Omasnow

Xsnow's vintage pixel snow for Omarchy and Hyprland. Real Xsnow bitmap flakes drift behind windows, collect on exposed window tops, and build up along the bottom of each screen. Mouse clicks and keyboard input pass through the snow.

The seven vintage masks come from Wsnow 0.92, Willem Vermin's MIT-licensed browser version. Their pixel shapes exactly match the vintage Xsnow flakes. They render in the classic snow color, at native physical-pixel size, with nearest-neighbor sampling and the classic 50 ms animation cadence. Deposited snow uses those same bitmap masks, including their holes and jagged edges. This is a Wayland adaptation of vintage snow, not a port of Xsnow's whole program: Santa, trees, birds, and modern procedurally generated flakes are outside its scope. Random motion and window handling are implemented locally.

Requires an Omarchy version with the Quickshell plugin host, Quickshell 0.3+, Hyprland, and Python 3.10+. No pip packages, compiler, or build step needed.

Install

Install with Omarchy's built-in plugin manager:

omarchy plugin add https://github.com/erikwb/omasnow --enable

Choose a bar section when prompted (right is the default). Omarchy validates the plugin, installs it into ~/.config/omarchy/plugins/io.weirdware.omasnow, and enables it. The shell starts the plugin on login. All runtime files are included; no separate setup is needed.

For subsequent updates:

omarchy plugin update io.weirdware.omasnow

Control

Click the ❄ snowflake on the right side of the bar to toggle snow. It is bright when snow is on and dim when off. All monitors and command-line toggles share the same state. Hover over the icon to see its current state.

omarchy-shell omasnow toggle
omarchy-shell omasnow clear
omarchy-shell omasnow status
omarchy plugin disable io.weirdware.omasnow
omarchy plugin enable io.weirdware.omasnow

stop and start are also available. Toggle/stop apply to this session; disable persists across login. For the standalone preview, replace omarchy-shell with qs ipc -p . call.

For the installed plugin, settings persist inline in its bar entry in ~/.config/omarchy/shell.json (older service-only installations can still use a plugins[] entry). Configuration changes in a standalone preview are session-only.

omarchy-shell omasnow configure '{"flakes":250,"wind":true}'
omarchy-shell omasnow configure '{"pixelSize":2}'

Setting	Default	Meaning
flakes	100	Flakes per monitor; 0–2000
wind	true	Periodic gusts, sideways drift, and snow blown off banks
windowDepth	15	Maximum window snow depth in snow pixels; 0–150
groundDepth	50	Maximum screen-bottom depth; 0–250
pixelSize	1	Physical pixels per bitmap pixel; integer 1–4
hideOnFullscreen	true	Pause and hide snow on a fullscreen monitor

Set a depth to zero to disable that accumulation. clear removes the current banks and their airborne fragments. pixelSize: 1 preserves the original bitmap size even on HiDPI displays; use 2 for an exact integer enlargement. Most snow is naturally hidden when tiled windows cover the desktop, just as with classic Xsnow.

flakes sets the regular falling-flake count, not the total snowfall. Flakes respawn immediately after landing or leaving the screen, even when the banks have reached their depth limit. Each keeps its falling speed across respawns so the snowfall does not gradually slow down. Flakes continue travelling behind windows, including translucent ones. The status command reports meanFallSpeed in snow pixels per second.

The default bank depths follow classic Xsnow 1.42: 15 pixels on windows and 50 at the screen bottom. Omasnow caps its bitmap banks at those depths and keeps replacing landed flakes after a bank fills. Gusts peel snow off exposed window and ground banks, lifting flakes upward before they fall and settle again. These use a separate pool of up to 128 extra flakes per monitor, preserving the regular snowfall. status reports their count as blownFlakes. Setting wind to false stops new blow-off; airborne flakes finish falling. Banks do not melt. Its recycling is an adaptation: classic Xsnow leaves an imprint while the particle continues falling, whereas Omasnow respawns it on landing and preserves its falling speed.

Remove

omarchy plugin remove io.weirdware.omasnow

Omarchy asks for confirmation, unloads the plugin, and removes its installed Git checkout. For a linked development checkout, it removes only the link and keeps the source directory. To keep the installation and disable snow across logins, use omarchy plugin disable io.weirdware.omasnow instead.

Implementation

geometry.py uses Hyprland's control and event sockets. It coalesces events and refreshes geometry every 250 ms to catch interactive moves and resizes. It emits JSON only when geometry changes, handles reconnects, and never enters the animation loop. Window titles and application contents are not forwarded or stored.

Each monitor has one bottom-layer surface for falling flakes and all snowbanks. The surface has an empty Quickshell input region and takes no keyboard focus. The compositor keeps all snow behind application windows, including floating windows during moves and animations, without waiting for geometry updates. Window banks clip out reserved bar space. Seven cached textures render the flakes. Only narrow, changed snow banks repaint their Canvas textures. Each bank retains its canvas when other windows enter or leave the monitor, avoiding blank frames from recreating unrelated banks. Snow stops rendering on sleeping and fullscreen monitors.

Snow follows moved windows. Resizing a bank, switching away from a workspace, or closing a window discards its old bank; it cannot leave snow suspended in the old location. Monitor coordinates, rotation, scale, pinned windows, and special workspaces are handled by the geometry bridge. Hyprland reports target geometry during some compositor animations, so banks can briefly lead animated windows; polling can also make them trail a drag. Occlusion by windows remains immediate. Window borders and arbitrary layer-shell panels are not reported as client geometry; snow sits at the client top, with reserved bar space excluded.

Development

To preview this checkout without installing, run qs -p . and press Ctrl+C to stop. Stop the installed plugin first with omarchy-shell omasnow stop if it is running, so the snow is not doubled. Use omarchy-shell omasnow start to resume it after closing the preview.

After editing QML in a linked checkout, run omarchy restart shell to load the updated code. Recursive file watchers may not follow symlinks, and some host versions retain cached QML even after rescanPlugins.

omarchy plugin validate .
python3 -m unittest discover -s tests -v
node --test tests/*.test.cjs
QT_QPA_PLATFORM=offscreen QT_QUICK_BACKEND=software /usr/lib/qt6/bin/qmltestrunner -input tests/tst_bank.qml
python3 geometry.py --once
python3 tools/build_flakes.py

Node is only needed for JavaScript tests. The asset generator uses Python's standard library and preserves the upstream masks exactly. See assets/wsnow/README.md for provenance.

MIT; see LICENSE. Omasnow copyright 2026 Erik Bourget. Wsnow artwork copyright 2020 Willem Vermin; its license and source declaration are preserved in assets/wsnow/. Rick Jansen created the original Xsnow artwork and is acknowledged by Wsnow. See THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md.