Warning

Hayward is currently a work-in-progress. The move from i3's tree-of-containers model to wmii's list-of-columns is only partly complete, and there are many show stopper bugs.

hayward

Hayward is a hybrid floating/tiling Wayland compositor. It supports arranging manually windows into columns using the keyboard or mouse. Hayward exists because the primary developer, a long time user of wmii, was too lazy to learn a new interaction model.

Hayward was created with sway as a starting point and continues to depend on wlroots.

Goals:

• Legible - It should be immediately obvious what state hayward is in.
• Predictable - The effect of a mouse or keyboard operation should be obvious based on current state.
• Spatial - Windows always stay where you put them so that you can rely on spatial memory to find them again.
• Fast - Responding to user input should never take more than a frame. Animations must not block interaction.
• Discoverable - All operations can be performed using either mouse or keyboard. Keyboard shortcuts are consistent and documented.
• Pretty - Hayward aims to be a full-featured (heavy weight) window manager and does not compromise on looks.
• Robust - Shouldn't crash. Best in class multi-output support (windows remember positions)

Non-goals:

• Scripting support - Automatic layout conflicts with legibility, predictability and focus on spatial memory. User scripting brings instability and slow downs.
• Configurability - Options that aren't used by developers won't be adequately maintained.
• Touch screen support - Hayward is a real window manager for real computers.
• World domination - Hayward exists to make its primary developer happy.

Installation

Compiling from Source

Check out this wiki page if you want to build the HEAD of hayward and wlroots for testing or development.

Install dependencies:

• meson *
• wlroots
• wayland
• wayland-protocols *
• pcre2
• json-c
• pango
• cairo
• gdk-pixbuf2 (optional: system tray)
• scdoc (optional: man pages) *
• git (optional: version info) *

* Compile-time dep

Run these commands:

meson build/
ninja -C build/
sudo ninja -C build/ install

On systems without logind nor seatd, you need to suid the hayward binary:

sudo chmod a+s /usr/local/bin/hayward

Hayward will drop root permissions shortly after startup.

Running

Run hayward from a TTY. Some display managers may work but are not supported by hayward (gdm is known to work fairly well).