Sway — i3-Compatible Tiling Window Manager for Wayland

Introduction

Sway implements the i3 window manager's features and configuration format on top of the Wayland display protocol. For developers moving from X11 to Wayland, Sway provides the same keyboard-driven tiling workflow with improved security, per-monitor scaling, and modern input handling.

What Sway Does

• Tiles windows automatically in horizontal/vertical splits and tabbed/stacked layouts
• Uses the same config syntax as i3 so existing dotfiles work with minimal changes
• Supports multiple monitors with per-output scaling, rotation, and arrangement
• Manages workspaces, scratchpad, floating windows, and fullscreen modes
• Communicates with tools and scripts via an IPC socket compatible with i3ipc

Architecture Overview

Sway is built on wlroots, a modular Wayland compositor library. wlroots handles DRM/KMS output, libinput devices, and the Wayland protocol; Sway adds the tiling layout logic, config parser, and i3-compatible IPC server on top. Rendering uses the GPU directly via EGL without an intermediate X server.

Self-Hosting & Configuration

• Install from distro repos; requires a Wayland-capable GPU driver
• Copy default config: mkdir -p ~/.config/sway && cp /etc/sway/config ~/.config/sway/
• Set keybindings, output resolution, input settings, and startup apps in the config file
• Use swaymsg to control the compositor at runtime (same as i3-msg)
• Pair with swaybar/waybar for a status bar and swaylock/swayidle for screen locking

Key Features

• Near-complete i3 configuration compatibility
• Native Wayland: better security (no X11 keylogging surface), smooth HiDPI
• Per-output fractional scaling without blurry fonts
• Criterion-based window rules for automatic tiling/floating/workspace assignment
• Active ecosystem: waybar, wofi, wl-clipboard, grim+slurp for screenshots

Comparison with Similar Tools

• i3 — the X11 original; Sway is the Wayland port with the same config
• Hyprland — Wayland compositor with animations and eye candy; less stable for daily driving
• river — minimal Wayland tiling WM configured via an external process
• dwl — dwm-like Wayland compositor; requires source patching to customize
• GNOME/KDE Wayland — full desktop environments; heavier, with floating-first UX

FAQ

Q: Can I reuse my i3 config file directly? A: Mostly yes. X11-specific directives (e.g., xrandr commands) need replacement with Sway equivalents.

Q: Do X11 apps work under Sway? A: Yes, via XWayland which is enabled by default.

Q: How do I take screenshots? A: Use grim for full screen or grim -g "$(slurp)" for region selection.

Q: Does Sway support NVIDIA GPUs? A: Experimental support exists with the proprietary driver (--unsupported-gpu flag). The open-source nouveau driver works out of the box.

Sources

• https://github.com/swaywm/sway
• https://swaywm.org