{"slug": "sway", "name": "Sway", "category": "os", "category_name": "Operating systems and desktop", "description": "Tiling Wayland compositor and window manager designed as a drop-in replacement for i3.", "recommenders": 12, "commenters": 26, "warners": 1, "score": 12.583, "rising": -0.27, "first": "2025-11-14", "latest": "2026-10-25", "why": "Liked as a Wayland tiling window manager that i3 users can switch to with little config effort, and for managing terminals and other apps with tabs, splits and workspaces.", "why_is_quote": false, "has_verdict": true, "sentiment": {"recommend": 13, "neutral": 12, "compare": 1, "warn": 1}, "spark": [2, 1, 2, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 4, 1, 2, 0], "listed": true, "loved": ["Easy i3 migration", "Tabs and workspaces"], "caveat": "Limited config", "short_quote": "I use Sway and happily manage my terminal windows using its tabs and splits.", "icon": true, "domain": null, "github_repo": null, "official_url": "https://swaywm.org", "pricing": "open source", "aliases": ["Sway", "sway"], "verdict": [{"text": "Liked as a Wayland tiling window manager that i3 users can switch to with little config effort", "cites": [{"id": 737541712, "item_id": 46096357, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46096357", "by": "s20n", "date": "2025-11-30", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Migrating my i3 config to sway hardly took any effort.", "excerpt": "I used i3 for the longest time and I'd say a wayland based alternative like sway or miracle is a better choice nowadays. Even KDE Plasma recently dropped x11 support [1] so going forward, most apps will target wayland first. Migrating my i3 config to sway hardly took any effort. I was also able to get rid of a lot of xorg specific configurations from various x11 dotfiles and put them directly in the sway config (Such", "context": "", "use_case": "window manager", "switched_from": "i3", "story": "CachyOS: Fast and Customizable Linux Distribution"}, {"id": 744074464, "item_id": 46504654, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46504654", "by": "rand846633", "date": "2026-01-05", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "moved from i3 to sway, etc.", "excerpt": "Recently had to reinstall my Linux (btw, Arch). Normally I\u2019d just dd/mirror the NVMe, but this time I decided to stop putting off the switch to Wayland and just do it \u2014 moved from i3 to sway, etc. I\u2019d been avoiding this for years. Turns out: absolutely no problem. The tooling around Wayland and adjacent programs is way more modern and functional. Great experience. Can recommend switching in 2026. For me, the unintuit", "context": "Arch Linux user", "use_case": "Wayland window manager", "switched_from": "i3", "story": "Can I start using Wayland in 2026?"}, {"id": 774037792, "item_id": 48377362, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48377362", "by": "melodyogonna", "date": "2026-06-02", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I installed Sway and was pleasantly surprised.", "excerpt": "I installed Arch on my old Mac few months ago, alongside Xorg and i3, they were what I was used to before I switched to Mac about 6 years ago. Back then Wayland was a mess, so I never even bothered to check it out this time. However, few days ago my non-technical girlfriend wanted to use my laptop, I couldn't see her using i3 so I decided to install Plasma, a proper desktop environment. Lo and behold I couldn't launc", "context": "Linux user returning after years on Mac", "use_case": "Wayland tiling window manager", "switched_from": "i3", "story": "Preparing for KDE Plasma's Last X11-Supported Release"}]}, {"text": ", and for managing terminals and other apps with tabs, splits and workspaces.", "cites": [{"id": 785511168, "item_id": 49094448, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49094448", "by": "dvdkon", "date": "2026-07-29", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use Sway and happily manage my terminal windows using its tabs and splits.", "excerpt": "I use Sway and happily manage my terminal windows using its tabs and splits. I can mix other \"graphical\" apps with the terminals or move them to another screen, all with the same keybindings. I agree, though, that I wouldn't want to replace my Sidebery vertical tabs with this setup, but I ultimately don't see why equivalent functionality couldn't be implemented inside the window manager in some alternate universe. Th", "context": "", "use_case": "window management", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: I was tired of opening 2 tabs for every HN link, so I made a userscript"}, {"id": 792515891, "item_id": 49532243, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49532243", "by": "stillpointlab", "date": "2026-09-02", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use Sway to manage things like tabs", "excerpt": "I literally just got Fable to write me a text editor. Well, I'll be honest, I got it to wrap the KDE KTextEditor library which is like 90% of a text editor. I had been using Kate which was what an LLM suggested was the closest to something like Sublime Text on Fedora. But even Kate, which was great, had too much going on. So I asked Fable to take the text editor part (KTextEditor) and wrap it using Rust with an LSP s", "context": "", "use_case": "window management", "switched_from": "", "story": "Fine, I'll build my own text editor"}, {"id": 803729249, "item_id": 50233078, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50233078", "by": "artemave", "date": "2026-10-25", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "", "excerpt": "I used tmux for about a decade and wrote quite a bit of automation around it, including tmux_super_fingers. But eventually I got frustrated with project sessions being limited to terminal windows. In particular, the browser tabs belonging to those projects were all mixed up in a single browser window. So I wrote hop[1], which uses sway workspaces instead of tmux sessions. Terminals, editors, browsers, or any other wi", "context": "", "use_case": "window management", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: I replaced tmux with sway workspaces"}]}, {"text": " Complaints are few and scattered: one user finds the config too limited for scratchpad tweaks", "cites": [{"id": 783729968, "item_id": 48983123, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48983123", "by": "honeycrispy", "date": "2026-07-20", "stance": "warn", "quote": "There are things that I want to do with my sway scratchpad in sway that are just not possible because the config vocab is so limited.", "excerpt": "I have to agree. There are things that I want to do with my sway scratchpad in sway that are just not possible because the config vocab is so limited. This makes me want to port my config to hyprland and give it a shot tbh.", "context": "", "use_case": "window manager", "switched_from": "", "story": "Hyprland 0.55 announced the switch to Lua for its config files"}]}, {"text": ", and another notes that extra Wayland tools needed permission setup.", "cites": [{"id": 737044209, "item_id": 46065263, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46065263", "by": "Fnoord", "date": "2025-11-26", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I already knew that the moment I went for Sway instead of Gnome or KDE.", "excerpt": "Wayland is fantastic, but it requires some external tools for some non-default (seemingly 'simple') utilization. Therein lies double work, devs scratching their itch in whatever programming language they prefer, sure. The most popular one isn't always the best. And all of that is the nature of the bazaar. But the way I regard it, the bazaar can make use of curators who make a cathedral and sell that (anyone can, in t", "context": "", "use_case": "Wayland window manager", "switched_from": "", "story": "Exploring the Fragmentation of Wayland, an xdotool adventure"}]}], "praise": [{"label": "Easy i3 migration", "summary": "Former i3 users report moving their config and habits to Sway with little effort.", "quotes": [{"id": 737541712, "item_id": 46096357, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46096357", "by": "s20n", "date": "2025-11-30", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Migrating my i3 config to sway hardly took any effort.", "excerpt": "I used i3 for the longest time and I'd say a wayland based alternative like sway or miracle is a better choice nowadays. Even KDE Plasma recently dropped x11 support [1] so going forward, most apps will target wayland first. Migrating my i3 config to sway hardly took any effort. I was also able to get rid of a lot of xorg specific configurations from various x11 dotfiles and put them directly in the sway config (Such", "context": "", "use_case": "window manager", "switched_from": "i3", "story": "CachyOS: Fast and Customizable Linux Distribution"}, {"id": 744074464, "item_id": 46504654, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46504654", "by": "rand846633", "date": "2026-01-05", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "moved from i3 to sway, etc.", "excerpt": "Recently had to reinstall my Linux (btw, Arch). Normally I\u2019d just dd/mirror the NVMe, but this time I decided to stop putting off the switch to Wayland and just do it \u2014 moved from i3 to sway, etc. I\u2019d been avoiding this for years. Turns out: absolutely no problem. The tooling around Wayland and adjacent programs is way more modern and functional. Great experience. Can recommend switching in 2026. For me, the unintuit", "context": "Arch Linux user", "use_case": "Wayland window manager", "switched_from": "i3", "story": "Can I start using Wayland in 2026?"}, {"id": 774037792, "item_id": 48377362, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48377362", "by": "melodyogonna", "date": "2026-06-02", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I installed Sway and was pleasantly surprised.", "excerpt": "I installed Arch on my old Mac few months ago, alongside Xorg and i3, they were what I was used to before I switched to Mac about 6 years ago. Back then Wayland was a mess, so I never even bothered to check it out this time. However, few days ago my non-technical girlfriend wanted to use my laptop, I couldn't see her using i3 so I decided to install Plasma, a proper desktop environment. Lo and behold I couldn't launc", "context": "Linux user returning after years on Mac", "use_case": "Wayland tiling window manager", "switched_from": "i3", "story": "Preparing for KDE Plasma's Last X11-Supported Release"}]}, {"label": "Tabs and workspaces", "summary": "Commenters use its tabs, splits and workspaces to organize terminals, editors and browsers.", "quotes": [{"id": 785511168, "item_id": 49094448, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49094448", "by": "dvdkon", "date": "2026-07-29", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use Sway and happily manage my terminal windows using its tabs and splits.", "excerpt": "I use Sway and happily manage my terminal windows using its tabs and splits. I can mix other \"graphical\" apps with the terminals or move them to another screen, all with the same keybindings. I agree, though, that I wouldn't want to replace my Sidebery vertical tabs with this setup, but I ultimately don't see why equivalent functionality couldn't be implemented inside the window manager in some alternate universe. Th", "context": "", "use_case": "window management", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: I was tired of opening 2 tabs for every HN link, so I made a userscript"}, {"id": 792515891, "item_id": 49532243, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49532243", "by": "stillpointlab", "date": "2026-09-02", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use Sway to manage things like tabs", "excerpt": "I literally just got Fable to write me a text editor. Well, I'll be honest, I got it to wrap the KDE KTextEditor library which is like 90% of a text editor. I had been using Kate which was what an LLM suggested was the closest to something like Sublime Text on Fedora. But even Kate, which was great, had too much going on. So I asked Fable to take the text editor part (KTextEditor) and wrap it using Rust with an LSP s", "context": "", "use_case": "window management", "switched_from": "", "story": "Fine, I'll build my own text editor"}, {"id": 803729249, "item_id": 50233078, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50233078", "by": "artemave", "date": "2026-10-25", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "", "excerpt": "I used tmux for about a decade and wrote quite a bit of automation around it, including tmux_super_fingers. But eventually I got frustrated with project sessions being limited to terminal windows. In particular, the browser tabs belonging to those projects were all mixed up in a single browser window. So I wrote hop[1], which uses sway workspaces instead of tmux sessions. Terminals, editors, browsers, or any other wi", "context": "", "use_case": "window management", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: I replaced tmux with sway workspaces"}]}, {"label": "Long-term daily use", "summary": "Several commenters have relied on Sway as their everyday desktop for years.", "quotes": [{"id": 749480272, "item_id": 46842517, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46842517", "by": "dfc", "date": "2026-01-31", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I've been using sway for years", "excerpt": "At first I thought \"desktop shell\" was supposed to be compositor, but that's not the case, a wayland compositor like sway is a requirement. I've been using sway for years I have no idea what a \"shell\" is? It's somewhere in between a desktop environment and a theme?", "context": "", "use_case": "Wayland compositor", "switched_from": "", "story": "Noctia: A sleek and minimal desktop shell thoughtfully crafted for Wayland"}, {"id": 738842816, "item_id": 46177676, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46177676", "by": "jasoneckert", "date": "2025-12-06", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "it explains why I use the Sway tiling window manager today", "excerpt": "I echo this. My desktop has stayed virtually unchanged for decades, and in retrospect, it explains why I use the Sway tiling window manager today.", "context": "", "use_case": "tiling window manager", "switched_from": "", "story": "Screenshots from developers: 2002 vs. 2015 (2015)"}, {"id": 785686833, "item_id": 49105427, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49105427", "by": "sjdhoome", "date": "2026-07-29", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I rely on tmux, sway, and AeroSpace for my daily life", "excerpt": "I rely on tmux, sway, and AeroSpace for my daily life, so I think multiplexers are important. It's just that they're currently fragmented, and with Chrome, we have so many tools for organizing tabs and split-screen now. It would be great if Superlogical could solve all of this.", "context": "", "use_case": "window management", "switched_from": "", "story": "Mitchellh starts a new company: Superlogical"}]}, {"label": "Scriptable setup", "summary": "Users customize it heavily and glue small tools together with scripts around it.", "quotes": [{"id": 795464337, "item_id": 49716521, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49716521", "by": "tombert", "date": "2026-09-15", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I'm fairly happy with my obscenely over-customized NixOS Sway desktop", "excerpt": "I am a pretty die-hard NixOS cultist, but I will admit that I actually like macOS. I used macOS almost exclusively from 2020-2024, until I bought my Thinkpad that I have now, and I never really disliked the operating system (though I did have issues with that particular laptop because of the i9 CPU's propensity to thermal-throttle). Despite me preferring it, it is hard for me to say that desktop Linux is \"better\" in ", "context": "", "use_case": "window manager", "switched_from": "", "story": "Leaving Linux"}, {"id": 789772384, "item_id": 49360774, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49360774", "by": "dundarious", "date": "2026-08-19", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use sway so just made a bash script", "excerpt": "I use sway so just made a bash script that's a couple of lines to join cliphist, tofi, wl-copy, wtype, together to the same effect.", "context": "", "use_case": "window manager", "switched_from": "", "story": "Win-V combo from Windows on Ubuntu"}, {"id": 803729249, "item_id": 50233078, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50233078", "by": "artemave", "date": "2026-10-25", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "", "excerpt": "I used tmux for about a decade and wrote quite a bit of automation around it, including tmux_super_fingers. But eventually I got frustrated with project sessions being limited to terminal windows. In particular, the browser tabs belonging to those projects were all mixed up in a single browser window. So I wrote hop[1], which uses sway workspaces instead of tmux sessions. Terminals, editors, browsers, or any other wi", "context": "", "use_case": "window management", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: I replaced tmux with sway workspaces"}]}, {"label": "Sensible defaults", "summary": "One user found the default setup in the Fedora Sway Spin very sensible.", "quotes": [{"id": 797250433, "item_id": 49828152, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49828152", "by": "dachworker", "date": "2026-09-24", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I have been using i3/sway for a long time.", "excerpt": "I have recently installed Fedora Sway Spin and it's so nice. I did change the configs since I have been using i3/sway for a long time. But otherwise, the default setup is just very sensible. I guess, the only thing it's missing is an AI agent component, but for now I don't know how to integrate one and trust it that it won't leak my personal data, so I prefer not to mess with that stuff.", "context": "", "use_case": "tiling window manager", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ideas on modernizing the open-source desktop"}]}, {"label": "Lightweight", "summary": "One user reports it running very responsively on a Pinephone Pro.", "quotes": [{"id": 787087713, "item_id": 49192982, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49192982", "by": "jolmg", "date": "2026-08-05", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "On the PPP, SXMO with sway WM/composer, foot terminal, and wvkbd as a keyboard is very responsive, too.", "excerpt": "I get it. Got one. Compromises are many. Speed wise, it clears the bar for me of being able to watch Youtube on Firefox and use the controls, but yeah it's got bugs and other issues. I may be able to tolerate the speed because of how I used my netbook many years ago. Windows XP was completely useless because of how laggy the GUI was. Archlinux with i3 and a focus on using the shell with a very light terminal (urxvt; ", "context": "Pinephone Pro user", "use_case": "window manager on phone", "switched_from": "", "story": "I'm switching my phone from Android to Linux"}]}], "caveats": [{"label": "Limited config", "summary": "One user says the config vocabulary is too limited for some scratchpad behavior they want.", "quotes": [{"id": 783729968, "item_id": 48983123, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48983123", "by": "honeycrispy", "date": "2026-07-20", "stance": "warn", "quote": "There are things that I want to do with my sway scratchpad in sway that are just not possible because the config vocab is so limited.", "excerpt": "I have to agree. There are things that I want to do with my sway scratchpad in sway that are just not possible because the config vocab is so limited. This makes me want to port my config to hyprland and give it a shot tbh.", "context": "", "use_case": "window manager", "switched_from": "", "story": "Hyprland 0.55 announced the switch to Lua for its config files"}]}, {"label": "Extra tool setup", "summary": "Some functions need external Wayland tools, such as ydotool, which required permission setup.", "quotes": [{"id": 737044209, "item_id": 46065263, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46065263", "by": "Fnoord", "date": "2025-11-26", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I already knew that the moment I went for Sway instead of Gnome or KDE.", "excerpt": "Wayland is fantastic, but it requires some external tools for some non-default (seemingly 'simple') utilization. Therein lies double work, devs scratching their itch in whatever programming language they prefer, sure. The most popular one isn't always the best. And all of that is the nature of the bazaar. But the way I regard it, the bazaar can make use of curators who make a cathedral and sell that (anyone can, in t", "context": "", "use_case": "Wayland window manager", "switched_from": "", "story": "Exploring the Fragmentation of Wayland, an xdotool adventure"}]}, {"label": "Unfamiliar workflow", "summary": "An AwesomeWM user found it not bad but too unlike what they were used to.", "quotes": [{"id": 773981329, "item_id": 48373833, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48373833", "by": "NoboruWataya", "date": "2026-06-02", "stance": "compare", "quote": "I tried Sway for a bit and while it's not bad by any means it's a bit too unlike what I'm used to.", "excerpt": "Slight tangent but has anyone moved from AwesomeWM to a Wayland-based tiling WM? Interested to hear what people chose. I tried Sway for a bit and while it's not bad by any means it's a bit too unlike what I'm used to. SomeWM is an attempt at \"porting\" AwesomeWM to Wayland and looks very promising but not quite there yet (I couldn't get Vicious widgets working and not sure if supporting them is even a goal). I'm still", "context": "", "use_case": "Wayland tiling window manager", "switched_from": "", "story": "Preparing for KDE Plasma's Last X11-Supported Release"}]}, {"label": "Config reload", "summary": "Reloading the config takes a keybind, unlike Niri, which reloads on save.", "quotes": [{"id": 734896705, "item_id": 45931044, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45931044", "by": "Philpax", "date": "2025-11-14", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Sway requires a keybind, but no restart.", "excerpt": "I'm not a Niri stan by any means - I only switched to it the other week, and was using sway/i3 before then - but I suspect that most alternatives have answers to these, too. > Especially how it handles workspaces on multiple monitors. By default, each monitor has one workspace. Not one workspace for ALL monitors. I'm pretty sure this is the case for most tiling WMs; it's definitely the case for Niri (https://github.c", "context": "", "use_case": "tiling Wayland compositor", "switched_from": "", "story": "Moving Back to a Tiling WM \u2013 XMonad"}]}], "who": [{"by": "tombert", "context": "customized Linux desktop user", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49716630", "date": "2026-09-15"}, {"by": "jolmg", "context": "Pinephone Pro user", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49192982", "date": "2026-08-05"}, {"by": "exiguus", "context": "GNOME user for 15+ years", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48861991", "date": "2026-07-10"}, {"by": "melodyogonna", "context": "Linux user returning after years on Mac", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48377362", "date": "2026-06-02"}, {"by": "krupan", "context": "Emacs and tiling WM user", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48256664", "date": "2026-05-24"}, {"by": "rand846633", "context": "Arch Linux user", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46504654", "date": "2026-01-05"}, {"by": "0x38B", "context": "Linux user with Framework laptop", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46382442", "date": "2025-12-24"}, {"by": "Duanemclemore", "context": "Linux daily driver", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45935408", "date": "2025-11-14"}], "tags": ["for i3 users", "for Wayland users", "for keyboard-driven workflows", "for low-end hardware"], "use_cases": ["window manager", "window management", "tiling window manager", "wayland tiling window manager", "desktop environment", "wayland window manager"], "compared": [{"slug": "i3", "name": "i3", "co": 14, "switched_from": 3, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "niri", "name": "niri", "co": 7, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 3}, {"slug": "hyprland", "name": "Hyprland", "co": 5, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 1}, {"slug": "xmonad", "name": "XMonad", "co": 3, "switched_from": 1, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "i3wm", "name": "i3wm", "co": 1, "switched_from": 1, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "tmux", "name": "tmux", "co": 3, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "macos", "name": "macOS", "co": 3, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "arch-linux", "name": "Arch Linux", "co": 3, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}], "makers": [], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48982011", "title": "Hyprland 0.55 announced the switch to Lua for its config files", "mentions": 3}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49715463", "title": "Leaving Linux", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48370588", "title": "Preparing for KDE Plasma's Last X11-Supported Release", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45928873", "title": "Moving Back to a Tiling WM \u2013 XMonad", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50233076", "title": "Show HN: I replaced tmux with sway workspaces", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50143132", "title": "Mitos editor is a fork of Helix", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {"neutral": 2, "recommend": 2}, "2025-12": {"recommend": 1, "neutral": 1}, "2026-01": {"recommend": 2}, "2026-02": {}, "2026-03": {}, "2026-04": {"neutral": 1}, "2026-05": {"neutral": 1}, "2026-06": {"compare": 1, "recommend": 1}, "2026-07": {"recommend": 4, "warn": 1, "neutral": 1}, "2026-08": {"recommend": 1, "neutral": 1}, "2026-09": {"recommend": 2, "neutral": 1}, "2026-10": {"neutral": 4}}, "quotes": [{"id": 803729249, "item_id": 50233078, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50233078", "by": "artemave", "date": "2026-10-25", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "", "excerpt": "I used tmux for about a decade and wrote quite a bit of automation around it, including tmux_super_fingers. But eventually I got frustrated with project sessions being limited to terminal windows. In particular, the browser tabs belonging to those projects were all mixed up in a single browser window. So I wrote hop[1], which uses sway workspaces instead of tmux sessions. Terminals, editors, browsers, or any other wi", "context": "", "use_case": "window management", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: I replaced tmux with sway workspaces"}, {"id": 802306275, "item_id": 50144142, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50144142", "by": "jon128", "date": "2026-10-18", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use i3 or Sway, so I already have macros that do just this", "excerpt": "An articulated rationale for why a fork would go a long way for awareness of why an existing user of Helix might consider to use Mitos instead (or not) really needs to be the first thing we see on the front page of the site for Mitos. One thing that really sticks out to me and gives me a feeling I won't consider to use Mitos, is the presentation further down on Mitos' front page of rendering of image files inside the", "context": "", "use_case": "window manager", "switched_from": "", "story": "Mitos editor is a fork of Helix"}, {"id": 801359730, "item_id": 50084983, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50084983", "by": "gadrev", "date": "2026-10-14", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Some time ago I switched to wayland/sway/foot", "excerpt": "Nice one. I used it for some years, mostly in urxvt. Some time ago I switched to wayland/sway/foot, and I'm on 0xProtoNerdFont, quite pleasant as well.", "context": "", "use_case": "window manager", "switched_from": "", "story": "Iosevka is an open-source, sans-serif and slab-serif monospace font"}, {"id": 801226800, "item_id": 50076675, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50076675", "by": "edukite", "date": "2026-10-13", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use swaywm with i3bar", "excerpt": "I'll throw my nickel to this comment. I use swaywm with i3bar, you literally can go lower with that taste but I'm at least aware and honest with my taste. Dia looks like ChatGPT web client. It's mediocre at best", "context": "", "use_case": "window manager", "switched_from": "", "story": "Thunderbird for iOS"}, {"id": 797250433, "item_id": 49828152, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49828152", "by": "dachworker", "date": "2026-09-24", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I have been using i3/sway for a long time.", "excerpt": "I have recently installed Fedora Sway Spin and it's so nice. I did change the configs since I have been using i3/sway for a long time. But otherwise, the default setup is just very sensible. I guess, the only thing it's missing is an AI agent component, but for now I don't know how to integrate one and trust it that it won't leak my personal data, so I prefer not to mess with that stuff.", "context": "", "use_case": "tiling window manager", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ideas on modernizing the open-source desktop"}, {"id": 796114224, "item_id": 49757139, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49757139", "by": "tombert", "date": "2026-09-18", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use it as my desktop environment.", "excerpt": "I use it as my desktop environment. I was using XWayland at first to get this working since that was historically the norm with Wine stuff, but that ended up being really glitchy. The latest versions of Wine/Proton actually have native Wayland support though so once I forced that it ran significantly better. I don't know if this is an XWayland problem, or a problem with X in general, since I don't have any computers ", "context": "", "use_case": "desktop environment", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Microsoft Office running with Wine on Linux with no virtualization"}, {"id": 795466080, "item_id": 49716630, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49716630", "by": "tombert", "date": "2026-09-15", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "much as I love the Sway desktop", "excerpt": "> People who complain about Linux usually either insist on customizing it (as you noted) or run it on hardware that it doesn't work well on. Even as someone who has customized the hell out of my desktop, it does kind of annoy me that people act like you \"just\" need to customize it. \"Customizable\" is (often) just a synonym for \"incomplete\". Instead of giving you a full operating system, you have to \"customize\" it. Or,", "context": "customized Linux desktop user", "use_case": "desktop environment", "switched_from": "", "story": "Leaving Linux"}, {"id": 795464337, "item_id": 49716521, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49716521", "by": "tombert", "date": "2026-09-15", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I'm fairly happy with my obscenely over-customized NixOS Sway desktop", "excerpt": "I am a pretty die-hard NixOS cultist, but I will admit that I actually like macOS. I used macOS almost exclusively from 2020-2024, until I bought my Thinkpad that I have now, and I never really disliked the operating system (though I did have issues with that particular laptop because of the i9 CPU's propensity to thermal-throttle). Despite me preferring it, it is hard for me to say that desktop Linux is \"better\" in ", "context": "", "use_case": "window manager", "switched_from": "", "story": "Leaving Linux"}, {"id": 792515891, "item_id": 49532243, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49532243", "by": "stillpointlab", "date": "2026-09-02", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use Sway to manage things like tabs", "excerpt": "I literally just got Fable to write me a text editor. Well, I'll be honest, I got it to wrap the KDE KTextEditor library which is like 90% of a text editor. I had been using Kate which was what an LLM suggested was the closest to something like Sublime Text on Fedora. But even Kate, which was great, had too much going on. So I asked Fable to take the text editor part (KTextEditor) and wrap it using Rust with an LSP s", "context": "", "use_case": "window management", "switched_from": "", "story": "Fine, I'll build my own text editor"}, {"id": 789772384, "item_id": 49360774, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49360774", "by": "dundarious", "date": "2026-08-19", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use sway so just made a bash script", "excerpt": "I use sway so just made a bash script that's a couple of lines to join cliphist, tofi, wl-copy, wtype, together to the same effect.", "context": "", "use_case": "window manager", "switched_from": "", "story": "Win-V combo from Windows on Ubuntu"}, {"id": 787087713, "item_id": 49192982, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49192982", "by": "jolmg", "date": "2026-08-05", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "On the PPP, SXMO with sway WM/composer, foot terminal, and wvkbd as a keyboard is very responsive, too.", "excerpt": "I get it. Got one. Compromises are many. Speed wise, it clears the bar for me of being able to watch Youtube on Firefox and use the controls, but yeah it's got bugs and other issues. I may be able to tolerate the speed because of how I used my netbook many years ago. Windows XP was completely useless because of how laggy the GUI was. Archlinux with i3 and a focus on using the shell with a very light terminal (urxvt; ", "context": "Pinephone Pro user", "use_case": "window manager on phone", "switched_from": "", "story": "I'm switching my phone from Android to Linux"}, {"id": 785686833, "item_id": 49105427, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49105427", "by": "sjdhoome", "date": "2026-07-29", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I rely on tmux, sway, and AeroSpace for my daily life", "excerpt": "I rely on tmux, sway, and AeroSpace for my daily life, so I think multiplexers are important. It's just that they're currently fragmented, and with Chrome, we have so many tools for organizing tabs and split-screen now. It would be great if Superlogical could solve all of this.", "context": "", "use_case": "window management", "switched_from": "", "story": "Mitchellh starts a new company: Superlogical"}, {"id": 785511168, "item_id": 49094448, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49094448", "by": "dvdkon", "date": "2026-07-29", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use Sway and happily manage my terminal windows using its tabs and splits.", "excerpt": "I use Sway and happily manage my terminal windows using its tabs and splits. I can mix other \"graphical\" apps with the terminals or move them to another screen, all with the same keybindings. I agree, though, that I wouldn't want to replace my Sidebery vertical tabs with this setup, but I ultimately don't see why equivalent functionality couldn't be implemented inside the window manager in some alternate universe. Th", "context": "", "use_case": "window management", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: I was tired of opening 2 tabs for every HN link, so I made a userscript"}, {"id": 783865330, "item_id": 48991583, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48991583", "by": "hackeraccount", "date": "2026-07-21", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I used to use Sway", "excerpt": "You're like a smarter more articulate version of me. I used to use Sway - switched to hyperland very briefly and it was so busy and a pain to work with. Niri on the other hand is as complicated as I want it to be.", "context": "", "use_case": "window manager", "switched_from": "", "story": "Hyprland 0.55 announced the switch to Lua for its config files"}, {"id": 783729968, "item_id": 48983123, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48983123", "by": "honeycrispy", "date": "2026-07-20", "stance": "warn", "quote": "There are things that I want to do with my sway scratchpad in sway that are just not possible because the config vocab is so limited.", "excerpt": "I have to agree. There are things that I want to do with my sway scratchpad in sway that are just not possible because the config vocab is so limited. This makes me want to port my config to hyprland and give it a shot tbh.", "context": "", "use_case": "window manager", "switched_from": "", "story": "Hyprland 0.55 announced the switch to Lua for its config files"}, {"id": 783717744, "item_id": 48982359, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48982359", "by": "tombert", "date": "2026-07-20", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use Sway personally, which is very configurable", "excerpt": "I have grown pretty negative opinions of \u201cusing a programming language as a config language\u201d after semi-recently having to spend a lot of time screwing around with someone\u2019s Gradle Groovy abomination. Not even to mention how quickly Nix can get annoying. I have to ask\u2026why do people want a Turing complete language to configure stuff? I use Sway personally, which is very configurable but for any even remotely complicat", "context": "", "use_case": "window manager", "switched_from": "", "story": "Hyprland 0.55 announced the switch to Lua for its config files"}, {"id": 781791856, "item_id": 48861991, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48861991", "by": "exiguus", "date": "2026-07-10", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "My \"TV/Steam\" runs a tiling window manager (Sway) and is controlled by a keyboard instead of a remote", "excerpt": "I had a similar experience with macOS a few years ago. After using GNOME for over 15 years, I had to switch to a Mac for work for about two years; and I never fully adapted. Windows, on the other hand, I've never been able to take seriously; every time I use it, the interface feels completely different. The same goes for tools like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. I prefer Markdown for creating presentations and document", "context": "GNOME user for 15+ years", "use_case": "TV/Steam machine window manager", "switched_from": "", "story": "Good Tools Are Invisible"}, {"id": 774037792, "item_id": 48377362, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48377362", "by": "melodyogonna", "date": "2026-06-02", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I installed Sway and was pleasantly surprised.", "excerpt": "I installed Arch on my old Mac few months ago, alongside Xorg and i3, they were what I was used to before I switched to Mac about 6 years ago. Back then Wayland was a mess, so I never even bothered to check it out this time. However, few days ago my non-technical girlfriend wanted to use my laptop, I couldn't see her using i3 so I decided to install Plasma, a proper desktop environment. Lo and behold I couldn't launc", "context": "Linux user returning after years on Mac", "use_case": "Wayland tiling window manager", "switched_from": "i3", "story": "Preparing for KDE Plasma's Last X11-Supported Release"}, {"id": 773981329, "item_id": 48373833, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48373833", "by": "NoboruWataya", "date": "2026-06-02", "stance": "compare", "quote": "I tried Sway for a bit and while it's not bad by any means it's a bit too unlike what I'm used to.", "excerpt": "Slight tangent but has anyone moved from AwesomeWM to a Wayland-based tiling WM? Interested to hear what people chose. I tried Sway for a bit and while it's not bad by any means it's a bit too unlike what I'm used to. SomeWM is an attempt at \"porting\" AwesomeWM to Wayland and looks very promising but not quite there yet (I couldn't get Vicious widgets working and not sure if supporting them is even a goal). I'm still", "context": "", "use_case": "Wayland tiling window manager", "switched_from": "", "story": "Preparing for KDE Plasma's Last X11-Supported Release"}, {"id": 772106626, "item_id": 48256664, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48256664", "by": "krupan", "date": "2026-05-24", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I've been using less emacs windows and more i3/sway windows", "excerpt": "In case you don't understand the problem here, an emacs instance can be split into multiple \"windows\" and there are emacs key bindings to create and destroy these windows, move the \"focus\" from one window to another, resize the windows, etc. For many of us, this was our introduction to a tiling window manager experience before we'd ever heard of tiling window managers. When we switched to using a tiling window manage", "context": "Emacs and tiling WM user", "use_case": "tiling window manager", "switched_from": "", "story": "My I3-Emacs Integration"}, {"id": 766468626, "item_id": 47904289, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47904289", "by": "_rousbound", "date": "2026-04-25", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Being a i3wm(now sway) user", "excerpt": "For people that went from i3wm to Niri, I would love to be convinced. Being a i3wm(now sway) user, I tried Niri but found the following points a little bit uncanny: - (Cropping) Sometimes when I scroll by shifting focus, a little bit like 10% of the window I pushed to the left keeps appearing. I tried to configure Niri in such a way that never a tiny fraction of a window be cropped but couldn't manage. Not sure I mis", "context": "", "use_case": "window management", "switched_from": "i3wm", "story": "Niri 26.04 was just released (scrollable-tiling Wayland compositor)"}, {"id": 749480272, "item_id": 46842517, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46842517", "by": "dfc", "date": "2026-01-31", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I've been using sway for years", "excerpt": "At first I thought \"desktop shell\" was supposed to be compositor, but that's not the case, a wayland compositor like sway is a requirement. I've been using sway for years I have no idea what a \"shell\" is? It's somewhere in between a desktop environment and a theme?", "context": "", "use_case": "Wayland compositor", "switched_from": "", "story": "Noctia: A sleek and minimal desktop shell thoughtfully crafted for Wayland"}, {"id": 744074464, "item_id": 46504654, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46504654", "by": "rand846633", "date": "2026-01-05", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "moved from i3 to sway, etc.", "excerpt": "Recently had to reinstall my Linux (btw, Arch). Normally I\u2019d just dd/mirror the NVMe, but this time I decided to stop putting off the switch to Wayland and just do it \u2014 moved from i3 to sway, etc. I\u2019d been avoiding this for years. Turns out: absolutely no problem. The tooling around Wayland and adjacent programs is way more modern and functional. Great experience. Can recommend switching in 2026. For me, the unintuit", "context": "Arch Linux user", "use_case": "Wayland window manager", "switched_from": "i3", "story": "Can I start using Wayland in 2026?"}, {"id": 742119074, "item_id": 46382442, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46382442", "by": "0x38B", "date": "2025-12-24", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "WMs like Niri and Sway (which I used before)", "excerpt": "My brother has a 16, and it\u2019s been good for him. It is big and chunky, more so with the GPU module; only a few paragraphs into the blog post I felt the author was trying to fit a big square peg in a round hole, and then blaming the square peg for being big and square. That is to say, it\u2019s a big, heavy, expensive laptop. My brother works shifts in a remote location and from what I can tell, the 16 is great for that: y", "context": "Linux user with Framework laptop", "use_case": "window manager", "switched_from": "", "story": "I'm returning my Framework 16"}, {"id": 738842816, "item_id": 46177676, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46177676", "by": "jasoneckert", "date": "2025-12-06", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "it explains why I use the Sway tiling window manager today", "excerpt": "I echo this. My desktop has stayed virtually unchanged for decades, and in retrospect, it explains why I use the Sway tiling window manager today.", "context": "", "use_case": "tiling window manager", "switched_from": "", "story": "Screenshots from developers: 2002 vs. 2015 (2015)"}, {"id": 737541712, "item_id": 46096357, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46096357", "by": "s20n", "date": "2025-11-30", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Migrating my i3 config to sway hardly took any effort.", "excerpt": "I used i3 for the longest time and I'd say a wayland based alternative like sway or miracle is a better choice nowadays. Even KDE Plasma recently dropped x11 support [1] so going forward, most apps will target wayland first. Migrating my i3 config to sway hardly took any effort. I was also able to get rid of a lot of xorg specific configurations from various x11 dotfiles and put them directly in the sway config (Such", "context": "", "use_case": "window manager", "switched_from": "i3", "story": "CachyOS: Fast and Customizable Linux Distribution"}, {"id": 737044209, "item_id": 46065263, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46065263", "by": "Fnoord", "date": "2025-11-26", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I already knew that the moment I went for Sway instead of Gnome or KDE.", "excerpt": "Wayland is fantastic, but it requires some external tools for some non-default (seemingly 'simple') utilization. Therein lies double work, devs scratching their itch in whatever programming language they prefer, sure. The most popular one isn't always the best. And all of that is the nature of the bazaar. But the way I regard it, the bazaar can make use of curators who make a cathedral and sell that (anyone can, in t", "context": "", "use_case": "Wayland window manager", "switched_from": "", "story": "Exploring the Fragmentation of Wayland, an xdotool adventure"}, {"id": 734966530, "item_id": 45935408, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45935408", "by": "Duanemclemore", "date": "2025-11-14", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "so I switched to sway for Wayland (such as it is it fixed the issue)", "excerpt": "When I got back on Linux as a daily driver a year ago I knew I wanted to be on a tiling / dynamic window manager. I started with i3 and really like the keybindings. A couple months later I found out about xmonad through general interest in the subject. I installed it, found someone's config to use i3 keybinds (which I was used to at that point) and had a lot of fun. It's definitely quick as heck and I like how compac", "context": "Linux daily driver", "use_case": "Wayland tiling window manager", "switched_from": "xmonad", "story": "Moving Back to a Tiling WM \u2013 XMonad"}, {"id": 734896705, "item_id": 45931044, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45931044", "by": "Philpax", "date": "2025-11-14", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Sway requires a keybind, but no restart.", "excerpt": "I'm not a Niri stan by any means - I only switched to it the other week, and was using sway/i3 before then - but I suspect that most alternatives have answers to these, too. > Especially how it handles workspaces on multiple monitors. By default, each monitor has one workspace. Not one workspace for ALL monitors. I'm pretty sure this is the case for most tiling WMs; it's definitely the case for Niri (https://github.c", "context": "", "use_case": "tiling Wayland compositor", "switched_from": "", "story": "Moving Back to a Tiling WM \u2013 XMonad"}]}