HyperGnome - Hyprland-style Tiling for GNOME

Overview

HyperGnome is an open-source GNOME Shell extension that brings the Hyprland tiling experience to GNOME desktops. It implements dwindle (binary space partitioning) tiling with per-workspace window trees, animated focus borders, configurable gaps, and a polished preferences UI — all from a single codebase that targets GNOME 46–49 on both Wayland and X11.

Motivation

Tiling window managers like Hyprland and i3 offer keyboard-driven, deterministic window layouts that many power users prefer over floating window management. GNOME, however, has historically resisted this paradigm. Existing tiling extensions tend to be either heavy frameworks (Pop Shell, Forge) or abandoned single-version experiments. HyperGnome takes a different stance:

• Stay close to GNOME's native behavior — don't reinvent the shell
• Use the BSP/dwindle model power users already know from Hyprland
• Support a wide range of GNOME versions from one source tree
• Ship a real preferences UI, not just dconf keys

Technical Implementation

The extension is written in GJS (GNOME's JavaScript runtime) against the Clutter scene graph and GNOME Shell's window-management APIs:

• Per-workspace BSP tree maintained as windows are mapped, focused, moved, or closed
• Custom border actors rendered through Clutter with configurable animation and color
• Gap and layout settings exposed via GSettings schemas and a Gtk preferences window
• Keybinding conflict detection that warns users when shortcuts clash with GNOME defaults
• Single codebase covers GNOME 46–49 across Wayland and X11 with conditional API shims
• Make-driven packaging for shell-extension zip bundles and version checks

Key Features

• Dwindle BSP Tiling: Familiar Hyprland-style splits that adapt as windows are added or removed
• Per-Workspace Trees: Each workspace keeps its own layout state independently
• Animated Focus Borders: Smooth, configurable borders that follow the active window
• Configurable Gaps: Inner and outer gap control via the preferences UI
• Full Preferences UI: A native Gtk settings window — no manual dconf editing required
• Wide Version Support: One extension for GNOME 46, 47, 48, and 49 on Wayland and X11
• Keybinding Conflict Detection: Catches collisions with built-in GNOME shortcuts before they cause confusion

Maintenance & Open Source

HyperGnome is developed and maintained solo on GitHub. The work spans not just the tiling logic itself but the surrounding infrastructure that any serious shell extension needs: GSettings schemas, packaging, version-skew handling, and a real release process.