instantWM

instantWM: a really nice WM

Yes, X11 and Wayland.

Yes, Mouse and Keyboard.

Yes, very customizeable.

Yes, looks nice and is fast. Have your WM and eat it too.

Installation

Please keep in mind that instantWM is not a full desktop environment and relies on external tools like instantMENU, instantCLI or i3status-rust for some functionality.

instantOS

InstantWM is preinstalled and preconfigured on instantOS.

Arch

Either add the https://packages.instantos.io repo to your pacman.conf or download the latest pkg file from the GitHub releases.

Ubuntu/Debian

Download the latest deb file from the GitHub releases.

From Source

git clone --depth=1 https://github.com/instantOS/instantWM.git
cd instantWM
just install

This requires the dependencies listed below or equivalents thereoff to be installed.

Arch Dependencies

sudo pacman -Sy needed libx11 libxcb libxkbcommon libxcursor libxinerama libxrandr libxss libxtst libxfixes libxdamage libxcomposite libxrender libxft libxi libxres libxvmc libxxf86vm libxt libxmu libxpm libxaw fontconfig freetype2 libdrm mesa wayland libinput seatd libglvnd libevdev libwacom dbus systemd xdg-desktop-portal-wlr

Ubuntu/Debian Dependencies

Verified on Ubuntu 24.04 (Noble):

sudo apt-get install -y --no-install-recommends \
    build-essential pkg-config \
    libx11-dev libxinerama-dev libxft-dev libxrender-dev \
    libfontconfig-dev libfreetype-dev libxkbcommon-dev \
    libudev-dev libseat-dev libinput-dev libgbm-dev

On older Debian releases, libfontconfig-dev is called libfontconfig1-dev.

Ubuntu 24.04 ships rustc 1.75, which is too old for instantWM (edition 2024 requires rustc 1.85+). Install a current toolchain via rustup instead:

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh -s -- -y

This is the same package list CI installs, see scripts/ci/install-deps-ubuntu.sh.

Running the test suite additionally requires at least one real system font (e.g. fonts-dejavu-core), otherwise the text rasterizer tests fail.

Wayland screen sharing and screenshots

For broad application compatibility on Wayland, instantWM follows the standard wlroots-style portal stack:

• xdg-desktop-portal
• xdg-desktop-portal-wlr
• xdg-desktop-portal-gtk as the fallback portal backend

The repository ships resources/instantwm-portals.conf, which routes ScreenCast and Screenshot to the wlr portal backend for XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP=instantwm.

This is the recommended setup for:

• OBS Studio
• Firefox / Chromium / Electron screen sharing
• portal-based screenshots in sandboxed applications

On a systemd-based session this additionally requires the Wayland session environment to be imported into D-Bus activation. instantWM does this automatically when starting its Wayland socket.

Documentation

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md for version bump and release rules.

Features

• General
  • Wayland and X11 support (Yes, really)
  • hybrid-wm: tiling and floating mode are both first-class citizens
  • Keyboard and Mouse based workflows
  • Start-menu
  • desktop bindings
  • Full multi monitor support
  • Tag system
  • Overview mode
  • Edge-anchored scratchpads
• Mouse support
  • Drag windows by grabbing the title
  • Drag windows onto other tags
  • Rio-like drawing feature
• Graphical Features
  • Animations
  • Hover indicators
  • Status markup
  • Color indicators for sticky windows, tag status etc.

This is just a quick list of some features. For a full list and explanation, please refer to the documentation.