So, it turns out Niri does not have scratchpads yet.

In my experience, that has been the sticking point for many an X11 tiling window manager, and even more so for wayland compositors. I have ~12 scratchpads for programs I want to use and put away at a moment’s notice, without having to close and re-open them. Stuff like htop, ncmpcpp, neomutt, irssi, profanity, easyeffects. Managing those programs in this way has become an integral part of my workflow, so while I’m sure I could make Niri work for me, it’s definitely a strong point for Hyprland. I just have to hope that hyprscrolling will continue to improve, and will get to a fully usable point.

Niri is cool, if it had scratchpads I’m sure it would be nice to live in. But without that, I’m not likely to commit to it long-term in the near future. Which is fine; I was just saying that I love Hyprland, I’m not exactly itching to leave it; I just wanted to check out another workflow.