Sway
sway (contracted from SirCmpwn's Wayland compositor [1]) is a compositor for Wayland designed to be fully compatible with i3. According to the official website:
- Sway is a tiling Wayland compositor and a drop-in replacement for the i3 window manager for X11. It works with your existing i3 configuration and supports most of i3's features, plus a few extras.
Installation
sway can be installed with the sway package. The development version can be installed using wlroots-gitAUR and sway-gitAUR. It is advisable to always update wlroots when you update sway, due to tight dependencies.
You may also install swaylock and swayidle to lock your screen and set up an idle manager.
The default application launcher is dmenu and the default terminal emulator is alacritty. Before starting sway it is advisable to either install them or set a new launcher and terminal in the configuration.
Starting
Manually
To start Sway, simply type sway in the Linux console.
Automatically on TTY login
Similarly to X, Sway can be started by adding the following to your shell initialization file (see Command-line shell#Login shell):
if [ -z $DISPLAY ] && [ "$(tty)" = "/dev/tty1" ]; then exec sway fi
For more details, see Xinit#Autostart X at login
From a display manager
The sway session is located at /usr/share/wayland-sessions/sway.desktop. It is automatically recognized by modern display managers like GDM and SDDM.
It is also possible to start sway as a systemd user service through the display manager.
Also you can use text-based session manager, see Display manager#Console.
Configuration
If you already use i3, you may copy your i3 configuration to ~/.config/sway/config and it should work out of the box. Otherwise, copy the sample configuration file located at /etc/sway/config to ~/.config/sway/config. See sway(5) for information on the configuration.
Keymap
By default, sway starts with the US QWERTY keymap. To configure per-input:
~/.config/sway/config
input * {
xkb_layout "us,de,ru"
xkb_variant "colemak,,typewriter"
xkb_options "grp:win_space_toggle"
}
input <identifier> xkb_model "pc101"
More details are available in xkeyboard-config(7) and sway-input(5).
The keymap can also be configured using environment variables (XKB_DEFAULT_LAYOUT, XKB_DEFAULT_VARIANT, etc.) when starting sway. The config options take precedence over environment variables.
Typematic delay and rate
To change typematic delay and rate, you can add the following lines to your input section:
~/.config/sway/config
input <identifier> repeat_delay 300 input <identifier> repeat_rate 30
Statusbar
sway ships with a default status bar in the form of swaybar which runs in a pure Wayland environment. swaybar can call a shell script or other program to show information in the status bar. See sway-bar(5) and swaybar-protocol(7) for details.
Installing i3status is an option to obtain a practical, default status bar under Wayland. All you have to do is add the following snippet at the end of your sway config:
~/.config/sway/config
bar {
status_command i3status
}
If you want to enable colored output for i3status, you need to adjust the following part in the i3status configuration:
~/.config/i3status/config
general {
colors = true
interval = 5
}
Wallpaper
The displaying of a wallpaper in sway is handled by a dedicated program which is packaged separately as swaybg. It is needed in order to run the output command.
The following line, which can be appended at the end of your sway configuration, sets a background image on all displays (output matches all with name "*"):
~/.config/sway/config
output "*" bg /path/to/image fill
Of course you have to replace the file name and path according to your wallpaper.
Solid colors may be set as follows:
output * bg #000000 solid_color
You may use azoteAUR as the GTK3 frontend to swaybg.
Input devices
It is possible to tweak specific input device configurations. For example, to enable tap-to-click and natural scrolling for all touchpads:
~/.config/sway/config
input type:touchpad {
tap enabled
natural_scroll enabled
}
To set the configuration for a particular touchpad, use swaymsg -t get_inputs to obtain a device identifier and use it instead of type:touchpad.
swaymsg -t get_inputs command may contain "\" to escape symbols like "/" (e.g. "2:14:ETPS\/2_Elantech_Touchpad"). These need to be removed.More documentation and options like acceleration profiles or disabling input entirely can be found in sway-input(5).
HiDPI
Set your displays scale factor with the output command in your config file. The scale factor can be fractional, but it is usually 2 for HiDPI screens.
~/.config/sway/config
output <name> scale <factor>
You can find your display name with the following command:
$ swaymsg -t get_outputs
Custom keybindings
Special keys on your keyboard can be used to execute commands, for example to control volume, monitor brightness or media players:
~/.config/sway/config
bindsym XF86AudioRaiseVolume exec pactl set-sink-volume @DEFAULT_SINK@ +5% bindsym XF86AudioLowerVolume exec pactl set-sink-volume @DEFAULT_SINK@ -5% bindsym XF86AudioMute exec pactl set-sink-mute @DEFAULT_SINK@ toggle bindsym XF86AudioMicMute exec pactl set-source-mute @DEFAULT_SOURCE@ toggle bindsym XF86MonBrightnessDown exec brightnessctl set 5%- bindsym XF86MonBrightnessUp exec brightnessctl set +5% bindsym XF86AudioPlay exec playerctl play-pause bindsym XF86AudioNext exec playerctl next bindsym XF86AudioPrev exec playerctl previous bindsym XF86Search exec bemenu-run
See PulseAudio#Keyboard volume control, Advanced Linux Sound Architecture#Keyboard volume control, Backlight#Backlight utilities and MPRIS for details and alternative utilities.
To allow a keybinding to be executed while the lockscreen is active add the --locked parameter to bindsym.
bindsym --locked XF86AudioPlay exec playerctl play-pause
Graphical indicator bars
It is often desirable to have the current level of some percentage-valued setting, such as brightness or volume, be indicated by a graphical bar when it is adjusted. A good option for providing this facility in Sway is wobAUR (alternatively wob-gitAUR), which provides a subset of the functionality of the popular X tool xobAUR but as a native Wayland utility implementing the layer-shell protocol. See the project website for usage examples.
Idle
Sway has a dedicated idle management daemon named swayidle to handle idling sessions. There are different ways to start and parameterize the daemon. The simplest is to use the config of sway itself. swayidle accepts a multitude of arguments to configure events like timeout (a.k.a. idling), resume (resume from sleep), before-sleep etc. See swayidle(1) for more details and further explanations of the events. Each event can then be assigned an action. To assign multiple actions to an event simply repeat the trigger.
The following instructs swayidle to lock the screen after 30 minutes and turn it off five seconds after:
~/.config/sway/config
exec swayidle -w \ timeout 1800 'swaylock' \ timeout 1805 'swaymsg "output * dpms off"' \ resume 'swaymsg "output * dpms on"'
To turn off a locked screen much sooner e.g. after 10 seconds, grep the process list for your locking manager and execute swaymsg "output * dpms off" accordingly like so:
timeout 10 'if pgrep -x swaylock; then swaymsg "output * dpms off"; fi'
In order to lock the screen before suspending and pause any playing media, amend the following instructions to the swayidle command:
before-sleep 'playerctl pause' before-sleep 'swaylock'
Floating windows
To enable floating windows or window assignments, open the application and then use the app_id, the class, the instance and the title attributes to enable floating windows/window assignments. The following command will list the properties of all the open windows.
$ swaymsg -t get_tree
To get only the app_id's of all open windows use:
$ swaymsg -t get_tree | grep "app_id"
To get the app_id of the focused window use:
$ swaymsg -t get_tree | jq -r '..|try select(.focused == true)'
If the app_id happens to be null for some windows, you might have to use the class and/or the instance attributes to enable floating mode/window assignments. You can search the output and create fine grained rules for your windows.
~/.config/sway/config
for_window [app_id="galculator"] floating enable assign [class="firefox"] -> 3 assign [class="^Urxvt$" instance="^htop$"] -> 9
This is similar to using xorg-xprop to find the class or wm_name attributes in X11.
When using multiple monitors, the floating scratchpad window can get too large, covering more than one monitor. This command centers and resizes the floating window to 80% of the current monitor's size:
$ swaymsg move position center; swaymsg resize set 80ppt 80ppt
Clipboard
By default, the clipboard is emptied whenever a window is closed. This can be a surprising default behaviour.
A "clipboard manager" must be installed to make the clipboard's content shared amongst windows.
One example of a clipboard manager, designed for Wayland, is clipman, which can be installed from clipmanAUR or clipman-gitAUR.
To start clipman with Sway, add the following line to your config file:
~/.config/sway/config
exec wl-paste -t text --watch clipman store --no-persist
Xresources
Copy ~/.Xresources to ~/.Xdefaults to use them in Sway.
XWayland
See Wayland#XWayland for details and an overview of available packages.
The use of XWayland is enabled by default.
If you would like to disable XWayland entirely and run a "pure" Wayland session, set the following config key to deactivate the use of XWayland:
~/.config/sway/config
xwayland disable
Use another wlroots renderer
You can use another wlroots renderer by specifying the WLR_RENDERER environment variable. The list of available ones is on the wlroots documentation.
Tips and tricks
Initially enable CapsLock/NumLock
By default, sway initially disables the CapsLock and NumLock keys on startup. To instead enable them on startup, set the xkb_capslock and/or xkb_numlock input configurations to enable for your keyboards. For example, to do so on all keyboards, add the following lines to your sway configuration:
~/.config/sway/config
input * xkb_capslock enable input * xkb_numlock enable
In either case, the CapsLock and NumLock keys may be toggled by pressing the relevant keys on a keyboard.
Current keyboard layout
The current keyboard layout can be retrieved as follows, where kbd_identifier needs to be replaced with your keyboard's identifier:
$ swaymsg -t get_inputs | jq -r '.[] | select(.identifier == "kbd_identifier") | .xkb_active_layout_name'
Compose key
To set up PrintScreen as the compose key:
$ swaymsg 'input * xkb_options compose:prsc'
The combinations for the compose key can also be configured in the XCompose file. Applications need to be restarted for this change to take effect.
You can look up key names in /usr/include/X11/keysymdef.h, or use the xev(1)-like debugger: xkbcli-interactive-wayland(1) (in /usr/lib/xkbcommon/).
Backlight toggle
To turn off (and on) your displays with a key (e.g. Pause) bind the following script in your Sway config:
#!/bin/sh
read lcd < /tmp/lcd
if [ "$lcd" -eq "0" ]; then
swaymsg "output * dpms on"
echo 1 > /tmp/lcd
else
swaymsg "output * dpms off"
echo 0 > /tmp/lcd
fi
Screen capture and screen sharing
Color temperature adjustment
See Backlight#Wayland.
Control swaynag with the keyboard
Swaynag, the default warning/prompt program shipped with sway, only supports user interaction with the mouse. A helper program such as swaynagmodeAUR may be used to enable interaction via keyboard shortcuts.
Swaynagmode works by first launching swaynag, then listening for signals which trigger actions such as selecting the next button, dismissing the prompt, or accepting the selected button. These signals are sent by launching another instance of the swaynagmode script itself with a control argument, such as swaynagmode --select right or swaynagmode --confirm.
Swaynagmode by default triggers the sway mode nag upon initialization, followed by default on exit. This makes it easy to define keybindings in your sway configuration:
~/.config/sway/config
set $nag exec swaynagmode
mode "nag" {
bindsym {
Ctrl+d mode "default"
Ctrl+c $nag --exit
q $nag --exit
Escape $nag --exit
Return $nag --confirm
Tab $nag --select prev
Shift+Tab $nag --select next
Left $nag --select next
Right $nag --select prev
Up $nag --select next
Down $nag --select prev
}
}
Note that, beginning in sway version 1.2, mode names are case-sensitive.
You can configure sway to use swaynagmode with the configuration command swaynag_command swaynagmode.
Change cursor theme and size
To set the cursor theme and size:
~/.config/sway/config
seat seat0 xcursor_theme my_cursor_theme my_cursor_size
Where my_cursor_theme can be set to or replaced by a specific value like default, Adwaita or Simple-and-Soft, and my_cursor_size a value like 48.
You can inspect their values with echo $XCURSOR_SIZE and echo $XCURSOR_THEME.
Note that you need to restart the application to see the changes.
$XCURSOR_SIZE and $XCURSOR_THEME.Manage Sway-specific daemons with systemd
Systemd provides a graphical-session.target which is a user unit which is active whenever any graphical session is running, whether Xorg or Wayland. User services which should run in all graphical environments can be bound to that target. It also allows for a window-manager-specific target to be bound to graphical-session.target to start and stop services which should run only under that window manager. See systemd.special(7)
Users may want to start some services/daemons (such as swayidle or kanshi) only when the current window manager is Sway, and they may also want these services to stop when Sway stops. Additionally, users who are running systemd-oomd.service(8) may want to have the services be in separate cgroups so that a single memory-hungry service does not take down the whole Sway session (see the Fedora bug report).
Some or all of this functionality is provided by Arch Sway packages. For example, the sway package in community provides the sway-session.target file and both sway and sway-gitAUR provide a 50-systemd-user.conf drop-in file for the /etc/sway/config.d/ directory. This file imports required environment variables into the systemd user session and dbus if the Sway config file contains include /etc/sway/config.d/*.
If you intend to provide functionality using the roll-your-own method described below or by using a specialist package such as sway-systemd-gitAUR or sway-services-gitAUR you should consider removing files that provide the same functionality.
This functionality can be provided on a roll-your-own basis by creating a sway-session.target and let those daemons/services wanted by sway-session.target. This systemd target should be a user target (see systemd/User). For example:
~/.config/systemd/user/sway-session.target
[Unit] Description=Sway compositor session Documentation=man:systemd.special BindsTo=graphical-session.target Wants=graphical-session-pre.target After=graphical-session-pre.target
Then, add the following line to Sway's config file (for example, append the line to ~/.config/sway/config, or add a new file to /etc/sway/config.d/):
~/.config/sway/config
... ... ... exec_always "systemctl --user import-environment; systemctl --user start sway-session.target"
With the above line in the configuration file, whenever Sway starts, it also activates sway-session.target.
Finally, link the desired services to sway-session.target. For example, adding a kanshi (or kanshi-gitAUR) service:
~/.config/systemd/user/kanshi.service
[Unit] Description=Dynamic output configuration for Wayland compositors Documentation=https://github.com/emersion/kanshi BindsTo=sway-session.target [Service] Type=simple ExecStart=/usr/bin/kanshi [Install] WantedBy=sway-session.target
When this service is enabled (with --user flag), it is only activated when Sway is running and deactivated when Sway stops:
$ systemctl --user enable --now kanshi.service
The creation of the sway-session.target file and the importing of the environment can also be accomplished by installing sway-systemd-gitAUR. In addition to separating services into cgroups, sway-systemd also places each GUI application in its own cgroup. This enables imposition of per-cgroup resource constraints on individual application. See the sway-systemd README.
Change screen resolution after start
You can use the graphical program wdisplaysAUR or the terminal program wlr-randrAUR to change the resolution, rotate and arrange displays.
Troubleshooting
Application launchers
i3-dmenu-desktop, dmenu, and rofi all function relatively well in Sway, but all run under XWayland and suffer from the same issue where they can become unresponsive if the cursor is moved to a native Wayland window. The reason for this issue is that Wayland clients/windows do not have access to input devices unless they have focus of the screen. The XWayland server is itself a client to the Wayland compositor, so one of its XWayland clients must have focus for it to access user input. However, once one of its clients has focus, it can gather input and make it available to all XWayland clients through the X11 protocol. Hence, moving the cursor to an XWayland window and pressing Escape should fix the issue, and sometimes running pkill does too.
bemenu is a native Wayland dmenu replacement which can optionally be combined with j4-dmenu-desktopAUR to provide a Wayland-native combination for launching desktop files (as i3-dmenu-desktop does):
j4-dmenu-desktop --dmenu='bemenu -i --nb "#3f3f3f" --nf "#dcdccc" --fn "pango:DejaVu Sans Mono 12"' --term='termite'
You may need to set BEMENU_BACKEND environment variable to "wayland" if you choose not to disable XWayland.
You can also build your own with a floating terminal and fzf as discussed in a GitHub issue.
Also krunner binary provided by plasma-workspace package can serve as launcher, offering both XWayland and native Wayland support.
rofi-lbonn-wayland-gitAUR is a fork of rofi that works in Wayland and also has an -x11 flag if you need to launch it in an X11 session.
wofi is a command launcher, that provides some of the same features as rofi but running under Wayland. wofi lacks some features from rofi like an SSH mode and a window-switching mode. It is based on wlroots library and use GTK3 for rendering. It works pretty well with sway.
Virtualization
Sway works with both VirtualBox and VMware ESXi.
Unable to start Sway from tty
For ESXi, you need to enable 3D support under the Hardware Configuration > Video card settings. See also VMware#Enable 3D graphics on Intel, Optimus and AMD.
No visible cursor
When using the VMSVGA graphics controller, the cursor is invisible. This can be fixed by using software cursors as discussed in [3]:
$ export WLR_NO_HARDWARE_CURSORS=1
Sway socket not detected
Using a swaymsg argument, such as swaymsg -t get_outputs, will sometimes return the message:
sway socket not detected. ERROR: Unable to connect to
when run inside a terminal multiplexer (such as gnu screen or tmux). This means swaymsg could not connect to the socket provided in your SWAYSOCK.
To view what the current value of SWAYSOCK is, type:
$ env | fgrep SWAYSOCK SWAYSOCK=/run/user/1000/sway-ipc.1000.4981.sock
To work around this problem, you may try attaching to a socket based on the running sway process:
$ export SWAYSOCK=/run/user/$(id -u)/sway-ipc.$(id -u).$(pgrep -x sway).sock
To avoid this error, run the command outside of a multiplexer.
Unable to retrieve socket path
Requesting messages from swaymsg -t on a tty may return the following message:
Unable to retrieve socket path
SWAYSOCK environment variable is set after launching Sway, therefore a workaround to this error is to request swaymsg -t [message] in a terminal inside Sway.
Keybindings and keyboard layouts
By default, if you are using more than one keyboard layout, e.g. input * xkb_layout "us,ru", bindings may become broken when you switch on some secondary layout.
Thanks to https://github.com/swaywm/sway/pull/3058, all you need is to add --to-code key to sensitive bindsym lines like this:
bindsym --to-code {
$mod+$left focus left
$mod+$down focus down
$mod+$up focus up
$mod+$right focus right
}
Alternatively you can create a variable set $mybind bindsym --to-code and then replace all instances of bindsym with $mybind like so: $mybind $mod+w thing
Java applications
Some Java-based applications will display blank screen when opened, for example any JetBrains editor such as IntelliJ, CLion, or PyCharm. To mitigate this, the application can be started with the _JAVA_AWT_WM_NONREPARENTING environment variable set to 1.
If you start the application from a launcher like rofi or dmenu, you might want to modify the application desktop entry as shown in Desktop entries#Modify environment variables.
Some issues with Java applications have been fixed in OpenJDK 11 and Sway 1.5. However, certain applications require additional configuration to use newer versions of OpenJDK, in the case of Android Studio you must set STUDIO_JDK=/usr/lib/jvm/java-11-openjdk/. [4]
Scroll on border
If using the mouse scroll wheel on an application's border crashes sway, you could use border none for the app_id (e.g. Firefox).
Program cannot open display
If a program crashes on start with the error message "cannot open display", it is likely that the program you are using is an X11 program. You can use the XWayland compatibility layer to run X11 programs under Wayland, see #XWayland for details.
Sway v1.6 shows garbage or blank screen when using nouveau
If sway displays a corrupted image, or a blank screen on one or more displays connected to an Nvidia GPU using nouveau, but starts properly otherwise, try setting WLR_DRM_NO_MODIFIERS=1 before starting sway.
$ WLR_DRM_NO_MODIFIERS=1 sway
The underlying issue relates to outstanding nouveau bugs in Mesa, and should be fixed in a future update. [5]