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WallpaBlur

Wallpaper provider which fakes window blur and other effects on Wayland based, i3ipc-enabled window managers like Sway.

screenshot

Overview

WallpaBlur draws two background images per output:

  • a wallpaper on the empty desktop
  • a background behind windows

The GET_TREE command from i3ipc is then used to decide which image to draw in what regions of the output.

Why Does WallpaBlur Exist?

Sway does not support window blur and this is unlikely to change. WallpaBlur aims to enable the most basic kind of window effects in combination with upstream Sway.

Limitations

  • since WallpaBlur is not part of the compositor's pipeline, there is an unavoidable delay (one or two frames at 60Hz) whenever the window layout changes -- depending on the visual differences between wallpaper and background this can lead to screen flashing
  • there are no effects applied when windows are stacked on top of each other
  • layer surfaces (used for status bars, notifications, application launchers, etc.) are not exposed via i3ipc and can currently only be added statically via the configuration
  • resizing windows and moving floating windows are not provided as events through the i3ipc, for these cases GET_TREE must be called in frequent intervals

Features

  • multi-monitor support including monitor hot-plugging and individual configuration
  • fractional output scaling
  • wallpaper and background can be independent images
  • wallpaper selection based on workspace properties
  • filter for wallpaper and background: blur, box-blur, color inversion
  • (optional) alpha fade-in and fade-out on startup and SIGTERM, respectively
  • border effects like shadows, glow, etc. depending on window properties
  • rounded corners with per-window radius

Non-Features

  • animated background images

Getting Started

Dependencies

To build WallpaBlur you will need:

  • GCC C++ 13 or newer
  • meson
  • wayland development libraries
  • libepoxy
  • rapidjson
  • gdk-pixbuf or as fallback libpng

As well as the following libraries which will be pulled as meson subprojects and compiled if they are not available:

To install all dependencies on Fedora 39 run:

sudo dnf install gcc-g++ meson libepoxy-devel rapidjson-devel \
wayland-devel wayland-protocols-devel gdk-pixbuf2-devel

Build Instructions

To install WallpaBlur run the following commands in the project's root directory:

meson setup -Dbuildtype=release build
meson compile -C build
sudo meson install -C build

Updating the Source

When updating the source code, remember to also update all meson subprojects:

git pull
meson subprojects update

Try It Out

First, make sure there is no other background provider running (when using output ... bg in Sway the background provider is swaybg). Then execute:

wallpablur <path-to-image>

To add a status bar, shadows, or changing other properties, check out how to configure WallpaBlur.