TL;DR: Hyprland 0.55 switched from Hyprlang to Lua, breaking everything. I spent days tweaking my setup, only for the dev to announce the change weeks later. Switched to Niri in under 2 hours.
The Breaking Point
I was a Cybersecurity undergrad / Jr DevOps / part-time blogger / occasional gamer with a perfect Hyprland setup. Then 0.55 dropped. Suddenly:
<ul>
<li>Config files broken</li>
<li>Plugins non-functional</li>
<li>Workspace rules gone</li>
<li>Days of debugging for nothing</li>
</ul>
The dev announced the Lua migration right after I thought I’d finally completed my setup. That was the signal to leave.
Why Niri?
<ul>
<li>Scrolling + tiling (no more manual window snapping)</li>
<li>Config based on my old Hyprland layout (easier migration)</li>
<li>Thanks to inspiration by DankMaterialShell’s Quickshell + styling, I got a polished UI fast</li>
<li>Total switch time: &lt;2 hours vs. weeks of Hyprland tweaking rewriting my configs in a new language</li>
</ul>
The Tradeoff
<ul>
<li>Less community support right now (it’s newer)</li>
<li>Different workflow (scrolling vs. traditional tiling)</li>
<li>But honestly? Functional &gt; Features at this point.</li>
</ul>
For anyone else stuck:
If you’re on the fence about the Lua migration or just tired of config breakage, Niri might be worth a spin. It’s not perfect, but it’s working, and that’s what matters for productivity.
<a href="https://angelsantiago.me/why-i-left-hyprland" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow">https://angelsantiago.me/why-i-left-hyprland</a>

Angel Santiago

A personal account of switching from Hyprland to Niri after Hyprland 0.55 broke existing configs by migrating from Hyprlang to Lua. The author spent days debugging the breakage before discovering the migration was intentional, then switched to Niri in under 2 hours. Key reasons for choosing Niri include its scrolling tiling workflow, easier config migration, and faster setup time. The tradeoff is less community support due to Niri being newer, but the author prioritizes a working setup over feature richness.

Why I left Hyprland for Niri

Niri is very stable and innovative. Sometimes I miss some features of hyprland like scratchpad workspace but found Niri to be well documented (with videos showing the features), fast and stable.

If you are using hyprland you want most of behaviour of your pc under your control. That is why most of us started to use hyprland. 💧
If you are using tools that are under ongoing development, you have to accept, there could be breaking changes…everytime I am upgrading anything I am looking for breaking changes in release notes. If there is anyone, I am simply migrating that simple feature. 🗒️
Nowdays it is even simpler with AI if you don’t want to bother with it, just open config folder and say to AI there are breaking changes, find them and fix them and mostly it will do for you correctly (of course simple backup for example with git is always recommended in this scenario) 🤖
IMO for me personally it looks like I would have to spend more time on switch to niri and get used to new DE than spend less time with simple solve of breaking changes. (And I believe you will meet breaking changes in Niri too in the future) ⌚

Hi, nixos hyprland user here.
Not sure to follow completely, is hyprland to niri quick? Or you are talking from Lua to niri?

Good choice. Even stock Niri with DMS is a very neat environment to work on. I only tweaked a few settings since some stock configs are already enough and in my preference. Niri fits my workflow so much