kwin-tiling

Native dynamic tiling built into KWin — master-stack, stacked, scrolling, and centred layouts, gaps, float/ignore window rules, and a settings KCM — packaged as a small overrideAttrs + hooks.patch over stock kdePackages.kwin (not a compositor fork).

It is not a fork: the bulk of the feature is vendored as normal source under pkgs/kwin-tiling/src/ (mirroring KWin's own layout) and copied into the build tree; hooks.patch carries only the edits to existing KWin files plus the CMake wiring. A nixpkgs/Plasma bump just needs that small patch re-tested.

See the docs site under website/ (Overview / Features / Usage / KWin + Noctalia session / Roadmap) for the full feature list, shortcuts, and minimum KDE session wiring for Noctalia, and pkgs/kwin-tiling/README.md for implementation/maintenance notes.

Two ways to start

1. KDE Plasma + tiling (very easy) — add the flake module to your host, log into your normal Plasma Wayland session, enable tiling in kwinrc or System Settings → Window Management → Tiling. No session changes; plasmashell and the rest of Plasma stay as they are.

2. KWin + Noctalia (custom session) — same patched KWin, but in a minimal Wayland session with Noctalia as the shell instead of plasmashell. Needs extra session wiring (systemd units, portals, env). See the docs site page KWin + Noctalia session for a self-contained NixOS + Home Manager example. Noctalia KWin patches: luxus/noctalia-kwin.

Use it from your flake

{
  inputs.kwin-tiling.url = "github:luxus/kwin-tiling";

  # In a NixOS host config:
  imports = [ inputs.kwin-tiling.nixosModules.kwin-tiling ];
  # ^ replaces kdePackages.kwin with the patched build for this host.
}

Or just take the overlay / package directly:

nixpkgs.overlays = [ inputs.kwin-tiling.overlays.default ];   # kdePackages.kwin -> patched
# or
environment.systemPackages = [ inputs.kwin-tiling.packages.${system}.kwin-tiling ];

Enable tiling at runtime via ~/.config/kwinrc:

[Tiling]
Enabled=true

…or in System Settings → Window Management → Tiling.

Patching KWin rebuilds the compositor and its reverse-deps, so compose the module only onto the hosts that actually want native tiling — not globally. Wiring a binary cache for this repo is strongly recommended; otherwise every consumer rebuilds KWin from source.

Build & check

nix build .#kwin-tiling     # the patched compositor (long: compiles KWin)
nix flake check             # fast: runs the pure column-math self-check, no KWin build

Maintenance

Edit the feature directly under pkgs/kwin-tiling/src/. For changes to existing KWin files, edit them in a KWin checkout and regenerate pkgs/kwin-tiling/hooks.patch (never hand-edit the patch text). On a nixpkgs/Plasma bump, rebuild and fix any rejected hunks — the vendored src/ files are additive and rarely conflict; the hooks into window/workspace/useractions/input/tiles are the risk surface.

Origin

The goal was smooth native tiling inside KWin — not another KWin script hitting the script API ceiling — without maintaining a compositor fork. This repo patches stock KWin with vendored source and a small hooks patch instead.

Early inspiration came from theblackdon/kineticwe, a fork that showed native tiling could live in the compositor. We ported ideas and features, not the fork — little of that code remains. Compared to carrying the full fork (~3,300 tracked files, 123 diverging src/ files today), we touch 37 files (22 vendored + 15 hooked, +468/−38 lines in hooks.patch) and skip its QPainter backend, hand-rolled borders, install scripts, and binary rename. For rounded corners use the separate kde-rounded-corners effect.