Part of CachyOS Wiki Notes. From the official CachyOS wiki (last updated 2026-07-25).

Switching Desktop Environments

Things to consider

• Multiple DEs/WMs can conflict — especially settings managers, default applications, and appearance configs such as GTK/Qt themes and icons. The two worst offenders are GNOME and KDE Plasma (different toolkits — GTK vs Qt — plus many background services).
• Package bloat matters for mainstream DEs (hundreds of packages).
• Window managers mix with DEs more easily, e.g. KDE Plasma + Hyprland, picked at login.

How CachyOS settings packages work

Each CachyOS-offered DE/WM has its own -settings package, e.g. cachyos-i3wm-settings. These place config files in /etc/skel/ — the template used for new user accounts.

Important: for existing users these settings are NOT applied automatically, to avoid overwriting personal configs.

Two install choices:

1. Keep your current config files and manually adjust/copy from /etc/skel as needed (e.g. copy only i3wm-related files from /etc/skel/.config/i3 into your home directory).
2. Overwrite your configs with the ones from /etc/skel/ for the full CachyOS experience.

Procedure

1. Back up your current configs:

   mkdir -p ~/config-backup
   cp -r ~/.config ~/config-backup/
   cp -r ~/.local ~/config-backup/

2. Uninstall the current -settings package, e.g. KDE:

   sudo pacman -R cachyos-kde-settings

   This does not remove your current DE/WM configurations — only the files stored in /etc/skel.

3. Install the new DE/WM plus its -settings package, e.g. i3wm:

   sudo pacman -Syu i3-wm cachyos-i3wm-settings

   Available DEs/WMs and packages: https://github.com/CachyOS/CachyOS-PKGBUILDS.

4. Copy the new config files from /etc/skel into your home directory. Example: cachyos-i3wm-settings carries config for Kvantum, dunst, GTK, i3, polybar, Qt5 and rofi.

   • File manager route: enable hidden files (Ctrl+H, or View → Show Hidden Files), go to /etc/skel, select all (Ctrl+A), copy (Ctrl+C), go to your home directory, paste (Ctrl+V), then choose “Merge”/“Apply to All” for folders and “Replace” for individual files you want to update — careful, this overwrites current configs.
   • Or do it in the terminal.

5. Log out; at the login screen pick the newly installed DE/WM from the session options before logging back in.

FAQ

• Reverting to your previous config — restore from the backup:

  cp -r ~/config-backup/.config/* ~/.config/
  cp -r ~/config-backup/.local/* ~/.local/

• New updates to a -settings package — new files go to /etc/skel/, your user config in /home/ stays untouched; apply updates by copying from /etc/skel/ again. Watch the relevant GitHub repo.

• Can I install multiple -settings packages? Yes and no — multiple DEs/WMs can be installed, but only one -settings package at a time is recommended to avoid conflicts in /etc/skel/; otherwise pacman may complain about file conflicts.

• What are “CachyOS Settings”? Convenience configuration packages for various DEs/WMs providing pre-configured settings, themes and tweaks. Installing one also pulls in dependencies the vanilla DE/WM doesn’t ship, such as themes, icons, wallpapers and extra apps — e.g. cachyos-i3wm-settings installs rofi, dunst, picom, lxappearance and more.

Maintained repos: KDE Plasma CachyOS/cachyos-kde-settings, GNOME CachyOS/cachyos-gnome-settings, Niri cachyos/cachyos-niri-noctalia, Hyprland CachyOS/cachyos-hypr-noctalia, MangoWM CachyOS/cachyos-mangowc-dms, i3 CachyOS/cachyos-i3wm-settings, Qtile CachyOS/cachyos-qtile-settings, Wayfire CachyOS/cachyos-wayfire-settings. All other offered DEs/WMs have no -settings package yet (vanilla versions).

Related: KDE Plasma on CachyOS, Niri Keybinds and FAQ, Hyprland Setup and Keybinds, i3 Keybinds and FAQ, Qtile Keybinds and FAQ.