DWM(1)

👑 DWM — the dynamic window manager, bestie edition 💅

okay so you opened the manual for dwm(1) and honestly? you're about to have a great time. this is the General Commands Manual page, and i'm gonna walk you through every single bit of it, no cap.

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✨ NAME ✨

dwm — dynamic window manager 🪟💖

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

dwm [-v]

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

dwm is a dynamic window manager for X. it manages your windows in three whole layouts: tiled, monocle, and floating. and the way you can apply any of them dynamically?? iconic. it optimises the environment for whatever app you're using and whatever task you're doing. main character energy fr.

In tiled layouts, windows live in a master area and a stacking area. the master area is on the left and holds one window by default — just the one, she's the favorite 💅 — and the stacking area on the right holds all the other windows. you can adjust the number of master area windows from zero to an arbitrary number, so go off. In monocle layout, all windows are maximised to the screen size. In floating layout, windows can be resized and moved freely. and heads up: dialog windows are always managed floating, regardless of the layout applied — they simply do not participate, periodt.

Windows are grouped by tags. each window can be tagged with one or multiple tags. selecting certain tags displays all windows with these tags. it's giving curated feed 🌈

Each screen contains a small status bar which displays:

• all available tags
• the layout
• the title of the focused window
• the text read from the root window name property, if the screen is focused

A floating window is indicated with an empty square and a maximised floating window is indicated with a filled square before the window's title. the selected tags are indicated with a different color. the tags of the focused window are indicated with a filled square in the top left corner. and the tags which are applied to one or more windows are indicated with an empty square in the top left corner. tiny squares doing so much work, we love to see it 🎀

dwm draws a small border around windows to indicate the focus state. yes bestie, the border is the vibe check.

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💖 OPTIONS 💖

• -v — prints version information to stderr, then exits. that's it, that's the whole option list, she's minimal and she knows it ✨

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💅 USAGE 💅

🍓 Status bar 🍓

• X root window name — is read and displayed in the status text area. It can be set with the xsetroot(1) command. so if you want words up there, xsetroot is your girl.
• Button1 — click on a tag label to display all windows with that tag; click on the layout label toggles between tiled and floating layout.
• Button3 — click on a tag label adds/removes all windows with that tag to/from the view.
• Mod1-Button1 — click on a tag label applies that tag to the focused window.
• Mod1-Button3 — click on a tag label adds/removes that tag to/from the focused window.

⌨️ Keyboard commands ⌨️

• Mod1-Shift-Return — Start st(1). 🖥️
• Mod1-p — Spawn dmenu(1) for launching other programs.
• Mod1-, — Focus previous screen, if any.
• Mod1-. — Focus next screen, if any.
• Mod1-Shift-, — Send focused window to previous screen, if any.
• Mod1-Shift-. — Send focused window to next screen, if any.
• Mod1-b — Toggles bar on and off.
• Mod1-t — Sets tiled layout.
• Mod1-f — Sets floating layout.
• Mod1-m — Sets monocle layout.
• Mod1-space — Toggles between current and previous layout.
• Mod1-j — Focus next window.
• Mod1-k — Focus previous window.
• Mod1-i — Increase number of windows in master area.
• Mod1-d — Decrease number of windows in master area.
• Mod1-l — Increase master area size.
• Mod1-h — Decrease master area size.
• Mod1-Return — Zooms/cycles focused window to/from master area (tiled layouts only).
• Mod1-Shift-c — Close focused window.
• Mod1-Shift-space — Toggle focused window between tiled and floating state.
• Mod1-Tab — Toggles to the previously selected tags.
• Mod1-Shift-[1..n] — Apply nth tag to focused window.
• Mod1-Shift-0 — Apply all tags to focused window.
• Mod1-Control-Shift-[1..n] — Add/remove nth tag to/from focused window.
• Mod1-[1..n] — View all windows with nth tag.
• Mod1-0 — View all windows with any tag.
• Mod1-Control-[1..n] — Add/remove all windows with nth tag to/from the view.
• Mod1-Shift-q — Quit dwm. 🚪

🖱️ Mouse commands 🖱️

• Mod1-Button1 — Move focused window while dragging. Tiled windows will be toggled to the floating state.
• Mod1-Button2 — Toggles focused window between floating and tiled state.
• Mod1-Button3 — Resize focused window while dragging. Tiled windows will be toggled to the floating state.

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🧚 CUSTOMIZATION 🧚

dwm is customized by creating a custom config.h and (re)compiling the source code. This keeps it fast, secure and simple. no runtime config files, no drama, just vibes compiled straight into the binary 💜

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🔥 SEE ALSO 🔥

dmenu(1), st(1)

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💀 ISSUES 💀

okay bestie, buckle up, this one's a little cursed. 😭

Java applications which use the XToolkit/XAWT backend may draw grey windows only. The XToolkit/XAWT backend breaks ICCCM-compliance in recent JDK 1.5 and early JDK 1.6 versions, because it assumes a reparenting window manager.

Possible workarounds are:

• using JDK 1.4 (which doesn't contain the XToolkit/XAWT backend), or
• setting the environment variable AWT_TOOLKIT=MToolkit (to use the older Motif backend instead), or
• running xprop -root -f _NET_WM_NAME 32a -set _NET_WM_NAME LG3D or wmname LG3D (to pretend that a non-reparenting window manager is running that the XToolkit/XAWT backend can recognize), or
• when using OpenJDK, setting the environment variable _JAVA_AWT_WM_NONREPARENTING=1.

not me listing four whole coping strategies for Java. but here we are. 🙈

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🐛 BUGS 🐛

Send all bug reports with a patch to hackers@suckless.org. patch included, always — that's the house rule 🫶

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and that's the whole page, you're officially a dwm girlie now ⭐ slay 💅✨ this was dwm-6.8, dated with the DWM(1) footer, from the General Commands Manual — go forth and tile your little heart out 🦋💖🌸