hyprland-wiki/pages/Getting Started/Master-Tutorial.md

---
weight: 1
title: Master tutorial
---

If you are coming to Hyprland for the first time, this is the main tutorial to
read.

Due to a lot of people doing stupid stuff, this tutorial will cover literally
everything you need to just get things going. It does link to other pages where
necessary.

## Install Hyprland

See [Installation](../Installation) and come back here once you have
successfully installed Hyprland.

Install `kitty` (default terminal emulator) terminal. This is available in most
distros' repositories.

## NVIDIA?

_If not using an NVIDIA card, skip this step_

Please take a look at [The Nvidia page](../../Nvidia) before launching. It has a
lot of info regarding the needed environment and tweaks.

## VM?

_If not using a VM, skip this step_

In a VM, make sure you have 3D acceleration enabled in your virtio config (or
virt-manager) otherwise Hyprland _**will not work**_.

You can also passthru a GPU to make it work.

Please bear in mind 3D accel in VMs may be pretty slow.

## Launching Hyprland

Now, you can just execute `Hyprland` in your tty.

**!IMPORTANT**: Do **not** launch Hyprland with `root` permissions (don't
`sudo`)

You can see some launch flags by doing `Hyprland -h`, these include setting the
config path, ignoring a check for the above, etc.

Login managers are not officially supported, but here's a short compatibility
list:

- SDDM → Works flawlessly. Install sddm ⩾ 0.20.0 or the
  [latest git version](https://github.com/sddm/sddm) (or
  [sddm-git](https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/sddm-git) from AUR) to prevent
  SDDM bug [1476](https://github.com/sddm/sddm/issues/1476) (90s shutdowns).
- GDM → Works with the caveat of crashing Hyprland on the first launch
- ly → Works poorly

## In Hyprland

You're good to go with your adventure, technically.

Use <key>SUPER</key> + <key>Q</key> to launch kitty. If you wish to choose the
default terminal before you proceed, you can do so in
`~/.config/hypr/hyprland.conf`
([example config](https://github.com/hyprwm/Hyprland/blob/main/example/hyprland.conf)).

If you want the best experience with less hassle googling, keep reading.

## Critical software

See the [Must-have Software page](../../Useful-Utilities/Must-have) for the
crucial things to make Wayland / Hyprland / other apps work correctly.

## Monitors config

See [Configuring Hyprland page](../../Configuring/Monitors) to learn all about
configuring your displays.

## Apps / X11 replacements

See the [Useful Utilities page](../../Useful-Utilities) and the
[Sway wiki page](https://github.com/swaywm/sway/wiki/Useful-add-ons-for-sway)
just about that. You can also visit the
[Awesome-Hyprland](https://github.com/hyprland-community/awesome-hyprland)
repository for a more comprehensive list.

## Fully configure

Head onto the
[Configuring Hyprland page](../../Configuring/Configuring-Hyprland) to learn all
about configuring Hyprland to your likings.

## Cursors

Cursors are a notorious pain to set up when you don't know how. See
[this FAQ entry](../../FAQ#how-do-i-change-me-mouse-cursor)

If your cursor does not appear, then see
[this FAQ entry](../../FAQ#me-cursor-no-render)

## Themes

Since this is not a fully-fledged Desktop Environment, you will need to use tools
such as `lxappearance` and `nwg-look` (recommended) for GTK, and `qt5ct` /
`qt6ct` for their respective Qt versions. Some older applications may also
require `qt4ct`.

## Force apps to use Wayland

A lot of apps will use Wayland by default. Chromium (and other browsers based on
it or electron) don't. You need to pass
`--enable-features=UseOzonePlatform --ozone-platform=wayland` to them or use
`.conf` files where possible. Chromium-based browsers also should have a toggle
in `chrome://flags`. Search for _"ozone"_ and select Wayland. If you are on NixOS
you can also set the environment variable `NIXOS_OZONE_WL=1` in your configuration.

For most electron apps, you should put the above in
`~/.config/electron-flags.conf`. VSCode is known to not work with that though.

A few more environment variables for forcing Wayland mode are documented
[here](../../Configuring/Environment-variables).

You can check whether an app is running in xwayland or not with
`hyprctl clients`.