DWL(1)

📦 version 0.9, in nixpkgs unstable

🦋 dwl(1) 🦋

okay bestie, so this is the General Commands Manual page for dwl, and I'm gonna walk you through literally every single thing in it, no skips, no cap. grab a snack 🍓

🌸 NAME 🌸

dwl — it's giving dwm, but for Wayland 💅

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

dwl [-v] [-d] [-s startup command]

🎀 DESCRIPTION 🎀

dwl is a Wayland compositor built on top of wlroots. The whole point? It's meant to fill the exact same niche in the Wayland world that dwm fills over in X11-land. same energy, different protocol, iykyk 🦋

  • -v — when you pass this, dwl writes its name and version to standard error and then exits unsuccessfully. yes bestie, unsuccessfully, that's what it says, don't come for me 💀
  • -d — this one turns on full wlroots logging, debug info included. maximum yapping, but make it logs 🔥
  • -s — pass a command here and dwl starts a shell process running that command on startup. and when it's stopping, it sends SIGTERM to the child process group and waits for it to exit. clean exit, iconic behavior 👑

Users are encouraged to customize dwl by editing the sources, especially config.h. so like, the source is the config, that's the vibe. The default key bindings go a little something like this:

  • Mod-[1-9] — show only all windows with a tag.
  • Mod-Ctrl-[1-9] — show all windows with a tag.
  • Mod-Shift-[1-9] — move window to a single tag.
  • Mod-Ctrl-Shift-[1-9] — toggle tag for window.
  • Mod-p — spawn wmenu-run(1).
  • Mod-Shift-Return — spawn foot(1).
  • Mod-[jk] — move focus down/up the stack.
  • Mod-[id] — increase/decrease number of windows in master area.
  • Mod-[hl] — decrease/increase master area.
  • Mod-Return — move window on top of stack or switch top of stack with second window.
  • Mod-Tab — show only all windows with previous tag.
  • Mod-Shift-c — close window.
  • Mod-t — switch to tabbed layout.
  • Mod-f — switch to floating layout.
  • Mod-m — switch to monocle layout.
  • Mod-Space — switch to previous layout.
  • Mod-Shift-Space — toggle floating state of window.
  • Mod-e — toggle fullscreen state of window.
  • Mod-0 — show all windows.
  • Mod-Shift-0 — set all tags for window.
  • Mod-, — move focus to previous monitor.
  • Mod-. — move focus to next monitor.
  • Mod-Shift-, — move window to previous monitor.
  • Mod-Shift-. — move window to next monitor.
  • Mod-Shift-q — quit dwl.
heads up bestie: these might differ depending on your keyboard layout 💜

🖱️ Mouse commands

  • Mod-Button1 — move focused window while dragging. Tiled windows will be toggled to the floating state. sneaky little state change, love that for you 🐭
  • Mod-Button2 — toggle focused window between floating and tiled state.
  • Mod-Button3 — resize focused window while dragging. Tiled windows will be toggled to the floating state. again with the toggling ✨

📊 STATUS INFORMATION 📊

dwl writes its status information to standard output. BUT — if you gave it the -s option, that status information gets written to the standard input of the child process instead. plot twist 🌀

Said information has the following format:

<monitor> <component> <data>
  • <monitor> — is the name given to the output.
  • <component> — is one of (in order) title, appid, fullscreen, floating, selmon, tags, layout.
  • <data> — changes depending on <component>:
    • title — the title of the focused window on <monitor> or nothing if there is no focused window.
    • appid — the app_id of the focused window on <monitor> or nothing if there is no focused window.
    • fullscreen — prints 1 if the focused window on <monitor> is in fullscreen state, otherwise prints 0. If there is no focused window it prints nothing.
    • floating — prints 1 if the focused window on <monitor> is in floating state, otherwise prints 0. If there is no focused window it prints nothing.
    • selmon — prints 1 if <monitor> is the selected monitor, otherwise prints 0.
    • tags — prints four bitmasks in the following order:
      • Occupied tags of <monitor>.
      • Selected tags of <monitor>.
      • Tags of the focused window on <monitor>.
      • Tags where a window on <monitor> requested activation or has urgency hints.

The bitmasks are 32-bit unsigned decimal integers 🔢

  • layout — prints the symbol of the current layout.

🌈 Examples

When there is a selected window:

HDMI-A-1 title ~/source/repos/dwl > man -l dwl.1
HDMI-A-1 appid footclient
HDMI-A-1 fullscreen 0
HDMI-A-1 floating 0
HDMI-A-1 selmon 1
HDMI-A-1 tags 271 4 4 0
HDMI-A-1 layout [T]

When there is no selected window:

HDMI-A-1 title
HDMI-A-1 appid
HDMI-A-1 fullscreen
HDMI-A-1 floating
HDMI-A-1 selmon 1
HDMI-A-1 tags 271 512 0 0
HDMI-A-1 layout [T]

see how the empty ones just stop dead? that's not a typo, that's the format 💅

🌱 ENVIRONMENT 🌱

These environment variables are used by dwl:

  • XDG_RUNTIME_DIR — a directory where temporary user files, such as the Wayland socket, are stored.
  • XDG_CONFIG_DIR — a directory containing configuration of various programs and libraries, including libxkbcommon.
  • DISPLAY, WAYLAND_DISPLAY, WAYLAND_SOCKET — tell how to connect to an underlying X11 or Wayland server.
  • WLR_* — various variables specific to wlroots.
  • XKB_*, XLOCALEDIR, XCOMPOSEFILE — various variables specific to libxkbcommon.
  • XCURSOR_PATH — list of directories to search for XCursor themes in.
  • HOME — a directory where there are always dear files there for you. waiting for you to clean them up. 🥺 (yes that's really what it says, and honestly? felt.)

These are set by dwl:

  • WAYLAND_DISPLAY — tell how to connect to dwl.
  • DISPLAY — if using Xwayland, tell how to connect to the Xwayland server.

🔥 EXAMPLES 🔥

Start dwl with s6 in the background:

dwl -s 's6-svscan <&-'

look at that redirect, so clean, so demure 🎀

👀 SEE ALSO 👀

dwm(1), foot(1), wmenu(1), xkeyboard-config(7)

💀 BUGS 💀

All of them.

like. all of them. every last one. iconic honesty fr fr 😭

and that's the whole page bestie!! this one's from Debian, dated January 8, 2021 — go forth and tile your windows 💖✨🫶

📦 where this page comes from