A Hyprland and niri rice with its own Quickshell settings app, bar, launcher, desktop widgets and a dock.
Everything is set with sliders and switches in one app. No config editing.
Made by shadoww.dev. Forked by Maja Wittbrodt for Euri Linux: Horizon.

Install · Systems · Features · Keybinds · Docs · Customize

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Screenshots

_{The desktop: widgets in your shape with wavy rings, the dynamic island in the notch and the visualizer}

_{The Settings app (SUPER + U)}

_{Edit mode (SUPER + ALT + W): widgets, quick settings, the bar and the visualizer}

Supported systems

The bar, the welcome window and Settings show your distro's logo automatically.

System	Status	How
Euri Linux: Horizon	home distro	ships as the default desktop in the next release
NixOS	main system	the module in nix/, then ./install.sh
Arch Linux	supported	./install.sh
CachyOS	new in V2.70	./install.sh (Arch based: its repositories and paru are used)
EndeavourOS, Garuda	Arch route	./install.sh
Fedora, Nobara	new in V2.60	./install.sh (COPR for Hyprland and Quickshell)
Bazzite, Silverblue	commands only	the installer prints the rpm-ostree steps
Manjaro	may not work	its packages are held back, Hyprland can be older than 0.55

Horizon is Dawn's Shell's real home: a from-scratch distro on musl, LLVM 23, dinit and apk. No systemd. If the shell runs there, it runs anywhere.

CachyOS and Fedora support is new: if something does not install, open an issue with the installer log and it gets fixed fast.

Hyprland or niri

The shell runs on Hyprland and on niri (the scrollable-tiling window manager), on every system above. Hyprland is set up by default; ./install.sh --wm=niri sets up niri, --wm=both both (then you pick one on the login screen).

On niri everything works the same: the bar, the island, workspaces, widgets, dock, launcher, lock screen, Settings and its sliders (gaps, borders, corners, shadows, blur, animation styles, keyboard, monitors, your keybinds and autostart). The shell writes ~/.config/niri/config.kdl for you (rice-niri) and checks it with niri validate, so it fits your niri version; your own niri settings go in ~/.config/niri/user.kdl and always win. Blur needs niri 26.04 or newer. niri extras: SUPER + Tab (or the top-left corner) shows the overview, SUPER + Shift + / lists every key, and windows sit in columns (SUPER + R changes the width, SUPER + F maximizes, SUPER + [ / ] takes a window in or out of a column).

Install in one minute

Pick your system, paste the three lines, then log out, choose Hyprland or niri on the login screen and press SUPER + U.

Arch Linux / CachyOS / EndeavourOS / Garuda

sudo pacman -S --needed git base-devel
git clone https://github.com/shadowww-dev/DawnShell dawn-shell && cd dawn-shell
./install.sh

Fedora / Nobara

sudo dnf install -y git
git clone https://github.com/shadowww-dev/DawnShell dawn-shell && cd dawn-shell
./install.sh

NixOS

git clone https://github.com/shadowww-dev/DawnShell dawn-shell && cd dawn-shell
# add to /etc/nixos/configuration.nix:
#   imports = [ /path/to/dawn-shell/nix/module.nix ];
#   programs.dawn-shell.user = "yourname";    # Infinite Desktop: SUPER + ALT + mouse (input group)
sudo nixos-rebuild switch && ./install.sh

The installer asks which window manager you want (Hyprland, niri or both), installs the packages, copies the configs and sets everything up. Every file it replaces is saved in ~/.config/dawns-shell-backup-<time>/.

• Arch: no AUR helper needed. paru or yay are used when you have one; otherwise yay is set up only if your Arch lacks something the shell needs. The Bibata cursor comes from GitHub when there is no AUR helper.
• Fedora: COPR repositories give the newest Hyprland, Quickshell and awww; Atomic Fedora (Bazzite, Silverblue) gets the rpm-ostree commands instead.
• NixOS: the module turns on Hyprland and niri (programs.niri.enable = false; leaves niri out).

Option	What it does
--wm=hyprland / --wm=niri / --wm=both	the window manager, without the question
--yes	everything, no questions
--aur / --no-aur	Arch: always get yay and every AUR package / never build yay
--no-packages	skip the package step
--dry-run	show what would happen, change nothing
--restore	put back the files from the last backup

Updating: Settings > Update Center > Update now (the steps show live, no terminal), the update notification, or rice-update in a terminal.

Features

Settings app (SUPER+U) in the spirit of Material 3: a navigation rail (Home, Wallpaper, Appearance, Motion, Desktop, Bar & island, Sound, System, Gaming, About) with tabs, Google icons, colors made from your theme and a search over every setting.

Font: the whole interface uses Google Sans Flex (and Google Sans Code for codes), both open source under the SIL Open Font License; the terminal keeps JetBrainsMono Nerd Font.

Area	What you get
Dawn bar	the Quickshell bar: style Dynamic (the default: an island in the middle that is your clock and grows into the player, volume, workspaces, notifications, today and recording), Flat, Island, Islands, Pills or Notch, auto-hide, a soft shadow, position top, bottom, left or right (a standing bar), size, transparency, workspaces as dots, Pac-Man or letters, clock with seconds, a switch back to Waybar
Bar styles	Flat, Floating, Islands, One island; group styles None, Pills, Segmented
Autohide	bar slides in when the pointer touches the screen edge
Distro logo	the logo of your distro (NixOS, Arch, CachyOS, Fedora, Nobara, EndeavourOS ...) in the bar, the welcome window and Settings, picked automatically
Desktop widgets	frosted glass over your blurred wallpaper (or plain cards), auto-hide while windows are open; clock, calendar, weather, music, resources (CPU, RAM, GPU), user card, battery gauges in soft shapes (CPU, RAM, GPU, heat, battery), the date in a flower, and a see-through audio visualizer (Bars like cava in a terminal, Mirror, Wave, Dots, in your Theme color, a gradient or rainbow), a to-do list, a focus timer and a note; three widget styles (Dawn, Google, Outline); colors that turn light or dark with your wallpaper; Sky, Now playing, Player, Play button, Lyrics, Storage and CPU · GPU · RAM; Edit mode with a side panel for widgets, quick settings, the bar and the visualizer
Today & System	click the clock (or SUPER + ALT + D) and a Material 3 card grows out of the bar with today (calendar, weather, the day as a wave) and System (CPU, GPU and RAM in wavy rings, the disk); right-click for System. Settings > Dynamic island: weather and date beside the time, what it grows into (music, volume, workspaces, notifications, the charger), which tab a click opens and how fast the card closes
Wallpaper picker	SUPER + W: your wallpapers in a sheet with search, shuffle and keys; colors follow (a black, white or grey wallpaper gives grey colors)
Wallpapers	animations when one comes in (Ripple from your pointer, Wave, Wipe, Portal, Fade, Slide, Dissolve), a slideshow, live wallpapers (videos, with mpvpaper), your Waypaper folders, space wallpapers in the Material style
Desktop menu	right-click the desktop: your wallpapers in a row, quick switches (next wallpaper, night light, Do Not Disturb, gaming mode, lock) and the places you change most in Settings, in Material 3 with frosted glass
Themes	a whole look in one click (Dawn, Terminal, Glass, Neon, Ember, Frost), and your colors in VSCodium / VS Code and Discord (Vesktop, Vencord, Equicord, BetterDiscord)
Monitors	resolution, refresh rate, scale, rotation, arrangement and turning a screen off, on Hyprland and niri
Bar layout	five ready-made Material 3 layouts, and drag and drop the modules between left, center and right: launcher, workspaces, window title, music, the island (your clock), tray (right-click an app: its menu and Close app; long menus scroll), volume, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, battery, notifications, power, a music visualizer; the window title with its app icon on the left or right
Dock	bottom, left or right edge, its own app menu with search, pinned favourite apps (also in Settings > Dock), open apps, hover to reveal, media player, tinted icons; windows keep away from it while it stays out
Window rules	Settings > Desktop > Window rules: your own rules for any app (workspace, floating, centered, size, on every workspace, fullscreen, see-through), picked from the windows open now; kept in ~/.config/rice/rules.json, so updates never touch them. An optional gaming workspace: games (Steam, Proton, Wine, gamescope, Minecraft) and their launchers open on their own workspace
Login screen	the shell's own SDDM theme in Material 3: your wallpaper and a big clock; a key press blurs it and brings up the login card (your picture, session, keyboard layout, sleep, restart, shut down). It follows your wallpaper, colors, font and language. Settings > Desktop > Idle & Lockscreen > Login screen, or rice-sddm install. NixOS: programs.dawn-shell.sddm = true;
Hyprland & niri	gaps, borders, rounding, blur, shadows and animations from sliders, no config editing, on either window manager
Theme	21 color schemes: Auto and Grey from your wallpaper, six monochrome (Mono, Slate, Stone, Steel, Ash, Ink) and thirteen colors (Navy, Ocean, Sky, Teal, Mint, Forest, Lime, Gold, Sunset, Ember, Rose, Orchid, Violet). They recolor Waybar, borders, notifications and the lock screen
Control center	SUPER + N or the bell: switches, sliders, music with a wavy, seekable progress line and your notifications, with smooth Material 3 motion
Notifications	shown by the shell in the Google style (or swaync, one click away): pop-ups with the app icon in your shape, pictures, action buttons and a line that shows how long they stay; position, width, time on screen, six themes, text size, corners, transparency and blur, live preview and a test button
Sfx & sounds	interface sounds in the shell's own parts (clicks, switches, sliders, typing), eight packs (Pebble, Tap, Soft, Pluck, Keys, Crystal, Bubble, Retro), volume, each sound on or off, quiet music for the welcome; ten notification sounds (Glass, Droplet, Chime, Bubble, Marimba, Aurora, Ping, Harp, Keys, Ripple) or Off
Search	"Search anything!" in Settings finds every setting ("bar position", "blur", "clock font") and jumps to it
Updates	a notification when a new version is out ("Update is Available!"), the Update Center in Settings (Update now, every step live, no terminal), rice-update in a terminal
Idle & Lockscreen	lock, screen-off and sleep timers; the shell's own Material 3 lock screen: your wallpaper (or the screen) blurred, the clock big, stacked, minimal or inside your shape, a greeting with your picture in your shape, chips for weather, battery, notifications, CPU and RAM (wavy rings), the music with a wavy line, the password as shapes, power buttons (Shut down in red), a Preview button; hyprlock is the fallback and still one switch away
Launcher	the built-in Dawn Launcher: 5 themes (Shadow, Graphite, Midnight, Rose, Paper), layouts list / grid / full-width bar / split (wallpaper on the left), position top, center or bottom, width, rows, corner radius, transparency, blur, font size, icons
Cursors	Bibata, Hyprcursor themes (Rose Pine) and packs you can download in Settings: Catppuccin, Phinger; live preview
Appearance	Colors (every color role of your theme), Fonts (typography: text size, heavier headings, rounded letters, the Material 3 type scale), Components (switch icons, corner shape, slider thickness, wavy progress)
Motion	Hyprland animation styles (calm, lively, bouncy, snappy, minimal) and speed, spring and easing graphs, durations, a shape you can throw
Keyboard	up to four layouts, the one in use, the keys that switch them, search over every layout
Game bar	SUPER + G: CPU and GPU with their heat, RAM, ping, screenshot, record, microphone, power mode, gaming mode, Do Not Disturb, volume and brightness over your game; its transparency and blur in Settings > Gaming
Welcome intro	once after installing: night falls over the desktop, a few words, the black hole logo draws itself in, "Take a look" opens it up again and Settings starts a short tour (it lights up one part at a time). Play it again with rice-welcome show, only the tour: rice-welcome tour
Performance & gaming	one switch turns off all blur and transparency (Hyprland, kitty, bar, launcher, notifications, dock, widgets); Gaming mode with options to keep blur, animations, shadows or gaps, Do Not Disturb (Settings > Services)
Your settings everywhere	./sync.sh saves your Settings choices to settings/, ./install.sh puts them on your other computers (files you changed there are kept)
Languages	English and Polish (Settings and the desktop)
Installer	interactive (Install, Update, Choose, Restore), backs up everything, supports Arch, CachyOS, Fedora and NixOS, warns when Hyprland is too old; a wallpaper is put on right after installing

Keybinds

SUPER is the main modifier. On niri the same keys work (the shell's own ones are identical), with niri's column keys in place of the Hyprland layout keys; SUPER + Shift + / shows them all there.

Keys	Action
SUPER + U	open Settings
SUPER + Q	terminal
SUPER + E	file manager
SUPER + R	app menu
ALT + Space	app launcher (Dawn Launcher)
SUPER + C	close window
SUPER + V	toggle floating
SUPER + P	pseudo-tile
SUPER + J	toggle split direction
SUPER + M	exit Hyprland
SUPER + ←/→/↑/↓	move focus
SUPER + 1 … 0	go to workspace
SUPER + SHIFT + 1 … 0	move window to workspace
SUPER + S	show/hide scratchpad
SUPER + SHIFT + S	move window to scratchpad
SUPER + scroll	next/previous workspace
SUPER + left mouse	drag window
SUPER + right mouse	resize window
ALT + ] / ALT + [	volume up / down
SUPER + F12 / F11 / F10	volume up / down / mute (with on-screen display)
media keys	play/pause, next, previous
Fn volume / brightness keys, headset + -	volume, mute, microphone, brightness
Print / SHIFT + Print	screenshot of a region / the whole screen
SUPER + SHIFT + R	record a region (press again to stop)
SUPER + A	control center (quick switches)
SUPER + G	game bar
SUPER + N	control center (notifications)
SUPER + ALT + W	edit desktop widgets (add, move, resize, style)
SUPER + ALT + D	today & system card from the bar's island
SUPER + W	wallpaper picker

Layout

Path	Contents
bin/	helper scripts installed to ~/.local/bin
quickshell/	Settings app (rice-settings) and widgets/dock (rice-desktop)
config/	dotfiles installed to ~/.config (Hyprland, Waybar, ...); the niri config is written by bin/rice-niri
install/	installer UI and distro detection
lua/	Hyprland add-ons: keybinds, widgets autostart
wallpapers/	original wallpapers, copied to ~/Pictures/Wallpapers
sounds/	notification sounds (made by install/tools/make-sounds.py, CC0)
VERSION	the current version, used by the update check
nix/, flake.nix	NixOS module
.github/	CI (shellcheck, dry-run install) and issue template

Maintainers

./sync.sh copies your current setup from this machine into the repo (paths become @HOME@, no username is stored) and scans for secrets. Your choices in Settings go to settings/; ./install.sh applies them on other computers, keeps files you changed there, and ./install.sh --update --use-saved-settings takes the saved ones anyway.

To release a new version, put the new number in VERSION (for example 2.03) and push. Everyone gets the update notification within a few hours.

Thanks

Sarods2D (sarodscommits): a big part of this shell stands on his work, and it should have said so from the start.

• Infinite Desktop comes from his hyprland-infinite-desktop-v2 (MIT): the endless canvas of floating windows, moving it with the mouse and going from window to window. Our version is written again for this shell, but the idea and the way it works are his.
• The redesign of Settings and the shell in V3.23 was inspired by his Iridium shell.

Thank you for the time and work you put into them. Please check out and star his projects.

The idea of the Dynamic bar's island, a clock that grows into the player, notifications and more, comes from hyprdots by fedyaqq34356. The island here is written from scratch.

License

MIT, see LICENSE.