// the find
eythaann/Seelen-UI
The Fully Customizable Desktop Environment for Windows 10/11.
Seelen UI is a full shell replacement for Windows 10/11 — tiling window manager, custom taskbar/dock, widget system, app launcher, and a CSS/JSON theming engine, all built on Tauri with a Rust backend and web-tech frontend. It targets power users who want the kind of desktop customization Linux users take for granted, without leaving Windows. 17k stars and active daily commits suggest genuine traction.
The architecture is well-considered: Rust handles the low-level Windows API work (window management, hooks, IPC) while Tauri+Svelte/React handles rendering, which is the right split rather than trying to do everything in one layer. The Widget SDK is a real differentiator — Svelte + TypeScript + IPC access means third-party widgets aren't second-class citizens. Config is plain files (YAML/JSON), so dotfiles-style version control and sync just works. The per-app rules system (floating mode, workspace pinning, layout overrides) is the kind of thing that separates a toy tiling manager from one you can actually use daily.
Hard dependency on Microsoft Edge / WebView2 is a real gotcha — users who deliberately removed Edge will hit a silent failure mode, and the README buries this in a caution block rather than surfacing it during install. The mixed-language frontend (some widgets are React, some Svelte) means the SDK experience is inconsistent and contributors need to know both. Windows-only by design, which is fine, but it means zero portability and the project lives or dies on Tauri's continued Windows support and Microsoft not breaking the Win32/UIA APIs Seelen depends on. Documentation is scattered across seelen.io, Discord, and the repo — there's no single authoritative reference for theme authoring or IPC commands.