A beautiful, fluid Wayland desktop made to feel like yours.
Install · Configure · Widgets · Notifications
Ferese is a complete Wayland desktop built around personalization. Its custom shell, native settings, live-reloading themes and wallpapers, desktop widgets, fluid animations, and scrolling and tiling layouts work together as one cohesive experience—beautiful by default and unmistakably yours.
One cohesive desktop
- Flexible layouts: scrolling columns, tree tiling, floating windows and a workspace overview.
- A native shell: menu bar, control center, settings, notifications and desktop widgets designed to belong together.
- Personal by design: themes, wallpapers, accent colors, blur, borders and motion that update without restarting your session.
- Ready for real setups: gestures, multi-monitor support, fractional scaling, screenshots, background services and session locking.
Make it yours
Use the native Settings app for everyday customization, or edit
~/.config/ferese/config.kdl when you want complete control. Ferese reloads
changes as you make them and keeps the last working configuration if an edit is
invalid.
Choose a preset or build your own look. Window behavior, gestures, shortcuts, rules, displays, widgets and login items are configurable too. Start with the configuration guide or the example config.
Install
The current installation guide covers Fedora with SDDM. After installing the prerequisites, run:
./scripts/install.sh
Log out, select Ferese at the login screen, and sign in. The installer keeps your configuration and the previous release for rollback. See installation and recovery for the full setup and safety notes.
To preview Ferese inside your current Wayland desktop instead:
cargo build --release --locked -p ferese -p ferese-shell -p ferese-settings -p feresectl
target/release/ferese --backend nested --grant-effects --grant-shell-control -- \
target/release/ferese-shell
Get around
These are the built-in defaults; every shortcut and gesture can be changed.
| Shortcut | Action |
|---|---|
| Super + Enter | Open a terminal |
| Super + H / J / K / L | Focus a window |
| Super + R | Cycle column width |
| Super + Tab | Open workspace and window overview |
| Super + M | Switch scrolling / tree layout |
| Super + Shift + S | Select a screenshot area |
Three-finger swipes move between workspaces and windows. Open Control Center → Settings → Shortcuts to change them or assign gestures to other actions.
Documentation
Development
cargo test --workspace --locked
cargo fmt --all --check
Ferese is built in Rust on Smithay. Use release builds when evaluating motion and startup performance, and keep another desktop session available while testing hardware behavior.