Add clickthrough parameter to windows to allow for floating windows to behave like true HUDs / overlays

[zitongcharliedeng]

I like to have floating stickies while playing games e.g. Twitch chat, crosshair overlays, etc. But done with native Niri tooling right now, the overlay floating windows will always steal focus from the main game window due to mouse clicks. If we could just allow target windows to ignore mouse clicks and not steal focus, we could make some pretty cool HUDs just with Niri.

Alternatively we could try wlr-screencopy but that feels like a bandaid and waste of computation if we could have the floating windows natively uninteractable.

[YaLTeR]

Guess it shouldn't be too difficult; how exactly does it work, ignore mouse focus unless the window is already focused via keyboard?

[zitongcharliedeng]

Yes something like that, we could even separate the properties like "ignoreMouseFocus" and "IgnoreKeyboardFocus".

…

On Tue, 4 Nov 2025, 10:24 Ivan Molodetskikh, ***@***.***> wrote: Guess it shouldn't be too difficult; how exactly does it work, ignore mouse focus *unless* the window is already focused via keyboard? — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#2743 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AZ3GVSMZZOZ6AQGL6EZ2YRT33B5E3AVCNFSM6AAAAACLBT4RKKVHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43URDJONRXK43TNFXW4Q3PNVWWK3TUHMYTIOBWG44TMMI> . You are receiving this because you authored the thread.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[HigherOrderLogic]

Have you tried using layer shell?

[zitongcharliedeng]

Sorry didn't see this before, layer shell sounds like for building custom passthrough overlays, my window rule PR is for turning windows immediately into an overlay?

[zitongcharliedeng]

A nice complimentary property would be blend mode customisation, i.e. I can make a floating window use additive layering, so black backgrounds appear transparent, or even green screen keying. On Tue, 4 Nov 2025, 11:55 Zi-Tong Deng, ***@***.***> wrote:

…

Yes something like that, we could even separate the properties like "ignoreMouseFocus" and "IgnoreKeyboardFocus". On Tue, 4 Nov 2025, 10:24 Ivan Molodetskikh, ***@***.***> wrote: > Guess it shouldn't be too difficult; how exactly does it work, ignore > mouse focus *unless* the window is already focused via keyboard? > > — > Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub > <#2743 (comment)>, > or unsubscribe > <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AZ3GVSMZZOZ6AQGL6EZ2YRT33B5E3AVCNFSM6AAAAACLBT4RKKVHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43URDJONRXK43TNFXW4Q3PNVWWK3TUHMYTIOBWG44TMMI> > . > You are receiving this because you authored the thread.Message ID: > ***@***.***> >