Sway

Last updated: 2024, Mon Jun 10th at 09:39 CDT

Sway is based on the i3 tiling manager but uses the wayland compositor. It will work with an existing i3 configuration and supports most of the same features and extras. Sway uses the wlroots project, that they maintain, providing a modular base for other Wayland compositors like Hyprland

To Install: #

Preferred method

Sway is in most package managers, building from source is for more advance user or developers.

sudo pacman -Su sway

sudo apt install sway

sudo dnf install sway

sudo zypper in sway

Essentials #

Start configuring sway be moving a copy of the default into ~/.config/sway/.

mkdir -p ~/.config/sway
cp /etc/sway/config ~/.config/sway/
$EDITOR ~/.config/sway/config

Extras #

Tip

Sway shares a lot of the same config options as i3

Edit the .conf file to suit your needs, more information on how and what can be configured can be found on the wiki or doing a web search for sway dotfiles may help. An i3 config can be converted/migrated, a guide can be found on the wiki. If you need or want more UI option try SwayFx.

Software #

Sway is a window manager and as such is designed to be as minimal as possible. It doesn’t have any utilities or plugins, a list of add-ons for sway on the wiki.

Suggested #

This a list of suggested programs to use on Sway. Most Window managers let you customize every detail.