01. Overview & Architecture

Profile: 1.12
Purpose
Drop-in replacement for the i3 window manager designed specifically for Wayland.
Compatibility
Arch Linux, Debian, Fedora, Void Linux, Alpine (Server: WAYLAND)
Desktop Part
WM & compositors
Window Manager & Theme
Sway / Sway Charcoal Minimal
Key Components
Bar: Swaybar / Waybar•Terminal: Foot•Launcher: Dmenu / Wofi•Notifications: Mako•Editor: Vim
Full Description
Sway provides a rock-solid, standards-compliant tiling Wayland environment. It works seamlessly with existing i3 configurations while offering tearing-free rendering, fractional scaling, and ultra-low CPU footprint.
Architecture & Technical Design

Sway provides a rock-solid, standards-compliant tiling Wayland environment. It works seamlessly with existing i3 configurations while offering tearing-free rendering, fractional scaling, and ultra-low CPU footprint.

02. Installation & Deployment

Method: Verified Command

Step-by-step deployment protocol

Step-by-step deployment
1Install Sway compositor and utils
$sudo pacman -S --needed sway swaybg swayidle swaylock foot dmenu
2Copy default sway config
$mkdir -p ~/.config/sway
$cp /etc/sway/config ~/.config/sway/config
3Reload Sway configuration
$swaymsg reload

03. Screenshot Gallery // Sway Wayland Workstation

Capture 01 // Fullscreen
Sway Wayland compositor official branding and architecture
01 / 02

04. Documentation & Guide

Source: swaywm/swayRef: 1652c54b73
README.md|GitHub Flavored Markdown

sway

English - عربي - Azərbaycanca - Česky - Deutsch - Dansk - Español - Français - ქართული - Ελληνικά - हिन्दी - Magyar - فارسی - Italiano - 日本語 - 한국어 - Nederlands - Norsk - Polski - Português - Română - Русский - Српски - Svenska - Türkçe - Українська - 中文-简体 - 中文-繁體

sway is an i3-compatible Wayland compositor. Read the FAQ. Join the IRC channel (#sway on irc.libera.chat).

Release Signatures

Releases are signed with E88F5E48 and published on GitHub.

Installation

From Packages

Sway is available in many distributions. Try installing the "sway" package for yours.

Compiling from Source

Check out this wiki page if you want to build the HEAD of sway and wlroots for testing or development.

Install dependencies:

  • meson *
  • wlroots
  • wayland
  • wayland-protocols *
  • pcre2
  • json-c
  • pango
  • cairo
  • gdk-pixbuf2 (optional: additional image formats for system tray)
  • swaybg (optional: wallpaper)
  • scdoc (optional: man pages) *
  • git (optional: version info) *

* Compile-time dep

Run these commands:

meson setup build/
ninja -C build/
sudo ninja -C build/ install

Configuration

If you already use i3, then copy your i3 config to ~/.config/sway/config and it'll work out of the box. Otherwise, copy the sample configuration file to ~/.config/sway/config. It is usually located at /etc/sway/config. Run man 5 sway for information on the configuration.

Running

Run sway from a TTY or from a display manager.

GitHub Flavored Markdown (github-markdown-css)● Live Repo Synced

05. Keyboard Shortcuts

Total: 4 shortcuts
SUPER + RETURNShortcut
exec, foot
Spawn Foot terminal
SUPER + DShortcut
exec, dmenu_path | dmenu | xargs swaymsg exec --
Launch program
SUPER + SHIFT + QShortcut
kill
Close focused window
SUPER + SHIFT + CShortcut
reload
Reload Sway config