Sway (window manager)

Short description: Tiling Wayland compositor

Sway

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Original author(s)| Drew DeVault (SirCmpwn)
Initial release| March 24, 2016; 10 years ago (2016-03-24)[1]
Stable release|

1.8.1 / February 13, 2023; 3 years ago (2023-02-13)

Written in| C
Operating system| Unix-like
Size| 5.3 MiB
Type| Window manager
License| MIT License
Website| swaywm.org

Sway is a tiling window manager and Wayland compositor, inspired by i3, and written in C.[2] Sway is designed as a drop-in replacement for i3 using the more modern Wayland display server protocol and wlroots compositor library.[3] Sway works with existing i3 configuration files and supports most of i3's features while providing several new features of its own.[4]

Sway's default controls for manipulating windows are similar to vi. Window focus is controlled by a combination of the Super key and one of the keys h, j, k, or l. Window movement is performed by the same combination of keys with the addition of the shift key.

Like i3, Sway can be extended and manipulated using its Unix domain socket and JSON-based IPC interface from many programming languages.[5]

Sway's first stable release was on March 11, 2019, after 3.6 years of development.[6]

## Features

Sway replicates several of i3's features:

* Configuration is performed via a plain text file.[5]
* Window tiling is handled manually, rather than dynamically.
* Windows can be split horizontally or vertically.
* Windows can be arranged in a tabbed (horizontal listing like that found in web browsers) or stacked (vertical listing) layout.
* Windows can be floated similar to a floating window manager.
* Tiled and floated windows can be resized or moved using both the mouse and keyboard.[7]
* Sway can be completely driven from the keyboard.[8]

Sway also provides several unique features:

* Supports multiple non-modifier keys when assigning key bindings.[9]
* Windows on the same workspace can be split into multiple containers, such that one set of windows might be arranged in a tabbed layout while the other windows on the workspace might be tiled normally, floating, or arranged in a stacked layout.
* Handles input, output, and wallpaper configurations instead of relying on separate programs.
* Gestures.

## References

1. ↑ Sway Initial Release, Sway, 2019-08-09, https://github.com/swaywm/sway, retrieved 2019-08-09
2. ↑ "State of Sway - December 2015". 2015-12-20. https://drewdevault.com/2015/12/20/State-of-sway.html.
3. ↑ "Wlroots Is A New, Modular Wayland Compositor Library - Phoronix". https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Wayland-wlroots.
4. ↑ "Linux Hardware Reviews, Open-Source Benchmarks & Linux Performance - Phoronix". https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Wayland-i3-Sway-Tiling An i3-Compatible.
5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 (in en) Sway - FLOSS Weekly 501, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4l6neZmG97w, retrieved 2019-08-09
6. ↑ "Announcing the release of sway 1.0". 2019-03-11. https://drewdevault.com/2019/03/11/Sway-1.0-released.html.
7. ↑ "Sway - A Tiling Wayland i3-Compatible Compositor" (in en-US). 2019-03-20. https://www.fossmint.com/sway-a-tiling-wayland-i3-compatible-compositor/.
8. ↑ "Sway: A Tiling Window Manager Specially Crafted for Wayland" (in en-US). 27 March 2019. https://itsfoss.com/sway-window-manager/.
9. ↑ Differences from i3, Sway, 2019-08-09, https://github.com/swaywm/sway, retrieved 2019-08-09

## External links

* v
* t
* e

Desktop environments and window managers based on X11 or Wayland

Desktop
environments
(comparison)|

| GTK-based|

* Budgie
* Cinnamon
* GNOME
* GPE
* LXDE
* MATE
* ROX Desktop
* Sugar
* Xfce

|

Qt-based|

* KDE Plasma
* Lumina
* LXQt (Razor-qt perpetuated)
* OPIE
* Trinity

Motif-based|

* CDE
* DECwindows
* IRIX Interactive Desktop
* VUE

Other|

* EDE (FLTK-based)
* Étoilé (GNUstep-based)
* Mezzo
* OpenWindows (OLIT-based)
* UDE (Xlib/XCB-based)
* Enlightenment (EFL-based)

Graphical
shells|

* GNOME Shell
* KDE Plasma 4
* KDE Plasma 5
* Maynard
* Unity

X window
managers
(comparison)|

| Compositing|

* Compiz
* KWin
* Metacity
* Muffin
* Mutter
* Xfwm
* Enlightenment

|

Stacking|

* 4Dwm
* 9wm
* AfterStep
* amiwm
* Blackbox
* CTWM
* cwm
* Fluxbox
* FLWM
* FVWM
* IceWM
* JWM
* Matchbox
* Motif Window Manager
* olwm
* Openbox
* Qvwm
* Sawfish
* swm
* twm
* tvtwm
* vtwm
* Window Maker
* WindowLab
* wm2

Tiling|

* awesome
* dwm
* i3
* Ion
* larswm
* ratpoison
* StumpWM
* wmii
* xmonad

Wayland
compositors|

* Enlightenment
* Gala
* KWin
* Mir
* Mutter
* Muffin
* Budgie-wm
* sway
* Weston

Related|

* Display server
* GUI
* GUI widget
* Painter's algorithm
* Resolution independence
* Shell
* Virtual desktop
* Widget toolkit
* WIMP
* Windowing system

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