ZovaWM is a window manager for x11 written in rust.

Why use ZovaWM?

The main purpose of ZovaWM is a full-featured minimal window manager, this makes it a great lightweight option while still having features such as multi monitor and EWMH support.

Features

Screenshots

Running from a display manager

Running ZovaWM from a display manager is really easy, you only need to write the following into /usr/share/xsessions/zovawm.desktop.

[Desktop Entry]
Name=zovawm
Comment=zova window manager
Exec=zovawm
Type=Application

Running in Xephyr

Single monitor (Xephyr)

$ Xephyr -br -ac -noreset -screen 800x600 :1
$ DISPLAY=:1 cargo run

Multi monitor (Xephyr)

When running in multi monitor Xephyr it is a know problem that the cursor can get a little messed up sometimes, to my knowledge this has nothing to do with ZovaWM as i have tested in other WM's such as dwm and gotten the same result.

$ Xephyr -br -ac -noreset +xinerama -screen 800x600 -screen 800x600 :1
$ DISPLAY=:1 cargo run

Configuring

Autostart

ZovaWM will by default execute a shell file located at .config/zovawm/startup.sh. This file needs to have permission to execute.

Creating a config

ZovaWM will look for a config file at .config/zovawm/config.toml, as you may have seen by the file extension ZovaWM is configured with toml.

The default configuration is as follows:

# Enable default bar, disabling this will allow you to use external bars
default-bar = true

# Padding of tiled windows
top-padding     = 50
bottom-padding  = 10
left-padding    = 10
right-padding   = 10

# WM specific keybindings
keybindings = [
    # Programs
    { key = "Return",   exec = "kitty" },
    { key = "d",        exec = "rmenu" },

    # Internal
    { key = "f",        internal = "fullscreen" },
    { key = "q",        internal = "kill" },
    { key = "m",        internal = "restart" },

    # Focus Change
    { key = "k",        internal = "focus_up" },
    { key = "j",        internal = "focus_down" },
    { key = "h",        internal = "focus_master" },

    # Move Window
    { key = "Up",       internal = "window_up" },
    { key = "Down",     internal = "window_down" },
    { key = "Left",     internal = "window_master" },

    # Floating Window
    { key = "o",        internal = "toggle_float" },
]

Default bar

The default bar can be disabled by setting default-bar to false.

Padding

The padding between the monitor and the area in which windows are tiled can be modified with {direction}-padding where {direction} can be any of the following top, bottom, left, right.

Keybindings

In ZovaWM the keybindings point to a action, the action can either be exec to execute a program or internal to perform a internal action such as going fullscreen or killing a window.

The following are the supported internal actions fullscreen, kill, restart, focus_up, focus_down, focus_master, window_up, window_down, window_master, toggle_float.

Tiling layout

ZovaWM tiles with a master-stack layout.

The master window is always on the left and the stack is on the right, in the future there will be implemented support for configuring this.

+--------+--------+
|        |        |
|        |        |
| master +--------+
|        |        |
|        |        |
+--------+--------+

License

ZovaWM is licensed under the MIT license.

Credits

Suckless DWM: Great learning resource.