faq

How do I arrange tiled windows with my mouse?

You can enable the drag_tile_to_tile option in your config. This allows you to drag a tiled window onto another to swap them.

drag_tile_to_tile=1

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Why is my background blurry or why does blur look wrong?

Blur applies to the transparent areas of windows. To disable it entirely, set blur=0.

If you are experiencing performance issues with blur, make sure blur_optimized=1 (the default). This caches the wallpaper as the blur background, which is much cheaper on the GPU:

blur_optimized=1

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Blur shows my wallpaper instead of the real background content

This is expected behavior when blur_optimized=1 (the default). The optimizer caches the wallpaper to reduce GPU load — windows will blur against the wallpaper rather than the actual content stacked beneath them.

If you want blur to composite against the true background (i.e., show whatever is actually behind the window), set:

blur_optimized=0

Warning: Disabling blur_optimized significantly increases GPU consumption and may cause rendering lag, especially on lower-end hardware.

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My games are lagging or stuttering

Try enabling SyncObj timeline support.

sync_obj_enable=1

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My games have high input latency

You can enable Tearing (similar to VSync off).

First, enable it globally:

allow_tearing=1

Then force it for your specific game:

window_rule=force_tearing:1,title:Counter-Strike 2

Warning: Some graphics cards require setting env=WLR_DRM_NO_ATOMIC,1 in config before mango starts for tearing to work. See Monitors — Tearing for details.

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The cursor escapes to another monitor when playing a fullscreen game

Some X11 games (typically Proton/Wine titles, e.g. Satisfactory) capture the mouse by hiding the cursor and grabbing the pointer with confine_to. Xwayland emulates that with a locked pointer constraint, and that lock can be dropped by Xwayland itself (when the game releases the X11 confine while keeping the mouse captured). Once the lock is gone the compositor has nothing left to confine the pointer, so the cursor can move onto another monitor.

Add a window rule to force the cursor to stay inside the game window while it is focused:

window_rule=confine_pointer:1,app_id:steam_app_526870

Use app_id: or title: to match your game — see Window Rules for the available matching options.

confine_pointer=1 keeps the cursor 5px inside the window's surface whenever that window is the focused, visible window. The confinement is released as soon as the window loses focus, gets hidden, minimized, or moved to a hidden tag. It does not rely on the pointer constraints protocol.

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A game ignores the mouse or the cursor is not hidden when using a fullscreen window rule

Some games (Proton/Wine titles) open a short-lived helper window (a splash/loading window showing the app id) before the real game window. A rule like

window_rule=confine_pointer:1,is_fullscreen:1,app_id:steam_app_526870

matches every window of that app, including that helper window, so mango forces it to fullscreen as well. The helper window then gets _NET_WM_STATE_FULLSCREEN and a resize to the whole monitor, and when the real game window maps mango's "a new tiled window kicks the fullscreen window out of fullscreen" logic un-fullscreens and re-tiles it again. Wine ties its mouse capture and cursor visibility to those window states, so after this churn the game ends up with a broken capture state: the cursor is not hidden, the pointer lock is created and dropped repeatedly, and the game's own cursor and the compositor cursor disagree (e.g. the menu cursor is not where the game thinks it is).

Restrict is_fullscreen to the real game window with title: (the helper window has no title):

window_rule=confine_pointer:1,app_id:steam_app_526870
window_rule=is_fullscreen:1,app_id:steam_app_526870,title:Satisfactory

Rules match on app_id and title when both are given, so only the main window is made fullscreen.

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How do I use pipes | in spawn commands?

The standard spawn command does not support shell pipes directly. You must use spawn_shell instead.

bind=SUPER,P,spawn_shell,echo "hello" | rofi -dmenu

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Certain key combinations do not work on my keyboard layout.

bind automatically converts keysym to keycode, which is compatible with most layouts but can sometimes be imprecise. If a key combination is not triggering, use the keycode directly instead of the key name.

Run wev and press the key to find its keycode, then use it in your bind:

# Instead of:
bind=ALT,q,killclient

# Use the keycode (e.g., code:24 = q on most layouts):
bind=ALT,code:24,killclient

You can also use binds (the s flag) to match by keysym instead of keycode:

binds=ALT,q,killclient