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My Tokyo Night Windows Rice

Windows GlazeWM Zebar Tokyo Night

I’ve been ricing my Windows 11 desktop for a while now. The goal: make Windows feel like a keyboard-driven Linux setup, with a consistent Tokyo Night Storm theme across every tool. Here’s the full breakdown.

The Stack

ToolPurpose
GlazeWMTiling window manager with vim keybindings
ZebarCustom status bar with system monitoring
Windows TerminalTerminal emulator with acrylic transparency
Oh My PoshShell prompt
btop4winSystem monitor with Tokyo Night theme
Neovim + LazyVimCode editor
Wallpaper EngineAnimated wallpapers

Everything is tied together with a consistent color palette and automated setup scripts. The whole config is version controlled at github.com/johnsideserf/windows-ricing.

GlazeWM: The Window Manager

GlazeWM is a tiling window manager for Windows, think i3 or Hyprland but native to Win11. I use Alt as my base modifier key with vim-style navigation:

  • Alt + H/J/K/L to focus left/down/up/right
  • Alt + Shift + H/J/K/L to move windows
  • Alt + 1-9 to jump to workspace
  • Alt + Space to cycle between tiling, floating, and fullscreen
  • Alt + Enter to open terminal

I have 9 workspaces with auto-assignment rules: workspace 1 for terminals, 2 for browsers, 3 for code editors, 4 for chat apps, 5 for media, and so on. When I open Spotify, it goes to workspace 5. When I open VS Code, workspace 3. No manual window management needed.

Window borders are Tokyo Night colored: #7aa2f7 blue for the focused window, #414868 for everything else. Gaps are 8px between windows with a 48px top gap to make room for Zebar.

Zebar: The Status Bar

Zebar sits at the top of the screen and shows everything I care about at a glance:

  • Left: Workspace indicators (clickable, color-coded)
  • Center: Date and time
  • Right: Spotify now playing (with my scrolling widget), CPU usage + temp, GPU usage + temp, RAM, network, battery, weather

The Spotify widget is one I built myself. It shows the current track and artist with a smooth marquee animation, plus skip and pause controls. The CPU and GPU temperature readouts come from a provider I contributed to the Zebar project.

The bar uses JetBrainsMono Nerd Font for icons and is styled to blend seamlessly with the Tokyo Night theme, with a #0D0E16 background matching the overall desktop.

Terminal Setup

Windows Terminal with a few key customizations:

  • Tokyo Night Storm color scheme (custom JSON theme)
  • JetBrainsMono Nerd Font at 11pt
  • 85% opacity with acrylic blur for a translucent background that blends with the wallpaper
  • PowerShell 7 as the default profile

On top of the terminal, my PowerShell profile loads a bunch of modern CLI tools:

  • zoxide: smart cd replacement. Type z projects instead of cd C:\Users\smile\projects
  • eza: modern ls with git status and icons. ll for long format, lt for tree view
  • fzf: fuzzy finder. Ctrl+T to search files, Ctrl+R for command history
  • lazygit: TUI for git operations
  • ripgrep: fast file content search
  • delta: better git diffs with syntax highlighting

btop4win: System Monitor

btop4win with the tokyo-storm theme, vim keys enabled for navigation, and LibreHardwareMonitor integration for accurate CPU and GPU temperature readings. It uses braille graph symbols for high-resolution charts.

Automation: The Secret Sauce

The best part of this rice is that it’s fully reproducible. Five PowerShell scripts handle everything:

.\install.ps1          # Install 15+ apps via winget
.\setup-configs.ps1    # Copy all config files to their system locations
.\setup-cursors.ps1    # Download & apply Bibata Modern Classic cursor
.\setup-startup.ps1    # Create startup shortcuts for GlazeWM + Wallpaper Engine
.\setup-windows.ps1    # Registry tweaks: dark mode, accent color, hide desktop icons

Fresh Windows install? Run these five scripts and you’re back to your exact setup. Every config file lives in the repo and gets symlinked or copied to the right location.

The registry tweaks handle things like:

  • System-wide dark mode
  • Accent color set to Tokyo Night blue
  • Desktop icons hidden
  • Recycle bin hidden
  • Taskbar auto-hide

Extra Touches

A few more things that round out the setup:

  • Bibata Modern Classic cursor: minimal dark cursor theme, applied via registry
  • Windhawk mods: translucent acrylic start menu and fully transparent taskbar
  • Wallpaper Engine: animated wallpapers from Steam, auto-launches on boot

Why Rice Windows?

Most desktop ricing happens on Linux. Windows is harder to customize, with fewer tools, more workarounds, and things like CPU temperature requiring kernel drivers. But GlazeWM and Zebar have gotten good enough that you can get a genuinely productive tiling setup on Windows without switching OS.

The version-controlled configs mean I never lose my setup. And the scripted installation means I can go from stock Windows to my full rice in under 10 minutes.

Check out the full repo: github.com/johnsideserf/windows-ricing

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