hyprexpose

Lightweight workspace overview for Hyprland. Shows active workspaces with real window thumbnails, navigate with keyboard, press Enter to switch.

Features

• Real window thumbnails via hyprland-toplevel-export protocol
• Fullscreen overlay using wlr-layer-shell
• Keyboard navigation (arrow keys / hjkl)
• Runs as a daemon, toggled with SIGUSR1 (~0% CPU when hidden)
• Direct IPC via Hyprland's unix socket (no process spawning)
• No runtime dependencies beyond Hyprland itself

Dependencies

Build: wayland-scanner

Runtime: wayland-client cairo pango

On Arch:

pacman -S wayland cairo pango

Build

make

Usage

Start the daemon:

hyprexpose &

Disable window previews (uses colored rectangles instead):

hyprexpose --no-preview &

Toggle the overlay:

pkill -SIGUSR1 hyprexpose

Add to your Hyprland config:

exec-once = hyprexpose
bind = $mainMod, Tab, exec, pkill -SIGUSR1 hyprexpose

Install (AUR)

yay -S hyprexpose-git

Controls

| Key | Action | |---|---| | Arrow keys / hjkl | Navigate workspaces | | Enter | Switch to selected workspace | | Escape | Close overlay |

How it works

hyprexpose runs as a background daemon that does nothing until it receives SIGUSR1. On signal, it:

1. Queries Hyprland's IPC socket for active workspaces and clients
2. Captures window thumbnails via the hyprland-toplevel-export protocol
3. Renders workspace cards with Cairo/Pango onto a wlr-layer-shell overlay
4. Waits for keyboard input, then switches workspace and hides

License

MIT