Omarchy 3.1: Hyprland’s Beauty, Arch’s Speed — Without the Yak‑Shave

🚀 Omarchy 3.1 — what is the hype

I’ve been kicking the tires on Omarchy—the Arch + Hyprland setup that promises a polished developer desktop with one command. Here’s how it felt to set up, what actually improved my day‑to‑day, and where I hit friction.

How I set it up

I started from a fresh Arch install and ran the Omarchy bootstrap. After reboot, Hyprland came up with a lock screen, bar, notifications, Bluetooth, and screen capture all wired. Fonts, icons, and terminal/shell defaults were already dialed in. No dotfile merge marathon, no “what status bar should I pick?” rabbit hole.

What clicked for me

• The desktop feels cohesive. Typography, colors, and icons are consistent so apps don’t look stitched together.
• Hyprland is fast and keyboard‑first. Window rules and animations make the workspace feel alive without getting in the way.
• The shell and terminal defaults are sensible. Prompt and aliases worked with my muscle memory instead of fighting it.
• Web/dev tooling was usable immediately. I could clone, build, and run projects without a day of setup.

What didn’t (or needed tweaks)

• NVIDIA on Wayland. Expect to nudge driver settings and test suspend/resume and screen sharing.
• Secure Boot. Unsigned modules/custom kernels complicate SB—either disable it or sign things yourself.
• Rolling updates. It’s Arch: keep a recovery path and skim release notes so surprises are recoverable.
• VMs aren’t the showcase. It runs, but graphics smoothness and input latency can’t match bare metal.
• Apple Silicon via Asahi is doable, but it’s an extra‑steps journey with evolving hardware support.

• Multi‑monitor/input quirks. I tweaked a couple of Hyprland rules to get my layout and devices just right.

• Resource usage vs minimal setups. With Hyprland’s effects/compositing and a fuller default stack, Omarchy can idle heavier than bare X11 or minimal tilers; on low-spec machines, dial down animations and trim background services.

Daily workflow feel

Tiling with sane gaps + animations made focus work pleasant. Switching contexts with keybinds is fast, and the machine felt light on resources. Most days I didn’t think about the environment—which is the point.

Should you try it?

If you want Arch’s freshness and a modern Wayland desktop without ricing from scratch, Omarchy delivered for me. If Secure Boot is non‑negotiable, or you’re on NVIDIA and unwilling to tweak, you might be happier elsewhere (or try Omakub on Ubuntu).