HyprGlass - Liquid Glass inspired plugin for Hyprland

Liquid Glass for Hyprland.

Frosted blur, edge refraction, chromatic aberration, specular highlights — fully customizable, per-theme, on every window.

Dark	Light

Installation

hyprpm (recommended)

Builds against your exact Hyprland version, no ABI mismatch headaches:

hyprpm add https://github.com/hyprnux/hyprglass
hyprpm enable HyprGlass

Pre-built release

Grab hyprglass.so from Releases. Each release targets a specific Hyprland API version — check the release notes to confirm it matches yours.

hyprctl plugin load /path/to/hyprglass.so

Or persist it in your config:

plugin = /path/to/hyprglass.so

Manual build

make
hyprctl plugin load $(pwd)/hyprglass.so

Configuration

Everything goes under plugin:hyprglass: in your Hyprland config.

Theme and presets

Configuration uses:

• Preset – named set of settings that can be inherited, global or given by the "hyprglass-aware" window through tag.
• Theme (dark / light) – fine tuning (brightness, contrast, saturation, adaptive dim/boost, ...), global or given by the "hyprglass-aware" window through tag.

Settings resolve through:

1. Preset – by priority: theme values, preset shared values, then inherited preset (recursive)
2. Built-in theme override (dark: / light: prefix in settings)
3. Global value (no prefix in settings)
4. Hardcoded theme default

plugin:hyprglass {
    default_theme = dark
    default_preset = default

    brightness = 0.9                 # global override
    dark:brightness = 0.82           # built-in dark theme override
    light:adaptive_boost = 0.5       # built-in light theme override

    # Custom preset: shared + per-theme variants
    preset = name:clear, glass_opacity:0.8, blur_strength:1.5
    preset = name:clear:dark, brightness:0.7
    preset = name:clear:light, brightness:1.2
}

Global-only settings

Option	Type	Default	Description
enabled	int	1	Enable/disable the effect (0 or 1)
default_theme	string	dark	Default theme: dark or light
default_preset	string	default	Default preset name

Overridable settings

Set globally, per theme with dark: / light: prefix, or in a preset.

Option	Type	Global Default	Dark Default	Light Default	Description
blur_strength	float	2.0	—	—	Blur radius scale (value × 12.0 px)
blur_iterations	int	3	—	—	Gaussian blur passes (1-5)
refraction_strength	float	0.6	—	—	Edge refraction intensity (0.0-1.0)
chromatic_aberration	float	0.5	—	—	Spectral dispersion at edges (0.0-1.0)
fresnel_strength	float	0.6	—	—	Edge glow intensity (0.0-1.0)
specular_strength	float	0.8	—	—	Specular highlight brightness (0.0-1.0)
glass_opacity	float	1.0	—	—	Overall glass opacity (0.0-1.0)
edge_thickness	float	0.06	—	—	Bezel width, fraction of smallest dimension (0.0-0.15)
tint_color	color	0x8899aa22	—	—	Glass tint RRGGBBAA hex. Alpha = tint strength
lens_distortion	float	0.5	—	—	Center dome magnification (0.0-1.0)
brightness	float	—	0.82	1.12	Brightness multiplier
contrast	float	—	0.90	0.92	Contrast around midpoint
saturation	float	—	0.80	0.85	Desaturation (0 = grayscale, 1 = full)
vibrancy	float	—	0.15	0.12	Selective saturation boost
vibrancy_darkness	float	—	0.0	0.0	Vibrancy influence on dark areas (0-1)
adaptive_dim	float	—	0.4	0.0	Dims bright areas behind the glass (white is white 0 -to- 1 white becomes black)
adaptive_boost	float	—	0.0	0.4	Boosts dark areas behind the glass (black is black 0 -to- 1 black becomes white)

— in Global Default = falls through to per-theme default. — in Dark/Light = inherits global value.

Theme detection

Each window's theme is resolved as:

1. Window tag hyprglass_theme_light or hyprglass_theme_dark
2. Fallback to default_theme

Set via window rules:

windowrule = tag +hyprglass_theme_light, class:firefox

Or on the fly:

hyprctl dispatch tagwindow +hyprglass_theme_dark

Presets

Presets are named config overrides. They can be built-in (always available) or user-defined via the preset keyword. User-defined presets with the same name override built-in ones.

Each preset can have:

• Shared values (theme-agnostic): preset = name:mypreset, blur_strength:1.5
• Dark variant: preset = name:mypreset:dark, brightness:0.7
• Light variant: preset = name:mypreset:light, brightness:1.2
• Inheritance: preset = name:mypreset, inherits:otherpreset, ...

Assign a preset to a window via tags:

windowrule = tag +hyprglass_preset_high_contrast, class:myterminal

Or on the fly:

hyprctl dispatch tagwindow +hyprglass_preset_subtle

Built-in presets

These are always available without any config. Use default_preset or per-window tags to activate them.

Preset	Description
high_contrast	Punchy colors, strong tinting, good contrast between dark and light themes. Lower blur, stronger refraction.
subtle	Minimal glass effect. Light blur, reduced refraction and highlights.
clear	Minimal transparent effect. Like a transparent rounded border glass plate.
glass	Solid glass block effect with a lot of chromatic aberration..

To use a built-in preset as default:

plugin:hyprglass {
    default_preset = high_contrast
}

To override a built-in preset, redefine it:

plugin:hyprglass {
    # Override the built-in high_contrast preset's shared blur
    preset = name:high_contrast, blur_strength:2.0
}

Note: Those presets are not totaly fine-tuned, but they are a good starting point. Please submit improvments or your own presets through issues or PR (with some screenshots).

User-defined presets

Define your own presets, in your Hyprland config, with :

plugin:hyprglass {
    # Clear preset — transparent look, app chooses this via tag
    preset = name:clear, blur_strength:0.2, blur_iteration: 1, refraction_strength: 1, lens_distortion: 1
    preset = name:clear:dark, brightness:0.7, contrast:1.0
    preset = name:clear:light, brightness:1.2, contrast:0.95

    # Contrasted — inherits from high_contrast, overrides tint
    preset = name:contrasted, inherits:high_contrast, contrast:1.2, adaptive_dim:1.5
    preset = name:contrasted:dark, tint_color:0x02142aa9
}

Increase two last digits of tint colors for more opacity of tint color and more contrast with background

How It Works

The window is modeled as a thick convex glass slab. The rendering pipeline per window:

1. Background sampling — The framebuffer behind the window is captured with padding (content beyond the window boundary is included).
2. Gaussian blur — Multi-pass two-pass (horizontal + vertical) Gaussian blur for the frosted look.
3. Glass height field — An SDF-based height profile: 1.0 deep inside the window, smooth S-curve to 0.0 at the edge. The transition width is edge_thickness.
4. Edge refraction — The height field gradient drives UV displacement. At the center the gradient is near-zero (no distortion). At the edges the gradient is steep, pushing sample UVs outward — pulling in content from beyond the window boundary. This creates natural color bleeding.
5. Chromatic aberration — R, G, B channels are sampled with slightly different refraction scales (blue bends more), creating spectral fringing at edges.
6. Center dome lens — Subtle barrel magnification in the flat interior, controlled by lens_distortion.
7. Frosted tint — Per-theme tone mapping: adaptive luminance-dependent brightness, contrast, desaturation, and vibrancy applied to the blurred background.
8. Color tint overlay — Configurable color tint.
9. Fresnel edge glow — Schlick-based fresnel approximation at the glass edge.
10. Specular highlight + inner shadow — Top-biased highlight and bottom-rim shadow for depth.

The plugin integrates with Hyprland's render pass system as a DECORATION_LAYER_BOTTOM decoration, drawing before the window surface so the glass shows through transparent windows.

Unloading

hyprctl plugin unload /path/to/hyprglass.so

Notes

• The plugin requires Hyprland shadows to be present in the render pipeline. It auto-enables them at load time if disabled — shadow visual values (range, color…) can be zero, only the decoration's presence matters.

License

See repository for license details.