Overview

Umbriel is a polished Wayland compositor for daily use, with scrolling and dwindle layouts, per-output workspaces, window rules, blur, shadows, and fluid animations.

It runs independently and can be paired with Noctalia, which provides a first-class desktop shell experience for Umbriel. Umbriel is built in C++23 on wlroots and SceneFX, with Xwayland support provided by xwayland-satellite.

Umbriel is young

It is usable for daily use today, but it is still finding its shape: configuration keys, keybinds, and behavior can change between releases, and you may hit rough edges. We would rather change what feels wrong than promise stability we cannot back yet, so treat current defaults as opinions, not contracts.

Features

• Scrolling and dwindle layouts with per-workspace selection, width presets, animated navigation, and mouse-driven resizing and tiled reordering
• Independent workspaces per output, with hotplug support and configurable modes, positions, scales, and transforms
• Floating, pinned, and fullscreen windows with configurable placement, focus, sizing, opacity, and visual effects
• Per-output scratchpads for temporarily hiding windows, with toggle, move, restore, and focus-next actions targetable at any output
• An animated overview, directional focus, configurable keybinds, submaps, and activation policy
• Blur, shadows, rounded corners, double borders, opacity, and animated position, size, and fade transitions
• Keyboard, pointer, touch, touchpad gestures, XKB configuration, and text-input-v3/input-method-v2 input method support
• Layer shell, session locking, clipboard management, screen capture, output control, and gamma control
• X11 application support through xwayland-satellite
• Live-reloaded TOML configuration with diagnostics and includes, plus local IPC and runtime inspection commands

Configuration reference

Umbriel loads ~/.config/umbriel/config.toml at startup. Config files can include other TOML files, and later files override earlier ones.

ConfigurationGeneral, appearance, layout, and input options.

KeybindsChords, submaps, and Noctalia integration.

OutputsMonitors, workspaces, and per-workspace layout overrides.

Window and Layer RulesMatching, effects, and blur.

Contributing

Umbriel shares its conventions with Noctalia. For general help and design discussion, join the community on Discord.