Sway AlternativesWayland Compositors and other similar apps like Sway

Sway is described as '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' and is a wayland compositor in the os & utilities category. There are more than 25 alternatives to Sway for a variety of platforms, including Linux, Wayland, BSD, Mac and Windows apps. The best Sway alternative is Hyprland, which is both free and Open Source. Other great apps like Sway are i3, SwayFX, awesome and Wayfire.

Copy a direct link to this comment to your clipboard
Sway alternatives page was last updated

Alternatives list

  1. Hyprland icon
     38 likes

    An independent tiling Wayland compositor written in C++. Noteworthy features of Hyprland include dynamic tiling, tabbed windows, a clean and readable C++ code-base, and a custom renderer that provides window animations, rounded corners, and Dual-Kawase Blur on transparent windows.

    28 Hyprland alternatives

    Cost / License

    Platforms

    • Linux
    • BSD
    • openSUSE
    • Arch Linux
    • Gentoo
    • Fedora
    • Ubuntu
    • Debian
    • FreeBSD
    • Alpine Linux
    • Slackware
    • Wayland
     
  2. i3 icon
     71 likes

    i3 is a dynamic tiling window manager with clean, readable and documented code, featuring extended Xinerama support, usage of libxcb instead of xlib and several improvements over wmii.

    80 i3 alternatives

    Cost / License

    Application type

    Platforms

    • Linux
    • BSD
     
  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
     
  4. awesome icon
     39 likes

    awesome is a highly configurable, next generation framework window manager for X. It is very fast, extensible and licensed under the GNU GPLv2 license.

    Cost / License

    Application type

    Platforms

    • Linux
    • BSD
     
  5. Wayfire icon
     7 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.

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Open Source (MIT)

    Platforms

    • Linux
    • FreeBSD
     
  6. hikari icon
     2 likes

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

    81 hikari alternatives

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Open Source

    Platforms

    • Linux
    • BSD
     
  7. 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.

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Open Source

    Application type

    Platforms

    • Linux
    • BSD
     
  8. Japokwm icon
     2 likes

    A dynamic tiling Wayland compositor (forked from dwl) that makes it a breeze to create custom layouts with a simple configuration. 🚀

    Cost / License

    Application type

    Alerts

    • Discontinued

    Platforms

    • Linux
     
  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.

    71 LeftWM alternatives

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Open Source (MIT)

    Application type

    Platforms

    • Linux
     
  10. Xmonad icon
     26 likes

    xmonad is a dynamically tiling X11 window manager that is written and configured in Haskell. In a normal WM, you spend half your time aligning and searching for windows. xmonad makes work easier, by automating this.

    77 Xmonad alternatives

    Cost / License

    Application type

    Platforms

    • Mac
    • Linux
    • X11
    • Haskell
     
  11. Qtile icon
     8 likes

    A full-featured, hackable tiling window manager written and configured in Python.

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Open Source (MIT)

    Application type

    Platforms

    • Linux
     
12 of 49 Sway alternatives