Noctalia is a native Wayland desktop shell for people who want a polished, configurable Linux desktop without stitching together a separate bar, launcher, notification daemon, lock screen, wallpaper tool, and settings UI.
It provides the shell layer around your compositor: bars, widgets, dock, launcher, control center, notifications, wallpaper, lock screen, session actions, clipboard history, OSDs, tray integration, and desktop widgets. The project is built directly on Wayland and OpenGL ES with no Qt or GTK dependency, so the UI, rendering, configuration, and IPC model are designed as one cohesive shell instead of a collection of unrelated panels and scripts.
Most Wayland setups leave the desktop shell to a stack of small tools: one bar, another launcher, another notification daemon, a lock screen, a wallpaper daemon, scripts for session actions, and separate config formats for each piece. That can be flexible, but it also makes a complete desktop feel fragile and hard to keep visually consistent.
Noctalia solves that by providing one configurable shell layer that owns the common desktop surfaces and services while still fitting into compositor-driven Wayland workflows. It is meant for users who want the control of a custom desktop environment with fewer moving parts and a consistent UI.
To understand the values and philosophy guiding the project, read our ethos.
- Multi-monitor bars with configurable widgets, taskbar, workspaces, system tray, media, network, battery, brightness, weather, clipboard, and custom script-backed widgets.
- Dock, launcher, control center, notification toasts/history, wallpaper picker, OSD overlays, lock screen, session panel, and desktop widgets.
- TOML configuration with hot reload, GUI-managed overrides, theme/palette support, template application, and IPC for runtime control.
- Direct Wayland integration for layer-shell, session lock, idle behavior, clipboard, foreign toplevels, workspaces, fractional scaling, and compositor-specific workspace backends where needed.
Noctalia supports Wayland compositors that provide the layer-shell protocols it needs for shell surfaces. Workspace integration works through compositor-native backends where needed, or through ext-workspace-v1 on compositors that implement it.
Current compositor integrations include Niri, Hyprland, Sway, Scroll, Mango, Labwc, dwl, and other compatible Wayland compositors. Other compositors may run Noctalia but can have reduced workspace, window, output, or session-action integration depending on the protocols and IPC they expose.
Noctalia is a desktop shell, not a full desktop environment. It provides the visual and service layer around your Wayland compositor; window management, compositor configuration, and standalone desktop applications belong elsewhere, and non-essential features live in plugins. See SCOPE.md for what the project takes on and declines.
Source dependencies, distro-specific package commands, build modes, and install layouts live in BUILDING.md.
A ready-to-use starting config with all defaults is at example.toml. The full configuration reference lives in the documentation site. The source MDX files are in docs/user/; sync them to a local docs checkout with tools/sync-docs.sh.
Developer notes, code style, contribution rules, testing, project layout, and debugging commands live in CONTRIBUTING.md. The architecture and its invariants are described in ARCHITECTURE.md.
Bug reports, fixes, documentation updates, themes, and configuration examples are welcome. For general help and design discussion, join the community on Discord.
Thank you to the contributors and community members who test Noctalia, report issues, share configurations, and help shape the project.
Donations are appreciated but completely optional.
MIT License. See LICENSE for details.
Distro packaging notes (description, deps, install layout, Meson options) live in PACKAGING.md.
