Comparison of tiling compositors
This article provides an unbiased comparison of the most popular tiling Wayland compositors (as opposed to floating window managers).
Comparison Table
| Window Manager | Written in | Configured with | Management style | System tray support | On-the-fly reload | Information bars | Default layouts | Pixel usage | External control | Library | Multiple (n) monitor behavior | Maintenance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sway | C | Dynamic | Yes | Yes | Active | |||||||
| Cagebreak | C | Text | libx, wlroots | Active | ||||||||
| miracle-wm | C++ | YAML | No | Yes | Configurable titles and borders | Configurable | Active, in early development | |||||
| niri | Rust | KDL (XML-like) | Dynamic (Scrolling) | Active | ||||||||
| Qtile | Python | Python | Dynamic | Built-in, via freedesktop StatusNotifierItem | Built-in preview(?) | Built-in | Several built-in options | wlroots | Active | |||
| SwayFx | ||||||||||||
| Velox | C | Text | Dynamic | Built-in | Inactive | |||||||
| cwc | C | C, Lua | Dynamic | Active | ||||||||
| dwl | ||||||||||||
| Hyprland | ||||||||||||
| japokwm | ||||||||||||
| river | Zig | Bash (default), any language | Dynamic | Yes | Yes | wlroots | Active, in early development | |||||
| Vivarium | ||||||||||||
| Window Manager | Written in | Configured with | Management style | System tray support | On-the-fly reload | Information bars | Default layouts | Pixel usage | External control | Library | Multiple (n) monitor behavior | Maintenance |