Omarchy: What It Is & How It Works

Omarchy is an “opinionated Arch + Hyprland setup” by David Heinemeier Hansson (DHH), the creator of Ruby on Rails and co-founder of 37signals. It’s designed to give you a modern, polished desktop experience on Linux with minimal setup.

What Is Omarchy?

• Based on Arch Linux + Hyprland: Omarchy layers on top of Arch, using Hyprland as the tiling window manager.
• Opinionated setup: It comes with a curated set of software, configuration, themes, dotfiles, key bindings, etc. The idea is to give you a working, attractive setup out of the box.
• ISO + Script installation: Omarchy provides an ISO installer (for fresh installs) and/or scripts/configs for post-install configuration.
• Polished UX: Keyboard-driven navigation, preconfigured theming, application launcher, hotkeys, etc. Everything is set up in a coherent, aesthetically pleasing way.

Major Features & What You Get

• Preinstalled modern tools: code editors, browsers, media apps, etc. For example: Neovim, LibreOffice, Chromium, Zoom, Spotify among others. Themes and styles: multiple themes, font options, background/image theming etc.
• Default keybindings and window management preconfigured: everything is wired to work well together under Hyprland.
• Menu and control interface: Omarchy includes its own menu for switching themes, installing/removing some packages, managing apps etc.
• Rolling updates & its own repository, plus access to Arch's official repos / AUR (Arch User Repository).

Installation Steps (High-Level)

1. Download the Omarchy ISO or use the online/script version
   The ISO is for a fresh install; there are also scripts for configuring an existing Arch installation. Download link.
2. Boot from the USB/Live environment
   Create a bootable USB (via balenaEtcher or similar), then boot the machine. Be aware you may need to disable Secure Boot or TPM depending on your hardware.
3. Configure options during setup
   • Partitioning / drive selection
   • Encryption (Omarchy uses full-disk encryption)
   • Choosing whether to accept the full package set or minimal (“bare” mode) if available.
4. Boot into your new system, explore the Omarchy environment
   Learn the hotkeys, the menus, theme selector etc. You’ll likely want to customize some of your dotfiles (in ~/.config) to adapt to your preferences.
5. Keep it updated
   Omarchy has its own package repo plus you still use Arch’s rolling releases. It provides updates via its GUI menu for “Update > Omarchy” etc.

Things to Know / Pros & Cons

Pros:

• Fast setup for a polished Linux desktop. You get a lot of configuration, theming, and apps without having to manually set everything up.
• Visually appealing / modern UX. For people tired of tweaking Arch + Hyprland from scratch, Omarchy gives a head start.
• Good defaults but still modifiable: many things are configurable via dotfiles / config files.

Potential Drawbacks:

• Opinionated: you get a bundle of software, styles, theming etc. If you prefer minimalism or want full control over every package, you may dislike having defaults baked in.
• Learning curve: Because it relies on Hyprland and keyboard navigation heavily, if you're used to more traditional desktop environments (GNOME, KDE, etc.), you’ll need to adjust.
• Hardware compatibility / Secure Boot / TPM settings can be tricky on some machines.

Who Is Omarchy For?

• You like Arch Linux but want a lot of polish and less setup overhead.
• You are okay with opinionated defaults but also want room to tweak.
• You prefer a keyboard-driven tiling window manager.
• You want a system that looks good out of the box and is productive quickly.

Maybe less ideal if:

• You want minimalist, bare-bones setups.
• You prefer GUI desktop environments with strong “point-and-click” workflows.
• Your hardware or firmware has Secure Boot / TPM / firmware quirks and you want less manual configuration.

Recent Changes / Versions

• Omarchy 2.0 introduced more robust infrastructure: dedicated package repository, growing community, more releases. (Hey World)
• The Omarchy manual is quite detailed; it covers getting started, theming, keybindings, navigation, etc. (learn.omacom.io)