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. 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
}

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.