Configuration: Overview

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Niri will load configuration from $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/.config/niri/config.kdl or ~/.config/niri/config.kdl. If that file is missing, niri will create it with the contents of the default configuration file. Please use the default configuration file as the starting point for your custom configuration.

The configuration is live-reloaded. Simply edit and save the config file, and your changes will be applied. This includes key bindings, output settings like mode, window rules, and everything else.

You can run niri validate to parse the config and see any errors.

To use a different config file path, pass it in the --config or -c argument to niri.

Syntax

The config is written in KDL.

Comments

Lines starting with // are comments; they are ignored.

Also, you can put /- in front of a node to comment out the entire node:

/-output "eDP-1" {
    everything inside here
    is ignored
}

Flags

Toggle options in niri are commonly represented as flags. Writing out the flag enables it, and omitting it or commenting it out disables it. For example:

// "Focus follows mouse" is enabled.
input {
    focus-follows-mouse

    // Other settings...
}

// "Focus follows mouse" is disabled.
input {
    // Other settings...
}

Sections

Most sections cannot be repeated. For example:

// This is valid: every section appears once.
input {
    keyboard {
        // ...
    }

    touchpad {
        // ...
    }
}

// This is NOT valid: input section appears twice.
input {
    keyboard {
        // ...
    }
}

input {
    touchpad {
        // ...
    }
}

Exceptions are for example sections that configure different devices by name:

output "eDP-1" {
    // ...
}

// This is valid: this section configures a different output.
output "HDMI-A-1" {
    // ...
}

// This is NOT valid: "eDP-1" already appeared above.
// It will either throw a config parsing error, or otherwise not work.
output "eDP-1" {
    // ...
}

Defaults

Omitting most of the sections of the config file will leave you with the default values for that section. A notable exception is binds {}: they do not get filled with defaults, so make sure you do not erase this section.