A trackpad-first infinite canvas Wayland compositor.

_{Primary repository: GitHub · Mirror: Codeberg}

demo.mp4

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, hevel, and niri.

WARNING: This is experimental software. Primarily built with AI. Use at your own risk.

Features

Pan & zoom

pan_zoom.mp4

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

Input	Action	Context
3-finger swipe	Pan viewport	anywhere
Trackpad scroll	Pan viewport	on-canvas
Mod + LMB drag	Pan viewport	anywhere
Mod+Ctrl + arrow	Pan viewport	—
2-finger pinch	Zoom	on-canvas
3-finger pinch	Zoom	anywhere
Mod + scroll	Zoom at cursor	anywhere
Mod+= / Mod+-	Zoom in / out	—
Mod+0 / Mod+Z	Reset zoom to 1.0	—

Window navigation

navigation.mp4

Jump to the nearest window in any direction via cone search. 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.

Input	Action
4-finger swipe	Jump to nearest window (natural direction)
Mod+Ctrl + LMB drag	Jump to nearest window (natural direction)
Mod + arrow	Jump to nearest window in direction
Alt-Tab / Alt-Shift-Tab	Cycle windows (MRU)
4-finger pinch in / Mod+W	Zoom-to-fit (overview)
4-finger pinch out / Mod+A	Home toggle (origin and back)
4-finger hold / Mod+C	Center focused window
Mod+1-4	Jump to bookmarked canvas position

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

Snapping

snap.mp4

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. Two benefits: 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) is a viewport mode, not a window state — any canvas action (launching an app, navigating) naturally exits it.

Input	Action
3-finger doubletap-swipe	Move window
Alt + LMB drag	Move window
Alt+Shift + LMB drag	Move snapped windows
Alt + 3-finger swipe	Resize window
Alt+Shift + 3-finger swipe	Resize snapped window
Alt + RMB drag	Resize window
Alt + MMB click / Mod+M	Fit window (maximize/restore)
Alt+Shift + MMB click / Mod+Shift+M	Fit snapped window
Mod + 4-finger pinch in / Mod+Shift+W	Zoom-to-fit snapped windows
Alt + 2-finger pinch in/out	Fit window
Alt + 3-finger pinch in/out	Toggle fullscreen
Mod + MMB click / Mod+F	Toggle fullscreen
Mod+Shift + arrow	Nudge window 20px

Infinite background

background.mp4

The background is part of the canvas — it scrolls and zooms with the viewport, not stuck to the screen. This gives spatial awareness when panning.

Three modes (all rendered as shaders internally):

• shader — procedural GLSL, animated or static. Default is a dot grid. See docs/shaders.md to write your own. Bundled shaders live in extras/wallpapers/{static,animated}/.
• tile — any PNG/JPG, tiled infinitely across the canvas.
• wallpaper — single image stretched to fill viewport (does not scroll/zoom) — a classic desktop wallpaper.

GPU cost rises with how often the background redraws: wallpaper renders once and stays; static shaders and tiles redraw on pan/zoom but cache when the viewport is still; animated shaders redraw every frame.

[background]
type = "shader"
path = "~/.config/driftwm/bg.glsl"
# Or: type = "tile",      path = "~/Pictures/tile.png"
# Or: type = "wallpaper", path = "~/Pictures/wallpaper.jpg"

Window rules

window_rules.mp4

Match windows by app_id and/or title (glob patterns) and control everything: position, size, decoration mode, blur, opacity, and widget behavior. All fields are independent and combine freely.

Widgets: set widget = true to pin a window in place — immovable, below normal windows, excluded from Alt-Tab. Works for both regular windows and layer-shell surfaces (e.g. waybar). Use this for clocks, system stats, trays, or anything you want fixed on the canvas.

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

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

Tip: to find a window's app_id, check $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/driftwm/state — the windows field lists all open windows by their app ID.

Multi-monitor

multi_monitor.mp4

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.

Input	Action
Mod+Alt + arrow	Send window to adjacent output

Panels, docks & taskbars

docks.mp4

Layer shell surfaces (waybar, fuzzel, mako) work as expected. Foreign toplevel management means your dock/taskbar shows all windows — click one and the viewport pans to it and centers it. See extras/ for a fuzzel window-search script that lets you search and jump to any open window.

Everything else

• X11 apps via xwayland-satellite (Steam, Wine, JetBrains, etc. — requires xwayland-satellite >= 0.7 in $PATH)
• Session lock (swaylock), idle notify (swayidle/hypridle)
• Screencasting (OBS, Firefox, Discord — requires xdg-desktop-portal + xdg-desktop-portal-wlr)
• Screenshots (grim + slurp)
• Click-to-focus (default) or focus-follows-mouse (sloppy focus)
• All bindings (keyboard, mouse, gesture) fully configurable via TOML
• 30+ Wayland protocols

Install

Fedora (prebuilt binary)

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/malbiruk/driftwm/main/install.sh | sudo sh

Installs the binary, session wrapper, desktop entry, and shader wallpapers. Checks for required runtime libraries and tells you what to install if anything is missing. To uninstall, run with sudo sh -s uninstall.

Arch Linux (AUR)

yay -S driftwm

NixOS / Nix

A flake.nix is included. To build:

nix build

For development (provides native deps, uses your system Rust):

nix develop
cargo build
cargo run

To add driftwm as a session in your NixOS config:

let
  driftwm-flake = builtins.getFlake "github:malbiruk/driftwm";
  driftwm = driftwm-flake.packages.x86_64-linux.default;
in
{
  services.displayManager.sessionPackages = [ driftwm ];
  environment.systemPackages = [ driftwm ];
}

Build from source

Requires Rust 1.88+ (edition 2024).

Fedora:

sudo dnf install libseat-devel libdisplay-info-devel libinput-devel mesa-libgbm-devel libxkbcommon-devel

Ubuntu/Debian:

sudo apt install libseat-dev libdisplay-info-dev libinput-dev libudev-dev libgbm-dev libxkbcommon-dev libwayland-dev

Arch Linux:

sudo pacman -S libdisplay-info libinput seatd mesa libxkbcommon

Note: Ubuntu 24.04 ships Rust 1.75 which is too old. Install via rustup instead of apt install rustc.

git clone https://github.com/malbiruk/driftwm.git
cd driftwm
cargo build --release
sudo make install

X11 support

X11 apps run through xwayland-satellite (>= 0.7). driftwm spawns it at startup and exports DISPLAY=:N so X11 clients connect transparently. No extra config needed beyond having the binary in $PATH.

• Arch: sudo pacman -S xwayland-satellite
• Fedora: sudo dnf install xwayland-satellite
• NixOS: pkgs.xwayland-satellite
• Debian/Ubuntu: not yet packaged — cargo install --locked xwayland-satellite

If satellite isn't found at startup, driftwm logs a warning and continues without X11 support. You can override the binary path or disable the integration in config.example.toml under [xwayland].

Logs go to $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/driftwm.log when launched by a display manager, otherwise stderr.

Running

driftwm auto-detects whether it's running nested (inside an existing Wayland session) or on real hardware (from a TTY). Just run driftwm. For display manager integration, select "driftwm" from the session menu.

Quick start

mod is Super by default. Terminal and launcher are auto-detected (foot/alacritty/kitty, fuzzel/wofi/bemenu); override in config.

Shortcut	Action
mod+return	Open terminal
mod+d	Open launcher
mod+q	Close window
mod+l	Lock screen
mod+ctrl+shift+q	Quit

Feature-specific bindings (navigation, zoom, snap) are in their respective sections above.

Configuration

Config file: ~/.config/driftwm/config.toml (respects XDG_CONFIG_HOME).

mkdir -p ~/.config/driftwm
cp /etc/driftwm/config.toml ~/.config/driftwm/config.toml

Missing file uses built-in defaults. Partial configs merge with defaults — only specify what you want to change. Use "none" to unbind a default binding. Validate without starting: driftwm --check-config.

# Launch programs at startup
autostart = ["waybar", "swaync", "swayosd-server"]

See config.example.toml for all options: input settings, scroll/momentum tuning, snap behavior, decorations, effects, per-output config, gesture bindings, mouse bindings, and window rules.

Example setup

driftwm is just a compositor — everything else is standard Wayland tooling. Here are some tools that work well with it:

• waybar — Status bar / taskbar
• crystal-dock — macOS-style dock
• fuzzel / wofi — App launcher
• mako / swaync — Notifications
• swaylock — Lock screen
• swayidle / hypridle — Idle timeout (lock, suspend)
• swayosd — Volume/brightness OSD
• grim + slurp — Screenshots
• wlr-randr / wdisplays — Output configuration
• COSMIC Settings — Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, sound (or nm-applet + blueman + pavucontrol)

The extras/ directory contains a complete setup — driftwm config, GLSL shader wallpapers, Python widgets (clock, calendar, system stats, power menu), waybar with taskbar/tray, fuzzel window-search script, and window rules tying it all together. Use it as a starting point or steal pieces.

Community tools

• driftwm-settings — GTK4 GUI config editor

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md.

TL;DR: open an issue before writing non-trivial code, keep PRs small and focused.

Merch

If you want to support the project (or just want a shirt), this is the way.

XL

100 GEL · 37 USD · 2800 RUB

Ships worldwide from Tbilisi.

Order via Telegram, Instagram, or email 2601074@gmail.com.

Revenue goes to me as driftwm's primary maintainer. If you've contributed substantively and want a shirt, drop me a line.

License

GPL-3.0-or-later