wlime

A fullscreen arcade-style CJK input method for Hyprland.

wlime replaces traditional IME popup menus with a translucent fullscreen overlay — think arcade high-score initial entry, not a dropdown next to your cursor. It works in regular apps, XWayland browsers, and even fullscreen games.

Features

• Fullscreen overlay with CRT scanlines, neon glow text, and rainbow particle effects
• Pinyin input powered by libpinyin with candidate selection (1-9, Space, Enter)
• Works everywhere — native Wayland apps via input-method-v2, XWayland apps, and clipboard+paste fallback
• Sound effects — arcade blips on keystrokes, commits, and toggles.
• Sparkle mode — rainbow cycling, impact bursts on keystrokes, celebration explosions on commit
• Configurable — Sound and sparkles optional. Multiple backends, incl RIME.

Dependencies

• A wayland compositor (tested on hyprland and sway)
• GTK 3, gtk-layer-shell
• libpinyin
• wayland-client, xkbcommon, cairo
• wlr-protocols
• PipeWire (for sound effects via pw-play)
• ffmpeg (optional, generates sound effects on first run)

Building

meson setup build
ninja -C build

yay -S wlime-git

Usage

# Start wlime
./build/wlime

# Toggle composition mode (bind this in hyprland.conf)
wlime toggle
wlime languages
wlime switch <one of the languages>

Hyprland keybind example:

bind = SUPER, space, exec, wlime toggle

When composition mode is active:

• Type pinyin (e.g. nihao)
• 1-9 select a candidate
• Space or Enter commits the first candidate
• Escape cancels
• Backspace edits the pinyin buffer

Configuration

Copy config.example to ~/.config/wlime/config:

language = rime:luna_pinyin_simp
clipboard_always = true
sounds = true
animate = true
fade_duration_ms = 150
sparkle = true

Screenshots

Architecture

wlime is a standalone Wayland client (not a Hyprland plugin) using standard protocols:

• zwp_input_method_v2 — keyboard grab and text commit
• zwp_virtual_keyboard_v1 — key forwarding
• zwlr_layer_shell_v1 — fullscreen overlay surface
• Separate wl_display connection integrated into GTK's event loop via GSource

License

GPL-3.0 (inherits from libpinyin)