driftwm

A trackpad-first infinite canvas Wayland compositor.

Primary repository: GitHub · Mirror: Codeberg

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/155511a6-0a6e-4681-9061-21be1e93e02a

Traditional window managers arrange windows to fit your screen. Stacking compositors do so by piling windows on top of each other; tiling compositors do so by squeezing them to fit and utilizing workspaces.

driftwm is an infinite-canvas compositor: windows live at their native size on an infinite 2D canvas, and your display is a camera viewing it. When two windows come close, they snap together, forming implicit groups that can be moved, resized, and viewed together. No tiling, no workspaces, window overlaps happen only on purpose.

Designed with laptops in mind: navigation and window management are trackpad-first; the infinite canvas makes the most of a small screen.

Built on smithay. Inspired by vxwm; borrows implementation details from niri.

[!WARNING] This is experimental software, primarily built with AI.

Features

Pan & zoom

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/97c2ff83-acfa-40ec-ae02-b16ad9a47318

Infinite 2D canvas with viewport panning, zoom, and scroll momentum. A quick flick carries the viewport smoothly until friction stops it.

Window navigation

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/ab80b545-817d-4d9f-beea-d332b3bb3dfa

Jump to the nearest window in any direction. MRU cycling (Alt-Tab) with hold-to-commit. Zoom-to-fit shows all windows at once. Configurable anchors act as navigation targets for directional jumps even with no window there — useful for areas with pinned widgets. Bookmarks: named canvas spots the camera jumps straight to.

All 4-finger navigation gestures also work as Mod + 3-finger for smaller trackpads.

Snapping

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/6bfc3458-664f-4746-a176-18f40337d94d

Move window with 3-finger doubletap-swipe or Alt + drag. Resize with Alt + 3-finger swipe. Snapping kicks in as edges approach each other. Drag past the viewport edge and the canvas auto-pans.

Snapped windows form a cluster. Neighbors stay visible at your view's edge for spatial context, and Shift + any move/resize/fit action acts on the whole cluster. Shuffle a layout in one drag, resize a row of panes proportionally, or scope an overview to just the cluster (Mod+Shift+W). No explicit grouping to manage.

[!TIP] While dragging a window, keyboard shortcuts still work. Use Mod+1-4 to jump to a bookmark or Mod+A to go home — your held window comes with you.

Fit-window (Mod+M) is the maximize analogue — centers the viewport, resets zoom to 1.0, and resizes the window to fill the screen. Toggle again to restore. Fullscreen (Mod+F) fills the screen with the focused window until any canvas action — launching an app, navigating — exits it.

Touchscreen

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/35316541-ad39-4c36-95ab-4093bd48c172

Everything works by touch too: pan and zoom the canvas, jump between windows, and move or resize windows — even whole window groups — exactly as you would on a trackpad.

Infinite background

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/b1581182-5e21-45c8-8559-99ab54bb5093

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/fb1cd5a1-242c-45d7-b302-952a15aaa24d

The background is part of the canvas — it scrolls and zooms with the viewport, not stuck to the screen.

Five modes:

• default — the built-in dot grid, what you get with no configuration.
• shader — procedural GLSL, animated or static, optionally sampling an image via texture. See docs/shaders.md to write your own. Bundled shaders live in extras/wallpapers/{static,animated,textured}/.
• tile — PNG/JPG (single texture, tiled infinitely), or a tiled pyramidal TIFF for gigapixel wallpapers. Set mirror_tile = true to mirror-fold a non-seamless image so it tiles without seams (kaleidoscope look).
• wallpaper — single image scaled to cover the viewport, aspect-preserving (does not scroll/zoom) — a classic desktop wallpaper.
• none — no built-in background, so an external wlr-layer-shell wallpaper daemon (swaybg, swww, mpvpaper for live video) becomes the wallpaper instead.

[background]
type = "shader"
path = "~/.config/driftwm/bg.glsl"
# texture = "~/Pictures/img.jpg"  # if it's a texture-based shader

# Or: type = "tile",      path = "~/Pictures/tile.png"
# Or: type = "tile",      path = "~/Pictures/world.tif"   # pyramidal TIFF
# Or: type = "wallpaper", path = "~/Pictures/wallpaper.jpg"
# Or: type = "none"                                       # external wallpaper daemon (swaybg/mpvpaper/…)

Window rules

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/e30e3821-1e84-4f6e-be60-adcb0ee58d3c

Match windows by app_id and/or title (glob patterns) and control position, size, decorations, blur, opacity, key pass-through, and placement — fields combine freely.

Two special placement modes: widget = true fixes a window to the canvas (immovable, below normal windows, out of Alt-Tab — clocks, trays, and layer-shell surfaces like waybar); pinned_to_screen = true fixes it to the screen instead, so it ignores pan/zoom and floats above normal windows (Picture-in-Picture, call toolbars) — toggleable live with Mod+T.

# Frosted-glass terminal
[[window_rules]]
app_id = "Alacritty"
opacity = 0.85
blur = true

# Desktop widget — pinned to the canvas, borderless
[[window_rules]]
app_id = "my-clock"
position = [50, 50]
widget = true
decoration = "none"

[!TIP] To find a window's app_id or title, run driftwm msg state — it lists every open window with its app ID, title, position, and size.

See docs/window-rules.md for more details.

Multi-monitor

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/3f6cc3a8-a4ed-4d78-80fc-d5a92478c48f

Multiple monitors are independent viewports on the same canvas. An outline on each monitor shows where the other monitors' viewports are. Cursor crosses between monitors freely; dragged windows teleport to the target viewport's canvas position.

Panels, docks & taskbars

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/31c235e6-baae-4843-bb43-aca749e41f04

Layer shell surfaces (waybar, fuzzel, mako) work as expected. Docks and taskbars see every window — click one and the viewport pans to it and centers it. Bookmarks are exported as workspaces over ext-workspace-v1 — bars that support it can list them and click to jump. It's an export for tooling, not real workspaces; driftwm is still one canvas.

Window suspend & session restore

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/a91d92bd-55af-4646-8be8-81f35f8f38ca

Close a window and leave a placeholder behind instead of losing it: suspend-window swaps the window for a compositor-drawn stand-in at the same canvas spot — press Enter or click its name to bring the app right back, in the same place. suspend_on_close does this automatically for every client-initiated close. [session].restore_windows keeps your whole canvas saved as you work and restores it (dormant, nothing auto-launches) on the next start, with restore_camera bringing each output's view back too.

See docs/session.md.

Everything else

• New wind