owl

features

• tiling and floating toplevels
• master layout with support for multiple masters, ideal for wide monitors
• keyboard focused workflow
• great multitasking with multimonitor and workspaces support
• smooth and customizable animations
• easy configuration with custom keybinds, monitor layouts etc
• portals and an ipc for integrating with other apps

owl is made mainly for myself, implementing just enough for my workflow. that means a lot of things is just not there. if you are looking for something more mature take a look at hyprland, sway or river.

showcase

dependencies

• make *
• wayland-protocols *
• wayland
• libinput
• libdrm
• pixman
• libxkbcommmon
• wlroots 18.0

* compile-time dependencies

building

git clone https://github.com/dqrk0jeste/owl
cd owl
make

installation

arch

owl is available on the arch user repository under the name owl-compositor-git. you can install it with your favourite aur helper

yay -S owl-compositor-git

nixos (outdated)

you can install owl by using chaotic-cx/nyx flake!

for now owl exist only as owl-wlr_git package, just add it into your nixos / home-manager configuration and follow usage and configuration parts of README.md!

other linux distributions

make install

note: you will need sudo privilages to do so

if you wish to uninstall owl you can do so with make unistall.

post install

if you need to intract with sandboxed applications and/or screenshare you will need xdg-desktop-portals. by default owl needs

• xdg-desktop-portal (base)
• xdg-desktop-portal-wlr (for screensharing)
• xdg-desktop-portal-gtk (for everything else)

usage

owl

you probably want to run it from a tty

configuration

configuration is done in a configuration file found at $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/owl/owl.conf or $HOME/.config/owl/owl.conf. if no config is found a default config will be used (you need owl installed, see above).

for detailed documentation see examples/example.conf. you can also find the default config in the repo.

todo

• fix issues
• animations
• rounded corners
• transparency
• blur
• drag and drop implementation
• monitor hotplugging
• complete foreign toplevel implementation (toplevel enter/leave output missing)
• add portals
• mouse clicks for keybinds (for moving and resizing toplevels)
• more ipc capabilities