Elevation and glow

Opaque boundaries carry structure; soft depth supports separation when available.

Four depth levels

Flush, rest, raised and dialog are semantic depth recipes, not stack indexes. Use the shared shadow tokens --wl-sys-shadow-flush, --wl-sys-shadow-rest, --wl-sys-shadow-raised and --wl-sys-shadow-dialog. Focus never changes a window’s depth class.

FlushAttached surface--wl-sys-shadow-flush

RestOrdinary window--wl-sys-shadow-rest

RaisedPopup surface--wl-sys-shadow-raised

DialogDialog depth--wl-sys-shadow-dialog

Each sample keeps an essential border; the shadow adds separation rather than carrying state.

Opaque surfaces

Owned chrome and content have alpha 1, no backdrop blur and no client dimming. Edges and opaque guards remain legible on near-black wallpaper.

Focused and unfocused

The focused window has a neutral 2px edge, inner and outer 1px guards, raised titlebar and reserved beacon. An unfocused edge remains distinct. Focus changes immediately.

Unfocused windowNeutral inactive edge

Focused window Guarded edge and title beacon

Three permitted treatments

A confirmed recipient may have a bounded halo with a sharp mark; family brackets may have short, subtle softness; a portal may have temporary bounded bloom. Controls, errors, candidates and text do not glow.

Effects off

Reduced effects removes glow. Effects-off and high contrast also remove soft shadows and highlights. Borders, labels and focus cues remain.

Full or reducedRaised depth

Effects offSame opaque surface and boundary

Hyprland mapping

A 2px neutral active border represents the focused window; inactive borders use the unfocused token. Floating windows use 8px rounding; snapped and maximized windows use 0. Blur and dimming are disabled. The compositor shadow approximates CSS depth; additional attention marks require the Warlock presentation path.