i3 Alternatives

Apps similar to i3 include GNOME, which is free and open source. Other options are Hyprland, COSMIC, niri and Sway. There's no shortage of Window Managers like i3, with more than 50 alternatives for Linux, Mac and Windows.

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Alternatives
i3 alternatives page was last updated

Alternatives list

  1. Fluxbox icon
     33 likes

    Fluxbox is a window manager for X that was based on the Blackbox 0.61.1 code. It is very light on resources and easy to handle but yet full of features to make an easy, and extremely fast, desktop experience. It is built using C++ and licensed under the MIT license.

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Open Source

    Application type

    Platforms

    • Linux
    • BSD
    • C++
    Good alternative?
     
  2. i3-gaps icon
     2 likes

    i3-gaps is a fork of i3wm, a tiling window manager for X11. It is kept up to date with upstream, adding a few additional features such as gaps between windows.

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Open Source

    Application type

    Alerts

    • Discontinued

    Platforms

    • Linux
    Good alternative?
     
  3. 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

    Platforms

    • Linux
    • Arch Linux
    • Gentoo Linux
    • Fedora
    • Nix Package Manager
    • Sway
    • FreeBSD
    • Wayland
    Good alternative?
     
  4. Wayfire icon
     8 likes

    Wayfire is a 3D Wayland compositor, inspired by Compiz and based on wlroots. It aims to create a customizable, extendable and lightweight environment without sacrificing its appearance.

    36 Wayfire alternatives

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Open Source (MIT)

    Application type

    Platforms

    • Linux
    • FreeBSD
    Good alternative?
     
  5. dwm icon
     24 likes

    dwm is a dynamic window manager for X. It manages windows in tiled, monocle and floating layouts. All of the layouts can be applied dynamically, optimising the environment for the application in use and the task performed.

    87 dwm alternatives

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Open Source

    Application type

    Platforms

    • Linux
    • BSD
    Good alternative?
     
  6. herbstluftwm icon
     5 likes

    herbstluftwm is a manual tiling window manager for X11 using Xlib and Glib.

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Open Source

    Application type

    Platforms

    • Linux
    • BSD
    Good alternative?
     
  7. Labwc icon
     2 likes

    Labwc stands for Lab Wayland Compositor, where lab can mean any of the following:

    Cost / License

    Application type

    Platforms

    • Linux
    Good alternative?
     
  8. yabai icon
     7 likes

    yabai started as a C99 rewrite of chunkwm, originally supposed to be its first RC version.

    135 yabai alternatives

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Open Source (MIT)

    Application type

    Platforms

    • Mac
    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

    Platforms

    • Linux
    Good alternative?
     
  10. 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.

    77 spectrwm alternatives

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Open Source

    Application type

    Platforms

    • Mac
    • Linux
    • BSD
    Good alternative?
     
  11. 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

    Platforms

    • Linux
    Good alternative?
     
  12. Amethyst icon
     22 likes

    Amethyst is a tiling window manager for Mac similar to the xmonad tiling window manager popular on Linux. Amethyst is written in Objective-C and has configurable shortcuts, multi-monitor support, multiple layouts, and the option to float certain applications.

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Open Source (MIT)

    Application type

    Platforms

    • Mac
    Good alternative?
     
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