nsticky

nsticky is a window management helper tool built on top of niri. It focuses on managing sticky windows — windows fixed across all workspaces — to enhance your workflow efficiency.

Why?

Niri doesn’t natively support global floating windows. This tool forces float windows to persist on every workspace, mimicking the sticky behavior from X11/Wayland compositors like Sway or KWin.

Features

✨ Powerful Sticky Window Management: Easily fix windows across all workspaces to keep your most important apps visible at all times.

🔧 Flexible Controls: Add or remove windows from the sticky list on demand via intuitive CLI commands.

📋 Real-time Overview: Quickly list all currently sticky windows to stay organized.

⚡ Instant Toggle: Toggle the sticky state of the currently active window with a single command or shortcut.

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Installation

Make sure you have Rust installed along with the required niri tool.

1. Build from source

git clone https://github.com/lonerOrz/nsticky.git
cd nsticky
cargo build --release

2. Install via Nix (for Nix or NixOS users)

{
  inputs = {
    nixpkgs.url = "github:nixos/nixpkgs/nixos-unstable";
    flake-utils.url = "github:numtide/flake-utils";
    nsticky.url = "github:lonerOrz/nsticky";
  };

  outputs =
    inputs@{
      self,
      flake-utils,
      nixpkgs,
      ...
    }:
    flake-utils.lib.eachDefaultSystem (
      system:
      let
        pkgs = import nixpkgs {
          inherit system;
        };
      in
      {
        devShells.default = pkgs.mkShell {
          packages = [ inputs.nsticky.packages.${system}.nsticky ];
        };
      }
    );
}

3. Use precompiled binaries directly

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Usage

Daemon mode

Configure niri to auto-start the nsticky daemon:

spawn-at-startup "nsticky"

Command line

Control nsticky from the terminal using CLI commands:

./target/release/nsticky add <window_id>          # Add a window to the sticky list
./target/release/nsticky remove <window_id>       # Remove a window from the sticky list
./target/release/nsticky list                      # List all sticky windows
./target/release/nsticky toggle-active             # Toggle sticky state of the active window

You can also set up a shortcut in niri:

Mod+Ctrl+Space { spawn "nsticky" "toggle-active"; }

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Design

nsticky communicates with its daemon via a Unix Domain Socket. The CLI client sends commands while the daemon manages sticky window states.

The daemon also listens to niri’s event stream to automatically handle window movement on workspace switches.

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Dependencies

🛠️ Core Libraries:

• Tokio: Asynchronous runtime for smooth, non-blocking IO.
• Clap: Robust command-line argument parser.
• Anyhow: Simplified error handling for better reliability.
• Serde / serde_json: Efficient JSON serialization and deserialization.

🔗 Integration:

• niri: The window manager integration foundation, enabling seamless event handling.

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Development

Contributions and feedback are welcome! Please format code with cargo fmt and check with cargo clippy.

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License

This project is licensed under the BSD 3-Clause License.

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If you find nsticky useful, please give it a ⭐ and share! 🎉