Nixy is a NixOS flake for Hyprland users who want one place for secrets and themes

What the configuration actually bundles

Nixy simplifies and unifies the Hyprland ecosystem with a minimalist, modular and easily customisable setup that is heavily focused on TUIs. The stated features are four. Hyprland and TUIs come preconfigured, with a set of terminal user interfaces. Consistent theming comes from Base16 and Stylix. Vim-like keybindings are applied everywhere, across Hyprland, nvim, vimium and similar. And the system is hardened by default, with LUKS encryption, sops-nix secrets, impermanence and more. The description says it provides a structured way to manage system configuration and dotfiles with minimal effort, and it includes home-manager, secrets and custom theming all in one place. The repository topics are `nixos` and `nixos-configuration`, and the licence is MIT, with the project mirrored on GitLab and Gitea in addition to GitHub, which is a sensible precaution for a configuration people depend on.

Five folders, one flake, and what lives where

The architecture section is the part to read before forking, because the folder layout is the design. The `home` folder holds the user-level configuration, with dotfiles and settings for your user environment, and inside it a `programs` subfolder holding apps configured with home-manager, plus a `system` subfolder described as desktop environment configuration. The `nixos` folder holds system-level configuration, with audio, bluetooth, GPU and bootloader among the areas named. The `themes` folder contains the system themes, mainly Stylix configurations, with a separate document explaining how themes work and how to create your own. The `hosts` folder is where per-machine configuration lives, and each host contains `configuration.nix` for system-wide settings, `home.nix` for user-level settings, `variables.nix` for global variables and a `secrets` folder for sensitive data. The `server-modules` folder holds server-related NixOS modules, with gitea, cloudflared and self-hosted apps named. The top-level `flake.nix` and `flake.lock` make the whole thing a single flake, and `.sops.yaml` sits at the root for the secrets tooling.

Installing it means forking and renaming a host

The installation is a five-step process and step two is the part people miss. You fork the repository and clone it into your NixOS configuration directory.

git clone https://github.com/anotherhadi/nixy ~/.config/nixos

Then you copy the `modules/hosts/laptop` folder to `modules/hosts/<hostname>`, rename the `nixosConfigurations` entry in its `default.nix`, and update `_variables.nix` with your machine's settings. Third, you copy your `hardware-configuration.nix` into the new host folder as `_hardware-configuration.nix` to ensure proper hardware support, and the README explains that files starting with `_` are plain NixOS modules ignored by import-tree. That last detail is the mechanism that lets a per-host folder carry a raw file without it being picked up as a module. The rebuild then targets the flake with a hostname fragment.

sudo nixos-rebuild switch --flake ~/.config/nixos#yourhostname

The `yourhostname` fragment is how NixOS selects the host configuration from the flake, and it is the same string as the folder name you created in step two.

CHANGEME comments and the fork as the operating model

There is no installer script and no generator, which is unusual for a distribution and is the point. The configuration ships with `# CHANGEME` comments placed throughout to indicate necessary modifications, and the README gives you a command to find them all, which is a ripgrep search for the marker across your NixOS directory.

That workflow, fork the repository, search for the markers, edit, rebuild, is how the project expects to be used, and it is a coherent choice for a configuration whose users are, by definition, comfortable in Nix. The tip in the README about running `git add.` after adding new files is a small but telling detail, since it treats the configuration as a repository you keep committing to, which is how dotfiles are usually managed. The documentation set reinforces this. There are pages for the server, for themes, for using the Neovim config in your own flake, and for contributing. The wallpapers link points to a separate collection. The releases show the pace of the project, with v5.0.0 in April 2026, v5.0.1 in May, and v6.0.0 in August 2026, whose release name marks a TUI focus, and the last push to the repository was recent.

Where Nixy is the wrong choice

There are two clear reasons not to use this, and neither is a defect. The first is platform. This is a NixOS flake with Hyprland at its centre, and if you are on a different Linux distribution, or on macOS, or you use a different desktop environment, most of the value evaporates, because the value is in the integration rather than in any single piece. The second is that a configuration opinionated about hardening and encryption is a configuration with opinions you may not want. LUKS encryption, sops-nix for secrets and impermanence for a tmpfs root are sensible defaults for a laptop, and they are also decisions with a cost, particularly the disk encryption prompt at boot and the fact that impermanence means state does not survive a reboot unless you declare it. The project also assumes a fair amount of Nix knowledge, since the instructions are about renaming flake entries and editing Nix files rather than clicking through a setup. A team that wants a Hyprland desktop with a working home-manager setup but does not want to maintain a fork of someone else's configuration will spend more time on it than the README suggests.

The stack behind the theming and the secrets

A few of the named technologies deserve a word, since they are the parts you would look up. Stylix is the tool that drives the theming, and the themes folder is mostly Stylix configurations, which means the colour scheme is a separate concern from the component configuration, and changing palette does not mean rewriting your terminal config. sops-nix handles the secrets, with a `secrets` folder per host and the `.sops.yaml` file at the root defining the keys, so each host's sensitive values are encrypted at rest and decrypted at build time rather than living in the repository in plain text. home-manager is what makes the `programs` subfolder work, since it is the standard way to declare user-level applications in Nix. Base16 is the underlying colour scheme format that Stylix builds on. The components are all well known and independently documented, so the configuration is assembling known parts rather than inventing an approach, and the README describes the result as a unified keybinding scheme across Hyprland, nvim and vimium, which is the part most likely to need adjusting to your own habits.

Editorial conclusion

Adopt Nixy if you already run NixOS with Hyprland and want a coherent desktop configuration that bundles theming, secrets, keybindings and hardening rather than assembling them yourself. Skip it if you are not on NixOS, since the whole thing is a flake, and skip it if you want a minimal system, because the feature list is deliberately broad. Before you commit, read through the CHANGEME placeholders in the configuration, since the install steps require you to rename a host entry and supply your own hardware configuration, and check that the v6 TUI-oriented release matches what you actually want to run.

Frequently asked questions

Official sources

1. anotherhadi/nixy on GitHub
2. Issues
3. License: MIT
4. README
5. Releases