2.31.0 introduces iRiS, the third panel family, together with its Island,
Themes, Studio, edge-aware Dock and desktop pieces. The release also folds in
the wallpaper, widget, Settings, runtime and installer work completed on
prerelease since 2.30.0.
Added
- iRiS, the third panel family. An Island that lives on a screen edge and turns into whatever you opened, pieces you can carry around, bodies that grow out of what you clicked, and a Studio that edits the whole thing live. It is built for Niri and it is the flagship from here on, so expect it to get most of the love.
- iRiS Themes are whole redesigns, not palettes: 14 curated ones, plus your own as plain JSON files in
~/.config/inir/iris/themes. Save, import, export and share them from Studio or withinir iris theme. A theme never touches what you placed, only how it looks and moves. - The Island goes on any edge. Top, bottom, left or right (
inir iris edge <side>, or drag it there). On a side it stands up as a capsule with a stacked clock and its bubbles above and below, and everything it opens grows inward. - The Dock goes on any edge too (
iris.dock.position,inir iris dockEdge <side|auto>). Auto sits opposite the Island, and if you send one to the other's edge they just trade places. - Pieces that share an edge with the Dock or the Island join them instead of floating on top: the Dock gives them a section of their own after a separator, and the Island carries them as part of its body.
- The Island can also be a full width bar with start, center and end zones (
iris.bar.fullStart,fullCenter,fullEnd) for the Island itself, workspaces, the focused window, the time or any piece. Settings, Island, Bar, orinir iris zone start|center|end kinds+joined+with+plus. - Glass is the iRiS material: the wallpaper, frosted and tinted, behind every body, with text that keeps its contrast on bright wallpapers. Real compositor blur is in there too, labelled as experimental because it is.
- Studio and Settings show what you are changing, with live miniatures and small animated scenes for the Island edge, the bar zones, Light, Fusion, Glass and the Dock. Not a fan? Animated previews in Settings, Appearance, Previews turns them all off.
- Multiple monitors: every output gets its own Island, frame and Dock, while Spotlight, the Dock reveal and editing in place follow the output you are on.
- Desktop widgets get an iRiS face system instead of a second widget backend: glass, transparent, solid and tinted materials, per-widget controls and native faces for the everyday set. Controls and Screen Time join the desktop library too.
- The iRiS wallpaper gallery browses the local library, Wallhaven and live anime scenery with showcase/strip/wall layouts, pinned folders and one-at-a-time muted video previews. Live wallpaper decoding pauses when it is not useful instead of burning through frames under covered desktops.
- iRiS keeps the expensive stuff on demand: inactive Island pages, external Controls, Settings previews and floating bubble bodies are not kept alive just because the family is selected. The family stays feature-heavy without making every feature resident.
- Editorial global style adds a configurable Material-based visual system across Settings, bars, dock, dashboard, sidebars, media, notifications, wallpaper flows, desktop widgets, lock/session surfaces and shared paper components, with separate paper/accent controls instead of one hard-coded treatment.
- Organic Edge brings the Organic audio renderer to screen edges and desktop backgrounds with layout-aware spectrum behavior, configurable placement/composition and dedicated Settings controls.
- Desktop composition tools add a dashboard focus timer, decorative shape/date-badge widgets, Editorial typography compositions and a substantially expanded widget editor for placement, shape, visibility and per-widget controls.
- Optional Kira companion runtime adds the companion shell integration, Settings/IPC controls, expanded JRPG animation profile, locale coverage and safer optional asset-pack delivery.
- Fresh-install experience presets now combine curated desktop compositions, coherent visual styles and explicit graphics budgets so new installs can choose a complete starting point instead of assembling every subsystem manually.
- Kalaallisut (
kl_GL) localization is now available as a complete selectable locale. - Day progress desktop widget shows a borderless instrument ring of 60 minute ticks with quarter hour labels, a comet-tipped elapsed arc and the current time/percentage at the center, with style (ring/arc/ticks), text size, icon, labels and date toggles plus the shared per-role palette.
Changed
- First-run setup is family-aware. The family is chosen before its setup pages; iRiS gets its own Themes, live chassis preview and real Island/Dock placement controls instead of inheriting Material ii profiles and controls that do not own iRiS.
- Settings architecture and search now use the rebuilt Material ii host/navigation model, generated search registry, clearer focus/readability states and consistent embedded/window lifecycle behavior.
- M3 bar layout editing has been rebuilt for clearer module placement and better compression on constrained widths while preserving the existing bar ownership model.
- Localization tooling and runtime switching now separate source coverage from locale parity, improve translations across the shipped catalogs and scope locale discovery to actual translation files.
- Organic audio behavior is more layout-aware across bars and screen edges, follows the active playback sink more reliably and uses less fragment work for edge rendering.
- Runtime work is more demand-driven: resource polling is scoped to visible consumers, countdowns share a second-aligned clock, hidden/reduced-motion widget animations stop unnecessary work and Settings search reuses edit-distance state.
- Default Niri animation timing is slower and more deliberate on fresh/default configurations.
- Fresh CachyOS installs enable
niri-focused-boosterwhen the official package and DMEM cgroup interface are available. Existing installations are left alone.
Fixed
- The iRiS desktop menu stays available with desktop widgets disabled. Turning off the widget canvas no longer removes bare-desktop right-click actions such as Wallpaper, Studio, Search and Settings.
- Update/crash recovery now refreshes Niri-owned session environment from the running compositor and limits
cleanup-orphansto Quickshell processes owned byinir.service, fixing the two failure paths reported in #257. Doctor also surfaces a failed/start-limit shell service with the normal conciseinir logspath instead of requiring full framework logs. - Terminal update completion now captures the real
setup updateexit status without relying onPIPESTATUS, so successful VM updates no longer end with Bash unary-operator errors and a false failure summary. - Uninstall restoration now restores pre-iNiR Kitty and Foot configuration, removes generated terminal theme links safely, preserves a final uninstall backup and removes only iNiR-owned shell integration (#256).
- Niri lock recovery now survives an interrupted Quickshell/session-lock lifecycle without leaving the next shell instance in a broken lock state.
- Niri display Settings no longer write compositor configuration merely by loading the page, persist actual display edits correctly and keep success/error feedback from disrupting the Settings workflow.
- Fullscreen/Game Mode behavior is reactive again: visualizers suspend correctly, Orbit hot corners stay out of fullscreen/game sessions, Overview can reclaim shell navigation, and Ricelin Pill uses the same native Top-layer fullscreen stacking as Dock/Classic/M3 while reserving Overlay only for explicit surfaces, OSD and toasts.
- Dock interactions recover canceled pointer activations and keep previews/context menus stable long enough to interact with them without leaving stale menus behind.
- Bar popups are clamped to their output bounds instead of rendering partially off-screen.
- Wallpaper/network content retries handle booru array responses correctly and retry transient Wallhaven service failures instead of failing permanently on a temporary response.
- Sidebar geometry preserves its bottom navigation rail width and correctly centers the collapsed footer summary.
- Audio visualizer source selection keeps Cava attached to playback sink monitors instead of silently following the wrong PipeWire path.
- Locale discovery no longer treats unrelated JSON files as selectable languages.
Issues / PRs
Update: https://github.com/snowarch/iNiR?tab=readme-ov-file#update
Fresh install: https://github.com/snowarch/iNiR?tab=readme-ov-file#install
Full changelog: https://github.com/snowarch/iNiR/blob/main/CHANGELOG.md