April 25, 2026
Blur wars and scroll nirvana
Niri 26.04 was just released (scrollable-tiling Wayland compositor)
Niri adds silky blur, fans lose it; Mac crowd copies with OmniWM
TLDR: Niri 26.04 adds long-awaited blur and shifts to a new GitHub home, supercharging its buzz. Comments rave about the scroll-first layout, Mac users tout an OmniWM copycat, and the main gripe is missing drag‑and‑drop between old X apps and Wayland—while Alt‑Tab lovers say it’s already perfect.
Linux’s scroll-everywhere window manager, Niri, just dropped its most-wanted feature: blur—and the comments section went full heart-eyes. Devs shipped two flavors: a super-fast “xray” blur that uses your wallpaper, and a regular blur for purists. Add in a move to a new GitHub org and a fresh 20,000+ stars, and the fandom is feeling unstoppable. One user even called switching from Windows to Niri their best tech decision, loving that windows line up in columns and never rudely resize when new ones open.
But the real drama? Mac users crashing the party. Multiple commenters swooned over OmniWM, a Mac window manager that now emulates Niri’s sideways-scrolling vibe. “Instantly clicked” was the mood, with one saying it made macOS tolerable. Meanwhile, the “Alt‑Tab truthers” are cheering that Niri’s Alt‑Tab now behaves like classic desktops—apparently that was the final boss. The lone thorn: a veteran i3 user says drag‑and‑drop is still missing between older X apps and newer Wayland apps (think: old world vs new world), so some workflows aren’t fully seamless yet. Cue the “Blur 2 when?” jokes, a mini “xray vs real blur” debate, and a whole lot of “my desktop is a runway now” energy. Niri’s not just a tool—it’s a vibe.
Key Points
- •Niri 26.04 adds integrated background blur with both xray (default) and non-xray modes.
- •Blur can be requested via the ext-background-effect Wayland protocol by windows and layer-shell components; several apps/toolkits support it now or soon.
- •For apps without protocol support, blur can be enabled through Niri configuration using window-rule and layer-rule, with per-layer xray toggles.
- •Implementing blur required significant changes, including refactoring Smithay’s rendering pipeline for non-xray blur.
- •Niri moved to a dedicated GitHub organization, added related repos (e.g., awesome-niri, artwork), and surpassed 20,000 GitHub stars.