Running the shell

Method

Use compositor autostart as the primary method.

Autostart by your Wayland compositor

This is the recommended method for launching noctalia-shell, as it integrates with your window manager.

For the Niri compositor, add the following line to the end of your configuration file, typically located at ~/.config/niri/config.kdl

spawn-at-startup "qs" "-c" "noctalia-shell"

For the Hyprland compositor, append this line to your configuration file, typically located at ~/.config/hypr/hyprland.conf

exec-once = qs -c noctalia-shell

Important

• Be aware that the command might need to be adjusted based on how you installed noctalia-shell.
• Manual installation: If you installed Noctalia into ~/.config/quickshell/, you can use qs to start it. For keybindings, you must use qs ipc ... instead.

Manual Launch for Debugging

The most direct way to run Noctalia for testing or debugging is to invoke it through Quickshell. Open a terminal and execute:

qs -c noctalia-shell