Hello, Nightdrive

Nightdrive, a fast, keyboard-driven Hyprland desktop for Fedora, is now public as a preview. Here's what it is, who it's for and how to try it.

· Jari Lehtinen

The Nightdrive desktop: Firefox, the Deck music player, a terminal and the launcher on top

Nightdrive is now public. It's a complete desktop built on Hyprland and Fedora: one launcher for everything, a top bar where every icon opens a menu, ⌘ shortcuts that work in every app, and a synthwave look. It runs on Apple Silicon Macs (M1 and M2) with Fedora Asahi Remix, and on PCs.

The source has been on GitHub since 13 October, under the MIT licence. This site is its new home, and from now on the news about Nightdrive lands on this page.

Why another desktop?

I've used a Mac for over twenty years, and every year or so I've tried a Linux distro or two. None of them quite stuck. Hyprland is a great compositor, but on its own it's a toolkit: no bar, no launcher, no theme. Omarchy showed how good a finished Hyprland setup can feel, and I wanted one built around the way I work: one launcher, a menu bar that just works, keys my fingers already know, and all of it fast and light.

So I installed Fedora Asahi on my MacBook Pro and built Nightdrive, evening by evening, with a lot of help from Claude Code.

Two things guide it. The first is simplicity: fewer parts, each one done well and working with the rest, rather than a setting for everything. The second is curiosity. Nightdrive is also where I try out ideas I haven't seen in a computer's operating system before. Some of them will stick and some won't, and you'll read about them here first.

What you get

  • One launcher for everything. ⌘Space finds apps, passwords, clipboard history, emoji, screenshots, settings, every keybinding, installs and power actions.
  • A top bar you can click into. Sound, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, battery, the calendar, notifications and more, each in a small menu. ⌘⇧Space walks through them by keyboard.
  • ⌘ is the main key. ⌘C and ⌘V work everywhere, the terminal included. ⌘W closes, ⌘Q quits.
  • Fits the machine. The installer recognises a Mac, a PC or a virtual machine, and sets up the keyboard, the graphics and the display scale to match.
  • Only the parts you want. Spotify, Tailscale, Home Assistant, 1Password, sharing files with your phone and more are plugins that you pick when installing, or add later.

Who it's for

  • People who live on the keyboard. Everything is a keystroke away, and the mouse is there when you want it.
  • Mac users curious about Linux. The keys, the launcher and the menu bar feel familiar from the first minute, and an Apple Silicon Mac (M1 or M2) can run it with Fedora Asahi Remix.
  • Hyprland fans who'd rather not build it all themselves. A finished, consistent desktop out of the box, still made of plain config files you can read and change.
  • Pixel pushers and UX enthusiasts. People who notice when a menu is two pixels off, and care how a desktop feels to use, not only what it can do. Every corner of Nightdrive has been looked at with those eyes.
  • Tinkerers. Take it as it is, borrow the parts you like, or make a plugin of your own.

A preview, honestly

Nightdrive is my daily desktop on a MacBook Pro 14″ (M2 Max), and it's tested in a virtual machine. PC support is new and hasn't met real PC hardware yet. Expect rough edges, and please tell me where you find them.

Where it's going

I'd like Nightdrive to become the desktop you'd set up for a friend: simple on the first day, powerful when you need it, and good-looking all the way down. The best parts of macOS and of Linux, without the parts of either that get in the way.

Next on the road:

  • An installer image. Today Nightdrive goes on top of Fedora. An image of its own, on the way, makes it a single step.
  • Real PC hardware. Testing and tuning on PCs, NVIDIA included.
  • More plugins, and yours. A plugin is just a folder, and anyone can make one.
  • New ideas. The experiments I mentioned above, one at a time.

Try it

Start from a fresh Fedora 44 KDE, or Fedora Asahi Remix 44 on a Mac, then run:

sudo dnf install -y git
git clone https://github.com/nightdrive-sh/nightdrive.git ~/dotfiles
cd ~/dotfiles && ./install.sh

The installer asks which optional parts you want, then sets up the rest in a few minutes.

Say hello

Questions, ideas and screenshots of your setup are welcome in Discussions, and bugs in Issues. If you run Nightdrive on another Mac or on a PC, I'd love to hear how it went.

Jari