bspwm Alternatives

Apps similar to bspwm include Hyprland, which is free and open source. Other options are niri, Sway, i3 and Openbox. Window Managers like bspwm are a crowded field, with more than 50 alternatives for Linux, Mac and Windows.

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Alternatives
bspwm alternatives page was last updated

Alternatives list

  1. SwayFX icon
     3 likes

    Sway is an incredible window manager, and certainly one of the most well established wayland window managers. However, it is restricted to only include the functionality that existed in i3. This fork ditches the simple wlr_renderer, and replaces it with our fx_renderer, capable...

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Open Source (MIT)

    Application type

    Since

    • Since 2024

    Platforms

    • Linux
    • Arch Linux
    • Gentoo Linux
    • Fedora
    • Nix Package Manager
    • Sway
    • FreeBSD
    • Wayland
    Good alternative?
     
  2. spectrwm icon
     11 likes

    spectrwm is a small dynamic tiling window manager for X11. It tries to stay out of the way so that valuable screen real estate can be used for much more important stuff. It has sane defaults and does not require one to learn a language to do any configuration.

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Open Source

    Application type

    Since

    • Since 2011

    Platforms

    • Mac
    • Linux
    • BSD
    Good alternative?
     
  3. hikari icon
     2 likes

    hikari [ja. Light] is a stacking Wayland compositor which is actively developed on FreeBSD but also supports Linux.

    88 hikari alternatives

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Open Source

    Since

    • Since 2023

    Platforms

    • Linux
    • BSD
    Good alternative?
     
  4. mangowc icon
     1 like

    wayland compositor base wlroots and scenefx(dwm but wayland).

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Open Source

    Application type

    Since

    • Since 2025

    Platforms

    • Wayland
    • Linux
    Good alternative?
     
  5. wmii icon
     9 likes

    wmii is a small, dynamic window manager for X11. It is scriptable, has a 9p filesystem interface and supports classic and tiling (acme-like) window management. It aims to maintain a small and clean (read hackable and beautiful) codebase.

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Open Source

    Application type

    Since

    • Since 2011

    Platforms

    • Linux
    Good alternative?
     
  6. Gnome Mutter icon
     1 like

    Mutter is a Wayland display server and X11 window manager and compositor library.

    Cost / License

    Application type

    Since

    • Since 2024

    Platforms

    • Linux
    • GNOME
    • Wayland
    Good alternative?
     
  7. PaperDE icon
     1 like

    A light-weight desktop environment based on Qt/Wayland and wayfire.

    Cost / License

    Application type

    Since

    • Since 2024

    Platforms

    • Linux
    • Qt
    • Wayland
    Good alternative?
     
  8. JWM icon
     5 likes

    JWM is a light-weight window manager for the X11 Window System. JWM is written in C and uses only Xlib at a minimum. Because of its small footprint, JWM makes a good window manager for older computers and less powerful systems, such as the .

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Open Source (MIT)

    Application type

    Since

    • Since 2019

    Platforms

    • Linux
    Good alternative?
     
  9. LeftWM icon
     3 likes

    Left is a tiling window manager written in rust for stability and performance. The core of left is designed to do one thing and one thing well. Be a window manager. Because you probably want more than just a black screen LeftWM is built around the concept of theming.

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Open Source (MIT)

    Application type

    Since

    • Since 2021

    Platforms

    • Linux
    Good alternative?
     
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