Module: Sway

• Mode
• Window
• Workspaces
• Language

---

Mode

The mode module displays the current binding mode of sway.

Config

Addressed by sway/mode

option	typeof	default	description
format	string	{}	The format, how information should be displayed. On {} data gets inserted.
rotate	integer		Positive value to rotate the text label.
max-length	integer		The maximum length in character the module should display.
on-click	string		Command to execute when clicked on the module.
on-click-middle	string		Command to execute when you middle clicked on the module using mousewheel.
on-click-right	string		Command to execute when you right clicked on the module.
on-scroll-up	string		Command to execute when scrolling up on the module.
on-scroll-down	string		Command to execute when scrolling down on the module.
smooth-scrolling-threshold	double		Threshold to be used when scrolling.
tooltip	bool	true	Option to enable tooltip on hover.

Example:

"sway/mode": {
    "format": " {}",
    "max-length": 50
}

Style

• #mode

Window

The window module displays the title of the currently focused window in sway.

Config

Addressed by sway/window

option	typeof	default	description
format	string	{title}	The format, how information should be displayed.
rotate	integer		Positive value to rotate the text label.
max-length	integer		The maximum length in character the module should display.
on-click	string		Command to execute when clicked on the module.
on-click-right	string		Command to execute when you right clicked on the module.
on-scroll-up	string		Command to execute when scrolling up on the module.
on-scroll-down	string		Command to execute when scrolling down on the module.
smooth-scrolling-threshold	double		Threshold to be used when scrolling.
tooltip	bool	true	Option to disable tooltip on hover.
rewrite	object	{}	Rules to rewrite the module format output. See rewrite rules.
all-outputs	bool	false	If set to false, displays only title of the window on the same output as bar
offscreen-css	bool	false	Only effective when all-outputs is true. Adds style according to present windows on unfocused outputs instead of showing the focused window and style.
offscreen-css-text	bool		Only effective when both all-outputs and offscreen-css are true. On screens currently not focused, show the given text along with that workspaces styles.
icon	bool	false	Option to disable application icon.
icon-size	integer	24	Set the size of application icon.

Format Replacements:

string	replacement
{title}	The title of the focused window.
{app_id}	The app_id of the focused window.
{shell}	The shell of the focused window. It's 'xwayland' when the window is running through xwayland, otherwise it's 'xdg-shell'.

Rewrite Rules:

rewrite is an object where keys are regular expressions and values are rewrite rules if the expression matches. Rules may contain references to captures of the expression.

Regular expression and replacement follow ECMAScript rules (formal definition).

An expression must match fully to trigger the replacement; if no expression matches, the format output is left unchanged.

Invalid expressions (e.g., mismatched parentheses) are ignored.

Example 1:

"sway/window": {
    "format": "{title}",
    "max-length": 50,
    "rewrite": {
       "(.*) - Mozilla Firefox": "🌎 $1",
       "(.*) - vim": " $1",
       "(.*) - zsh": " [$1]"
    }
}

Example 2:

"sway/window": {
    "format": "{}",
    "max-length": 50,
    "all-outputs" : true,
    "offscreen-css" : true,
    "offscreen-css-text": "(inactive)",
    "rewrite": {
        "(.*) - Mozilla Firefox": " $1",
        "(.*) - fish": "> [$1]"
    },
}

Style

• #window
• window#waybar.empty When no windows are in the workspace, or screen is not focused and offscreen-css option is not set
• window#waybar.solo When one tiled window is in the workspace
• window#waybar.floating When there are only floating windows in the workspace
• window#waybar.stacked When there is more than one window in the workspace and the workspace layout is stacked
• window#waybar.tabbed When there is more than one window in the workspace and the workspace layout is tabbed
• window#waybar.tiled When there is more than one window in the workspace and the workspace layout is splith or splitv
• window#waybar.<app_id> Where app_id is the app_id or instance name like (chromium) of the only window in the workspace

Please note that the window module applies the additional css classes listed above to the whole waybar rather than the module widgets. The whole waybar is an element with the name "window" and the id "waybar", whereas the window module itself is an element with the name "box" and the id "window". So in most instances, you probably want to apply formatting to window#waybar.<stylename> #window. For better insight regarding css hierarchy, consider GTK_DEBUG.

Also, switching layouts does not change the style unless the focus is changed. At this point, sway does not provide events for layout switching and the module does not poll.

Example

window#waybar {
  background-color: #990000;
}

window#waybar.empty {
  background-color: transparent;
}

window#waybar.empty #window {
  padding: 0px;
  margin: 0px;
  border: 0px;
/*  background-color: rgba(66,66,66,0.5); */ /* transparent */
  background-color: transparent;
}

window#waybar.solo #window {
    padding-left: 5px;
    padding-right: 5px;
    color: #eee8d5; /* base2 */
    background-color: #073642; /*base02*/
}

window#waybar.floating #window {
    padding-left: 5px;
    padding-right: 5px;
    color: #eee8d5; /* base2 */
    background-color: #b58900; /*yellow*/
}

window#waybar.tiled #window {
    padding-left: 5px;
    padding-right: 5px;
    color: #eee8d5; /* base2 */
    background-color: #cb4b16; /* orange */

}
window#waybar.stacked #window {
    padding-left: 5px;
    padding-right: 5px;
    color: #eee8d5; /* base2 */
    background: #2aa196; /*cyan*/
}
window#waybar.tabbed #window {
    padding-left: 5px;
    padding-right: 5px;
    color: #eee8d5; /* base2 */
    background: #859900; /*green*/
}

window#waybar.code {
    background-color: #007ACC;
}

Workspaces

The workspaces module displays the currently used workspaces in sway.

Config

Addressed by sway/workspaces

option	typeof	default	description
all-outputs	bool	false	If set to false, workspaces will only be shown on the output they are on. If set to true all workspaces will be shown on every output.
format	string	{name}	The format, how information should be displayed.
format-icons	array		Based on the workspace name and state, the corresponding icon gets selected. See Icons
disable-scroll	bool	false	If set to false, you can scroll to cycle through workspaces. If set to true this behaviour is disabled.
disable-click	bool	false	If set to false, you can click to change workspace. If set to true this behaviour is disabled.
smooth-scrolling-threshold	double		Threshold to be used when scrolling.
disable-scroll-wraparound	bool	false	If set to false, scrolling on the workspace indicator will wrap around to the first workspace when reading the end, and vice versa. If set to true this behavior is disabled.
enable-bar-scroll	bool	false	If set to false, you can't scroll to cycle throughout workspaces from the entire bar. If set to true this behaviour is enabled.
disable-markup	bool	false	If set to true, button label will escape pango markup.
current-only	bool	false	If set to true. Only focused workspaces will be shown.
persistent-workspaces	json (see below)	empty	Lists workspaces that should always be shown, even when non existant
numeric-first	bool	false	If set to true, workspaces with a name that starts with a number are displayed in front of workspaces that do not start with a number.
disable-auto-back-and-forth	bool	false	Whether to disable workspace_auto_back_and_forth when clicking on workspaces. If this is set to true, clicking on a workspace you are already on won't do anything, even if workspace_auto_back_and_forth is enabled in the Sway configuration.
warp-on-scroll	bool	true	If set to false, waybar will ephemerally disable mouse_warping (see man 5 sway) while using the scroll wheel to switch workspaces
window-rewrite	object	{}	Regex rules to map window class to an icon or preferred method of representation for a workspace's window.
window-rewrite-default	string	?	The default method of representation for a workspace's window. This will be used for windows whose classes do not match any of the rules in window-rewrite
format-window-separator	string		The separator to be used between windows in a workspace.

Format replacements:

string	replacement
{value}	Name of the workspace, as defined by sway
{name}	Number stripped from workspace value at colon e.g. "13:NAME"
{icon}	Icon, as defined in format-icons.
{index}	Index of the workspace
{output}	Output where the workspace is located.
{windows}	Result from window-rewrite

Icons:

Additional to workspace name matching, the following format-icons can be set.

port name	note
default	Will be shown, when no string matches is found.
urgent	Will be shown, when workspace is flagged as urgent
focused	Will be shown, when workspace is focused
persistent	Will be shown, when workspace is persistent one.

If you don't want these additional icons to override your matched workspace icon for some workspaces, then you can list such workspaces in the high-priority-named list (like "high-priority-named": ["1", "2", "3"])

Persistent workspaces:

each entry of persistent_workspace names a workspace that should always be shown. Associated with that value is a list of outputs indicating where the workspace should be shown, an empty list denoting all outputs

"sway/workspaces": {
    "persistent-workspaces": {
        "3": [], // Always show a workspace with name '3', on all outputs if it does not exists
        "4": ["eDP-1"], // Always show a workspace with name '4', on output 'eDP-1' if it does not exists
        "5": ["eDP-1", "DP-2"] // Always show a workspace with name '5', on outputs 'eDP-1' and 'DP-2' if it does not exists
    }
}

n.b.: the list of outputs can be obtained from command line using swaymsg -t get_outputs

Example:

"sway/workspaces": {
    "disable-scroll": true,
    "all-outputs": true,
    "format": "{name}: {icon}",
    "format-icons": {
        "1": "",
        "2": "",
        "3": "",
        "4": "",
        "5": "",
        "urgent": "",
        "focused": "",
        "default": "",
        "high-priority-named": ["1", "2"]
    }
}

"sway/workspaces": {
  "format": "<span size='larger'>{name}</span> {windows}"
  "format-window-separator": " | ",
  "window-rewrite-default": "{name}",
  "window-format": "<span color='#e0e0e0'>{name}</span>",
  "window-rewrite": {
    "class<firefox> title<.*chat.gig.tech.*>": "",
    "class<kitty>": "",
  }
}

Style

• #workspaces button
• #workspaces button.visible
• #workspaces button.focused
• #workspaces button.urgent
• #workspaces button.persistent
• #workspaces button.empty
• #workspaces button.current_output
• #workspaces button#sway-workspace-${name}

Language

sway/language