AeroWM

A Wayland compositor and window manager written in Rust, built on Smithay.

AeroWM organises windows in a tree structure. You can work in a focused tiling mode or zoom out to a tree view that shows the full window hierarchy on an infinite canvas.

Features

• BSP tiling layout - windows are split recursively into the available space
• Tree view - zoom out to see and navigate the full window tree
• Infinite canvas - pan and zoom freely in tree view
• Tree navigation - move focus to parent, child, or sibling windows with keyboard shortcuts
• Edge resizing - drag any window edge or corner to resize
• Drag to move - hold the main modifier and drag to reposition windows freely
• Configurable keybinds - bind keyboard shortcuts and mouse buttons to actions via Lua
• Lua config - all settings and keybinds are defined in a single Lua file
• Borders with corner rounding - customisable focused/unfocused border colours and rounded corners
• Hover to focus - optional focus-follows-mouse
• Background - solid colour, image, or custom GLSL shader
• XWayland support - run X11 applications alongside native Wayland clients
• Areas - define named rectangular regions on the canvas and jump to them instantly

Requirements

• A Linux system with DRM/KMS support
• libseat for session management
• libinput for input handling
• A GPU with EGL/GBM support

Building

cargo build --release

Running

cargo run --release

Or after building:

./target/release/aerowm

To launch with an app:

./target/release/aerowm -e kitty

Configuration

The config file lives at ~/.config/aerowm/aerowm.lua. If it doesn't exist, AeroWM will create a default one on first run.

Example config

config = {
    main_modifier = "Ctrl",
    gap = 80.0,
    focused_border_color = '#4090c2',
    unfocused_border_color = '#000000',
    background_type = "color",
    background_color = '#1a1a1a',
    corner_rounding = 32.0,
    tile_distance = 8,
    border_width = 2.0,
    animation_ease = 0.3,
    hover_to_focus = true,
    client_side_decorations = false,
    cursor_size = {32, 32},

    area_colors = {
        '#5e81ac', '#88c0d0', '#8fbcbb', '#a3be8c', '#ebcb8b',
        '#d08770', '#b48ead', '#81a1c1', '#4c566a', '#76c0a0',
    },
    area_border_thickness = 3,
    always_show_areas = false,

    apps = {
        terminal = "kitty",
        browser  = "firefox",
    },

    launch_rules = {},
}

-- Keybinds
bind("Ctrl+Return", "exec", "terminal")
bind("Ctrl+W",      "exec", "browser")
bind("Ctrl+Q",      "close")
bind("Ctrl+F",      "fullscreen")
bind("Ctrl+Space",  "switch_view")

bind("Ctrl+P",      "parent")
bind("Ctrl+N",      "sibling")
bind("Ctrl+C",      "child")
bind("Ctrl+Z",      "focus_zoom")
bind("Ctrl+Home",   "reset_view")

bind("Ctrl+Left",   "pan", "-100 0")
bind("Ctrl+Right",  "pan", "100 0")
bind("Ctrl+Up",     "pan", "0 -100")
bind("Ctrl+Down",   "pan", "0 100")

bind("Ctrl+Alt+BackSpace", "quit")

Keybind syntax

bind("Mod+Key", "action")
bind("Mod+Key", "action", "argument")

Modifiers: Ctrl, Alt, Shift, Super. Mouse buttons: left, right, middle.

Actions

Action	Argument	Description
exec	command or app alias	Launch an application
close		Close the focused window
quit		Exit AeroWM
fullscreen		Toggle fullscreen for the focused window
switch_view		Toggle between tiling and tree view
parent		Focus the parent window in the tree
child		Focus the first child window in the tree
sibling		Focus the next sibling window in the tree
focus_zoom		Zoom the viewport to the focused window (tree view)
reset_view		Reset viewport and zoom
pan	"dx dy"	Pan the canvas by dx, dy pixels
switch_vt	vt number	Switch to a virtual terminal
mark_area		Start marking a new area by dragging on the canvas
goto_area	area number	Animate the viewport to fill the given area
remove_area		Remove the currently active area
show_areas		Hold to show area outlines on the canvas

Planned / In Progress

• XWayland support - compatibility with X11 applications
• Multi-output support - multiple monitors
• wlr protocols - layer shell (bars, docks, notifications), screencopy, data control, idle notify, session lock
• Background images and shaders - image backgrounds and custom GLSL shaders
• Trackpad support - gestures for panning, zooming, and switching views
• Animations - window open/close transitions
• Scratchpad - floating windows outside the tree
• Window rules - auto-assign apps to positions or parents on launch
• IPC - full external control protocol over the Unix socket
• Screenshot/screencopy - wlr-screencopy protocol support
• Clipboard manager support - wlr-data-control protocol
• Idle/lock screen - ext-idle-notify and ext-session-lock support
• Config hot-reload - reload the Lua config without restarting
• Multi-language input - IME support for non-Latin scripts

License

MIT