1wm

1wm

The smallest, actually usable window manager.

• ~30 LOC.
• No modes, no mouse control, no virtual desktops, no menus.
• No configs, no eye-candy, not standards-compliant.
• Only one full-screen window visible at a time.
• Depends only on Xlib.

This is the whole thing as seen in 1wm.c:

…

Why?

Because software should be small, hackable and fun. You can grasp this one in <5 minutes.

How?

The essential things a window manager should let me do are:

• Launch applications (dmenu): Mod4 + e.
• Switch between windows: Mod4 + n.
• Close windows: Mod4 + q.

Building

CC=gcc ./build.sh, or use tcc by default: ./build.sh.

Customizing

See 1wm-custom.c for my own setup, adds ~10 LOC.