :ss when seconds display is off.
• Launcher apps rendering blurry: GDK_SCALE, QT_SCALE_FACTOR, and related DPI environment variables are now unset before launching child processes. They were inherited from the shell's own scaling and caused apps to double-scale.
• Clipboard layout jump on hover: hovering a clipboard entry caused a layout reflow from the action buttons appearing. Now uses opacity transition without changing dimensions.
• Screenshot Esc key scope: pressing Escape while in the region selector now only closes the screenshot UI, not unrelated background panels that were listening on the same key.
• Image search broken: migrated from defunct SauceNAO endpoints to Bing visual search, fixed curl quoting for URLs with special characters, added upload endpoint rotation for reliability.
• Lock screen memory (#163): waffle lock surface images now set cache: false, preventing Qt from accumulating texture copies across lock/unlock cycles.
• JSGC pressure: reduced garbage generation in lock screen, clipboard history, and settings overlay by avoiding unnecessary property re-evaluations and gating timers.
• Orphaned helper processes: inir stop and service restarts now send SIGTERM to child processes (cava, awww, etc.) that outlived their parent scope. inir doctor --perf extended with orphan detection.
• awww daemon lifecycle: health check switched from socket probe to a lightweight query, daemon started per-display in its own systemd scope instead of a single shared instance.
• Persistent storage first-run: mkdir for the persistent state directory now uses Process.execDetached() instead of blocking the shell on first launch.
• Duplicate Mod+Shift+L keybind (#151): lock and layout-cycle were both bound to the same combo. Layout-cycle moved to a non-conflicting keybind.
• GTK CSS !important and alpha(): removed invalid CSS constructs from the generated GTK3/4 stylesheets that triggered parser warnings in GTK4 apps.

Issues

• Fixes #166, #170.
• Addresses #160, #163, #164, #167.
• Resolves #151, #154.

Closes #160, closes #161, closes #167, closes #154, closes #166, closes #170