Hyprland Layout Switcher

Hyprland Layout Switcher is a bar widget for Noctalia that shows the tiled layout of the currently active Hyprland workspace and cycles to the next layout on click or via a keybinding. Switching is scoped to the current workspace with a workspace rule, so each workspace keeps its own layout instead of changing the global default.

Plugin

Field	Value
ID	maddingo/hypr-layout-switcher
Entries	Bar widget: toggle; service: poller

Requirements

Hyprland, with hyprctl on PATH — the plugin declares hyprland as a dependency. It reads hyprctl activeworkspace -j and applies layouts through hyprctl eval, so it does nothing on other compositors (Sway, river, Niri, X11 WMs, …).

The monocle and scrolling layouts come from Hyprland layout plugins. If you do not have them installed, cycling onto them is a no-op on Hyprland's side.

Usage

Enable the plugin, then add the widget to a bar section:

noctalia msg plugins enable maddingo/hypr-layout-switcher

In Settings → Bar, add Hyprland Layout Switcher → toggle to the section you want. The widget shows an icon plus the layout name (Dwindle, Master, Monocle, Scrolling).

The poller service runs hyprctl activeworkspace -j once per second and publishes the layout, so the widget stays in sync when you switch workspaces or change the layout from elsewhere.

Clicking the widget cycles to the next layout in dwindle → master → monocle → scrolling → dwindle. Special workspaces (scratchpads) are handled too, matched by name instead of id.

Settings

Setting	Type	Default	Description
show_label	bool	true	Show the layout name next to the icon. Turn off for an icon-only widget.

IPC

The poller service accepts a cycle event, which does the same thing as clicking the widget:

noctalia msg plugin maddingo/hypr-layout-switcher:poller all cycle

The signature is plugin <author/plugin:entry> <target[:bar-name]> <event>. poller is a service entry with no visible output, so the target must be all.

Bind it in ~/.config/hypr/hyprland.lua:

-- Cycle the active workspace's tiled layout
bind("SUPER, Tab, exec, "
  .. "noctalia msg plugin maddingo/hypr-layout-switcher:poller all cycle")

Reload with hyprctl reload. The widget updates immediately, whether you cycle via the keybinding or by clicking.

To jump straight to a specific layout instead of cycling, bind hyprctl directly — the widget picks the change up on its next poll:

bind("SUPER, D, exec, hyprctl keyword general:layout dwindle")
bind("SUPER, M, exec, hyprctl keyword general:layout master")

Note that general:layout changes the global default, whereas the plugin's cycle only affects the active workspace.

Notes

• Commands spawned: hyprctl activeworkspace -j every second while the plugin is enabled, and hyprctl eval '…' on each cycle. No network access, no files written.

• Layout list is fixed. To change the list or its glyphs, use a local clone or fork. The layout list lives at the top of service.luau:

  local layouts = { "dwindle", "master", "monocle", "scrolling" }
  

  Trim it to the layouts you actually have installed, and keep the glyphs table at the top of widget.luau in sync. Reload the plugin afterwards.

• The plugin only sets the layout; per-layout options stay in your Hyprland config, for example:

  -- See https://wiki.hypr.land/Configuring/Layouts/Dwindle-Layout/ for more
  hl.config({ dwindle = { preserve_split = true } })
  
  -- See https://wiki.hypr.land/Configuring/Layouts/Master-Layout/ for more
  hl.config({ master = { new_status = "master" } })
  
  -- See https://wiki.hypr.land/Configuring/Layouts/Scrolling-Layout/ for more
  hl.config({ scrolling = { fullscreen_on_one_column = true } })
  

Known issues

Layouts do not survive hyprctl reload

The plugin applies layouts with hl.workspace_rule(…) through hyprctl eval. Those rules live only in the running Hyprland instance — nothing is written to your config. hyprctl reload re-reads the config from scratch and discards them, so every workspace silently falls back to the global general:layout.

You can see it directly:

noctalia msg plugin maddingo/hypr-layout-switcher:poller all cycle
hyprctl -j workspacerules   # [{ "workspaceString": "1", "enabled": true }]
hyprctl activeworkspace -j | grep tiledLayout   # "master"

hyprctl reload
hyprctl -j workspacerules   # []
hyprctl activeworkspace -j | grep tiledLayout   # back to "dwindle"

The widget follows along on its next poll, so the bar stays truthful — but the layout you picked is gone, and nothing announced it.

Noctalia's wallpaper rotation triggers that reload

This is the usual way the above is hit, and it is confusing because nothing the user does is involved. It applies when the colour scheme is derived from the wallpaper and the Hyprland theme template is enabled:

[theme]
source = "wallpaper"

    [theme.templates]
    builtin_ids = [ "alacritty", "hyprland" ]

Every wallpaper change recomputes the palette and regenerates the Hyprland template. That generated file is pulled in from hyprland.lua with something like require("noctalia").apply_theme(), which only runs at config load — so the new colours reach Hyprland through a reload, and the reload takes the layout rules with it.

With automatic wallpaper rotation enabled, the layout therefore resets once per rotation interval, on the clock. A user rotating hourly sees every workspace snap back to dwindle once an hour, at the same minute past the hour, with no input of their own. The Noctalia log dates the ticks if you want to confirm the correlation:

grep "automation set all outputs" ~/.cache/noctalia/noctalia.log
stat -c '%y' ~/.config/hypr/noctalia.lua   # written a fraction of a second later

Monitor hotplug can trigger the same thing out of band: an external display that drops the link when it power-saves makes Noctalia re-apply the wallpaper for that output, which regenerates the template again.

Workarounds

None of these are fixes in the plugin — pick whichever costs you least:

• Drop "hyprland" from builtin_ids. Wallpaper rotation and the Alacritty template keep working; you lose wallpaper-derived window border colours, and the reloads stop.

• Set source to a fixed palette (builtin, community, or custom) instead of "wallpaper", so rotating the wallpaper no longer recomputes the theme.

• Turn off wallpaper automation, if you only ever change wallpapers deliberately.

• Declare the layouts in your Hyprland config so a reload re-applies them:

  hl.workspace_rule({ workspace = "2", layout = "master" })
  

  Layouts then survive reloads, but a cycled layout still only lasts until the next reload, which returns the workspace to whatever the config declares rather than to general:layout.

A real fix would mean persisting the per-workspace layouts outside Hyprland's runtime state and re-applying them after a reload — the plugin currently has no settings storage and writes no files, so this is left open deliberately.