A modular Wayland desktop shell for Hyprland, niri and sway.
One process, twenty-five parts, and every one of them optional.
Website · Getting started · Documentation · FAQ · Compared with other shells · Community
Sylvaris gives Hyprland, niri and sway a bar, a control center, notifications, a launcher, a dock, a lock and login screen and about twenty other parts, drawn in one glassmorphism design. It is written in QML and JavaScript and runs on SylStack, its own Qt Quick runtime in C++, so it is a finished shell rather than a toolkit like Quickshell or AGS. On NixOS every setting is a typed Home Manager option.
From a Hyprland, niri or sway session with Nix, start it once without installing anything:
nix run github:fatumorg/Sylvaris- One process. Twenty-five parts run together on SylStack, Sylvaris's own Qt runtime.
- Only what you enable. A part you turn off is never loaded, and its tools stay off your
PATH. - Three compositors. The same shell runs on Hyprland, niri and sway.
- Scriptable and declarative. Every switch is a
sylvariscommand, and every setting is a typed Home Manager option. - One look everywhere. Themes preview live, and SylSync makes GTK, Qt, terminals and editors follow them.
- Looks, not just colours. Pick Lumen, Classic, Frost, Ink, Neon or Paper to change glass, corners, spacing and type at once, let Sylvaris shuffle them each day, or make a theme from your wallpaper.
|
SylBar glass bar on any edge, or one floating pill SylCenter control center with orbits and bento tiles SylClock live sky, weather, calendar SylNotify notifications as quiet toasts or a fanned stack SylIsland live activities you can control SylDeck dock that hides when windows open SylPad launcher, grid or list SylWidget clocks, notes, now playing and more on the desktop SylPaper wallpapers per theme and screen |
SylSwitch Alt+Tab with previews SylClip clipboard history SylCapture screenshots and recording SylMedia player, equalizer, AirPods SylDiver Diver planner and alarms SylFiles file manager, as many windows as you like SylNotes small editor for notes and code SylViewer images and videos over the desktop SylArchive zip, rar, 7z and tar as folders SylTop task manager with history graphs SylTemp temperatures, with an overlay for games SylPower power menu constellation |
SylSettings every setting, searchable SylTheme themes with live preview SylSync apps follow your theme SylLock · SylGreet lock and login SylPolkit password prompts SylAccessibility zoom and filters SylPlugins your own widgets |
 SylTheme previews the whole desktop before you pick |
 SylSettings with a live preview for every look |
 SylPad and SylSwitch |
 SylDiver, SylClip, SylCapture and SylPower |
 SylWidget places clocks, notes and now playing on the desktop |
 SylTemp shows temperatures in a panel or over a game |
SylLock, and SylGreet looks the same at login
{
inputs.sylvaris.url = "github:fatumorg/Sylvaris";
inputs.sylvaris.inputs.nixpkgs.follows = "nixpkgs";
outputs = { sylvaris, ... }: {
homeConfigurations.me = home-manager.lib.homeManagerConfiguration {
modules = [
sylvaris.homeManagerModules.sylvaris
{
programs.sylvaris = {
enable = true;
bar.position = "top";
deck = { enabled = true; hide = "windows"; };
keybinds = { "switcher next" = "ALT+Tab"; "clip toggle" = "SUPER+V"; };
parts.media = false;
};
}
];
};
};
}Keep the follows line, so the lock screen loads PAM modules built from the same nixpkgs as your system. Every setting is a typed Home Manager option. For the lock screen's PAM service and the SylGreet login screen, also import sylvaris.nixosModules.sylvaris. Every option is in docs/nix.md. Not on Nix? docs/install.md has steps for Arch, Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu, Linux Mint, openSUSE, Void, Gentoo and every other distribution: make builds SylStack, sudo make install puts everything in place.
- Linux with Hyprland (Lua or classic config), niri or sway. GNOME, KDE Plasma, COSMIC and X11 are not supported.
- Qt 6.9 or newer. Distributions with an older Qt, such as Linux Mint 22, Ubuntu 24.04 and Debian 13, can use Nix, which brings its own.
- The fonts Inter and JetBrainsMono Nerd Font, which the Nix modules install for you.
What works on each compositor is generated from the code; the main difference is that sway has no blur.
| Compositor | Add to its config |
|---|---|
| Hyprland (Lua) | hl.exec_cmd("sylvaris") in hl.on("hyprland.start", …) |
| Hyprland | exec-once = sylvaris |
| niri | spawn-at-startup "sylvaris" |
| sway | exec sylvaris |
Then open SylSettings from SylCenter's gear, or run sylvaris settings, and type to search any setting. Every switch is also a command:
sylvaris center # control center
sylvaris switcher next # Alt+Tab
sylvaris capture shot area
sylvaris lock
sylvaris set bar.position left
sylvaris list # everything elseParts you turn off in parts are never loaded, and their tools stay off your PATH. Panels are built when you open them; their windows are freed the moment they close and the rest 20 seconds later.
| Measured in the headless harness | Software rendering | GPU (NVIDIA) |
|---|---|---|
| Idle, every part on | 150 MB · 0.5 % CPU | 270 MB · 0.5 % CPU |
| After opening every panel once, 25 s later | 168 MB | 348 MB |
| Idle, only the bar and notifications | 101 MB · 0.4 % CPU | 243 MB · 1.6 % CPU |
Resident memory of the Sylvaris process, including SylStack, Qt and, with a GPU, the driver's mappings; CPU is a share of one core over 20 idle seconds. Demo data on one 2560×1440 output with SylStack 1.0.0 and Qt 6.11. Run tests/bench/bench.sh to measure on your machine (BENCH_SETTINGS takes a settings.json to compare setups; set HL_RENDERER=gles2 HL_QT_BACKEND=rhi for GPU rendering).
The documentation, also at sylvaris.fatum.cc, covers every part, command and setting, theme bundles, plugins, Nix and development, one page each. Questions and answers covers X11, Quickshell, requirements and memory use, and compared with other shells puts Sylvaris next to Quickshell, AGS, eww and Waybar. How Sylvaris is built and ARCHITECTURE.md explain the internals, CONTRIBUTING.md how to work on it, and CHANGELOG.md what changed.
Sylvaris has a forum on GitHub Discussions: ask a question, show your desktop and its Looks, and follow announcements. Issues are for bugs.
The constellation idea is inspired by ilyamiro/serpantinum. Weather by Open-Meteo. AirPods support follows the protocol documented by LibrePods. Made with AI assistance, all changes tested, reviewed and used daily by a real group of people.
MIT