FAQ

FAQ

Why not Quickshell / AGS / Waybar? Mist started on Quickshell. The QML version used 428 MB and 9.5 % CPU at idle; most of that is the Qt Quick scene graph and its GL context, before any widget. Drawing on the CPU into shared memory brought the whole shell to about 100 MB and 0.6 %. See Architecture.

Is CPU drawing not slow? Surfaces repaint only what changed, and only when it changed. A dock hover or a panel animation is a few hundred microseconds per frame; at rest nothing is drawn at all.

Does it work without NVIDIA / on AMD or Intel? Nothing in mist-ui touches the GPU. mist-wall needs EGL with OpenGL 3.3 core, which Mesa provides. Only NVIDIA is tested daily.

Does it work on Sway, niri, KDE? Not tested. The surfaces are plain layer-shell, but window lists, thumbnails, workspaces and snapping use Hyprland's socket and protocols. mist-comp is the experiment for running without Hyprland.

Hyprland with the old hyprland.conf? The example config is Lua (hyprland.lua, Hyprland 0.55+). The bindings are plain exec of mist-ui-bin msg ..., so translating them to hyprlang is mechanical; the layer rules are needed for blur.

Can I use only some parts, e.g. keep my bar? Yes: MIST_UI_NO_BAR=1 (also _NO_DOCK, _NO_ISLAND, _NO_DESK, _NO_WALL) in the environment of the guard.

Why is the UI in Polish? The author is Polish. English, German and Spanish are full translations; auto follows $LANG (Languages and monitors).

Do I need Garmin? No. Without influx.json the Garmin and running cards are simply not there.

Is it affiliated with Apple? No. It borrows the look; macOS, Dynamic Island, Spotlight and SF Pro are Apple's trademarks, and SF Pro is not shipped.