A trackpad-first infinite canvas Wayland compositor.

demo.mp4

Traditional window managers arrange windows to fit your screen. driftwm flips this: windows float on an infinite 2D canvas and you move the viewport around them. Designed with laptops in mind — trackpad support keeps getting better while display size stays limited, so treating your screen as a camera onto a larger canvas makes sense. Pan, zoom, and navigate with trackpad gestures. No workspaces, no tiling — just drift.

Built on smithay. Inspired by vxwm, hevel, and niri.

WARNING: This is experimental software. Primarily built with AI. Use at your own risk.

Concept

Think Figma or Google Maps, but for your desktop. Your screen is a viewport onto an infinite canvas where windows live. Pan around to find what you need, zoom out to see everything at once, zoom back in to focus.

Zoom is cursor-anchored — the point under your cursor stays fixed as you zoom in or out, just like pinch-to-zoom on a map. Multiple monitors are just multiple viewports on the same canvas.

Features

Pan & zoom

pan_zoom.mp4

Infinite 2D canvas with viewport panning, zoom, and scroll momentum. A quick flick carries the viewport smoothly until friction stops it.

Input	Action	Context
3-finger swipe	Pan viewport	anywhere
Trackpad scroll	Pan viewport	on-canvas
Mod + LMB drag	Pan viewport	anywhere
Mod+Ctrl + arrow	Pan viewport	—
2-finger pinch	Zoom	on-canvas
3-finger pinch	Zoom	anywhere
Mod + scroll	Zoom at cursor	anywhere
Mod+= / Mod+-	Zoom in / out	—
Mod+0 / Mod+Z	Reset zoom to 1.0	—

Window navigation

navigation.mp4

Jump to the nearest window in any direction via cone search. MRU cycling (Alt-Tab) with hold-to-commit. Zoom-to-fit shows all windows at once. Configurable anchors act as navigation targets for directional jumps even with no window there — useful for areas with pinned widgets.

Input	Action
4-finger swipe	Jump to nearest window (natural direction)
Mod+Ctrl + LMB drag	Jump to nearest window (natural direction)
Mod + arrow	Jump to nearest window in direction
Alt-Tab / Alt-Shift-Tab	Cycle windows (MRU)
4-finger pinch in / Mod+W	Zoom-to-fit (overview)
4-finger pinch out / Mod+A	Home toggle (origin and back)
4-finger hold / Mod+C	Center focused window
Mod+1-4	Jump to bookmarked canvas position

All 4-finger navigation gestures also work as Mod + 3-finger for smaller trackpads.

Move, resize, maximize

movement.mp4

Move windows by doubletap-swiping on them. Resize with Alt + 3-finger swipe. Windows snap to nearby edges magnetically during drag. Drag to the viewport edge and the canvas auto-pans — handy for rearranging windows just beyond the visible area.

Tip: while dragging a window, keyboard shortcuts still work. Use Mod+1-4 to jump to a bookmark or Mod+A to go home — your held window comes with you.

Fit-window (Mod+M) is the maximize analogue — centers the viewport, resets zoom to 1.0, and resizes the window to fill the screen. Toggle again to restore. Fullscreen (Mod+F) is a viewport mode, not a window state — any canvas action (launching an app, navigating) naturally exits it.

Input	Action
3-finger doubletap-swipe	Move window
Alt + LMB drag	Move window
Alt + 3-finger swipe	Resize window
Alt + RMB drag	Resize window
Alt + MMB click / Mod+M	Fit window (maximize/restore)
Alt + 2-finger pinch-in/out	Fit window
Alt + 3-finger pinch-in/out	Toggle fullscreen
Mod + MMB click / Mod+F	Toggle fullscreen
Mod+Shift + arrow	Nudge window 20px

Infinite background

canvas.mp4

The background is part of the canvas — it scrolls and zooms with the viewport, not stuck to the screen. This gives spatial awareness when panning.

Two modes: GLSL shaders (default: dot grid, or write your own — see docs/shaders.md) and tiled images (any PNG/JPG, tiled infinitely across the canvas). Both are infinite by nature.

[background]
shader_path = "~/.config/driftwm/bg.glsl"    # custom shader
# tile_path = "~/.config/driftwm/tile.png"   # or tiled image

Window rules

window_rules.mp4

Match windows by app_id and/or title (glob patterns) and control everything: position, size, decoration mode, blur, opacity, and widget behavior. All fields are independent and combine freely.

Widgets: set widget = true to pin a window in place — immovable, below normal windows, excluded from Alt-Tab. Works for both regular windows and layer-shell surfaces (e.g. waybar). Use this for clocks, system stats, trays, or anything you want fixed on the canvas.

# Frosted-glass terminal
[[window_rules]]
app_id = "Alacritty"
opacity = 0.85
blur = true

# Desktop widget — pinned, borderless
[[window_rules]]
app_id = "my-clock"
position = [50, 50]
widget = true
decoration = "none"

Tip: to find a window's app_id, check $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/driftwm/state — the windows field lists all open windows by their app ID.

Consistent rounded corners and drop shadows across all CSD and SSD windows. SSD fallback for X11/XWayland apps — minimal title bar, close button, double-tap to maximize.

Multi-monitor

Multiple monitors are independent viewports on the same canvas. An outline on each monitor shows where the other monitors' viewports are. Cursor crosses between monitors freely; dragged windows teleport to the target viewport's canvas position.

Input	Action
Mod+Alt + arrow	Send window to adjacent output

Panels, docks & taskbars

docks.mp4

Layer shell surfaces (waybar, fuzzel, mako) work as expected. Foreign toplevel management means your dock/taskbar shows all windows — click one and the viewport pans to it and centers it. See extras/ for a fuzzel window-search script that lets you search and jump to any open window.

Everything else

• XWayland for X11 apps (Steam, Wine, JetBrains, etc.)
• Session lock (swaylock), idle notify (swayidle/hypridle)
• Screencasting (OBS, Firefox, Discord — requires xdg-desktop-portal + xdg-desktop-portal-wlr)
• Screenshots (grim + slurp)
• Click-to-focus (default) or focus-follows-mouse (sloppy focus)
• All bindings (keyboard, mouse, gesture) fully configurable via TOML
• 30 Wayland protocols

Install

Fedora (prebuilt binary)

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/malbiruk/driftwm/main/install.sh | sudo sh

Installs the binary, session wrapper, desktop entry, and shader wallpapers. Checks for required runtime libraries and tells you what to install if anything is missing. To uninstall, run with sudo sh -s uninstall.

Arch Linux (AUR)

yay -S driftwm

NixOS / Nix

A flake.nix is included. To build:

nix build

For development (provides native deps, uses your system Rust):

nix develop
cargo build
cargo run

To add driftwm as a session in your NixOS config:

let
  driftwm-flake = builtins.getFlake "github:malbiruk/driftwm";
  driftwm = driftwm-flake.packages.x86_64-linux.default;
in
{
  services.displayManager.sessionPackages = [ driftwm ];
  environment.systemPackages = [ driftwm ];
}

Build from source

Requires Rust 1.85+ (edition 2024).

Fedora:

sudo dnf install libseat-devel libdisplay-info-devel libinput-devel mesa-libgbm-devel libxkbcommon-devel

Ubuntu/Debian:

sudo apt install libseat-dev libdisplay-info-dev libinput-dev libudev-dev libgbm-dev libxkbcommon-dev libwayland-dev

Arch Linux:

sudo pacman -S libdisplay-info libinput seatd mesa libxkbcommon

Note: Ubuntu 24.04 ships Rust 1.75 which is too old. Install via rustup instead of apt install rustc.

git clone https://github.com/malbiruk/driftwm.git
cd driftwm
cargo build --release
sudo make install

Running

driftwm auto-detects whether it's running nested (inside an existing Wayland session) or on real hardware (from a TTY). Just run driftwm. For display manager integration, select "driftwm" from the session menu.

Quick start

mod is Super by default. Terminal and launcher are auto-detected (foot/alacritty/kitty, fuzzel/wofi/bemenu), can be overridden in config.

Shortcut	Action
mod+return	Open terminal
mod+d	Open launcher
mod+q	Close window
mod+m	Fit window (maximize/restore)
mod+f	Toggle fullscreen
mod+c	Center focused window
mod+x	Center window under cursor
mod+arrow	Jump to nearest window
mod+a	Home toggle
mod+w	Zoom-to-fit (overview)
mod+= / mod+-	Zoom in / out
mod+scroll	Zoom at cursor
alt+tab	Cycle windows
mod+l	Lock screen
mod+ctrl+shift+q	Quit

All keybindings are configurable — see config.example.toml.

Configuration

Config file: ~/.config/driftwm/config.toml (respects XDG_CONFIG_HOME).

mkdir -p ~/.config/driftwm
cp /etc/driftwm/config.toml ~/.config/driftwm/config.toml

Missing file uses built-in defaults. Partial configs merge with defaults — only specify what you want to change. Use "none" to unbind a default binding. Validate without starting: driftwm --check-config.

# Launch programs at startup
autostart = ["waybar", "swaync", "swayosd-server"]

See config.example.toml for all options: input settings, scroll/momentum tuning, snap behavior, decorations, effects, per-output config, gesture bindings, mouse bindings, and window rules.

See docs/DESIGN.md for the full compositor design specification.

Example setup

driftwm is just a compositor — everything else is standard Wayland tooling. Here are some tools that work well with it:

Tool	Purpose
waybar	Status bar / taskbar
crystal-dock	macOS-style dock
fuzzel / wofi	App launcher
mako / swaync	Notifications
swaylock	Lock screen
swayidle / hypridle	Idle timeout (lock, suspend)
swayosd	Volume/brightness OSD
grim + slurp	Screenshots
wlr-randr / wdisplays	Output configuration
COSMIC Settings	Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, sound (or nm-applet + blueman + pavucontrol)

The extras/ directory contains a complete setup — driftwm config, GLSL shader wallpapers, Python widgets (clock, calendar, system stats, power menu), waybar with taskbar/tray, fuzzel window-search script, and window rules tying it all together. Use it as a starting point or steal pieces.

License

GPL-3.0-or-later