IMPORTANT NOTE: LeftWM has changed the config language from TOML to RON with the 0.4.0 release. Please use leftwm-check --migrate-toml-to-ron to migrate your config and visit the wiki for more info.

• Why go left
• Dependencies
• Installation (with package manager)
• Manual Installation (no package manager)
  • Using a graphical login such as LightDM, GDM, LXDM, and others
  • Optional Development Installation
  • Optional Build Features
  • Using the Makefile
  • Starting with startx or a login such as slim
• Theming
  • With LeftWM-Theme
  • Without LeftWM-Theme
• Configuring
  • Default keys
  • Floating Windows
  • Workspaces
  • Tags / Desktops
  • Layouts
• Troubleshooting
• Support

LeftWM is a tiling window manager written in Rust that aims to be stable and performant. LeftWM is designed to do one thing and to do that one thing well: be a window manager. LeftWM follows the following mantra:

LeftWM is not a compositor.
LeftWM is not a lock screen.
LeftWM is not a bar. But, there are lots of good bars out there. With themes, picking one is as simple as setting a symlink.

Because you probably want more than just a black screen, LeftWM is built around the concept of themes. With themes, you can choose between different bars, compositors, backgrounds, colors, docks, and whatever else makes you happy.

LeftWM was built from the very beginning to support multiple screens and ultrawide monitors. The default keybindings support ultrawide monitors and multiple screens.

With LeftWM, there are two types of configuration files:

• LeftWM Configuration files: LeftWM configurations are specific to you and don’t change for different themes. These are settings like keybindings, workspace locations, and names of desktops/tags. These settings can be found in ~/.config/leftwm/config.toml.

• Theme Configuration files: The appearance of your desktop is different. It’s fun to try new looks and feels. It’s fun to tweak and customize the appearance (AKA: ricing). It’s fun to share so others can experience your awesome desktop! LeftWM is built around this concept. By pulling all these settings out into themes, you can now easily tweak, switch, and share your experiences. This configuration is spread between theme.toml and related files contained within a theme's folder.

While LeftWM has very few dependencies, this isn't always the case for themes. Themes typically require the following to be installed. However, this is up to the author of the theme and could be different.

List of LeftWM dependencies:

• xorg (runtime, build): specifically libx11, xrandr, xorg-server, libxinerama
• sh (runtime): any posix-compliant shell for starting up and down files
• rust (build): >= 1.56.0
• bash (optional): Most of the themes available use bash, though the scripts maybe converted to any posix-compliant shell

List of common dependencies for themes:

* You can use whichever AUR wrapper you like. See paru and yay.
** See the git page (link in first column) for how to install these manually

sudo layman -a guru && sudo emerge --sync 
sudo emerge --ask --verbose x11-wm/leftwm

paru -S leftwm

paru is an AUR helper like yay, but written in Rust.

sudo dnf copr enable atim/leftwm -y && sudo dnf install leftwm

Important note: currently the copr package is broken due to missing lefthk-worker in the installation. We are on it to get the package fixed. In the meantime please look into cargo or manual installation.

pkgin install leftwm

or, if you prefer to build it from source

cd /usr/pkgsrc/wm/leftwm
make install

sudo xbps-install -S leftwm

cargo install leftwm

If you install LeftWM with crates.io, you will need to link to the xsession desktop file if you want to be able to login to LeftWM from a display manager (GDM, SSDM, LightDM, etc.):

sudo cp PATH_TO_LEFTWM/leftwm.desktop /usr/share/xsessions

Also see the build options for more feature options, especially if you don't use systemd or want to use your own hotkey daemon like sxhkd.

1. Dependencies: Rust, Cargo

2. Clone the repository and cd into the directory

   git clone https://github.com/leftwm/leftwm.git
   cd leftwm

3. Build leftwm

   cargo build --profile optimized

   For more options see the build options section.

4. Copy leftwm executables to the /usr/bin folder

   sudo install -s -Dm755 ./target/optimized/leftwm ./target/optimized/leftwm-worker ./target/optimized/lefthk-worker ./target/optimized/leftwm-state ./target/optimized/leftwm-check ./target/optimized/leftwm-command -t /usr/bin

5. Copy leftwm.desktop to xsessions folder

   sudo cp leftwm.desktop /usr/share/xsessions/

You should now see LeftWM in your list of available window managers. At this point, expect only a simple black screen on login. For a more customized look, install a theme.

If your goal is to continuously build leftwm and keep up to date with the latest releases, you may prefer to symlink the leftwm executables instead of copying them. If you choose to install this way, make sure you do not move the build directory as it will break your installation.

Note that if you want to build leftwm with an other build profile, you will have to change the --profile <profile-name> option and the target folder to target/<profile-name>. Currently available are dev, release and optimized.

1. Dependencies: Rust, Cargo

2. Clone the repository and cd into the directory

   git clone https://github.com/leftwm/leftwm.git
   cd leftwm

3. Build leftwm

   # With systemd logging (view with 'journalctl -f -t leftwm-worker')
   cargo build --profile optimized

   For more options see build options below.

4. Create the symlinks

   sudo ln -s "$(pwd)"/target/optimized/leftwm /usr/bin/leftwm
   sudo ln -s "$(pwd)"/target/optimized/leftwm-worker /usr/bin/leftwm-worker
   sudo ln -s "$(pwd)"/target/optimized/lefthk-worker /usr/bin/lefthk-worker
   sudo ln -s "$(pwd)"/target/optimized/leftwm-state /usr/bin/leftwm-state
   sudo ln -s "$(pwd)"/target/optimized/leftwm-check /usr/bin/leftwm-check
   sudo ln -s "$(pwd)"/target/optimized/leftwm-command /usr/bin/leftwm-command

5. Copy leftwm.desktop to xsessions folder

   sudo cp leftwm.desktop /usr/share/xsessions/

You should now see LeftWM in your list of available window managers. At this point, expect only a simple black screen on login. For a more customized look, install a theme.

1. Now if you want to get the newest version of leftwm run this command from your build directory:

   git pull origin main

2. Build leftwm

   # With systemd logging (view with 'journalctl -f -t leftwm-worker')
   cargo build --profile optimized

3. And press the following keybind to reload leftwm

   Mod + Shift + R

Since LeftWM is targeting to be more and more modular, there are a few features that can be selected at compile time:

Use cargo with the added flags --no-default-features --features= and then commaseparated a selection from the following features:

Example:

# With `lefthk` and logging to `sys-log`
cargo build --profile optimized --no-default-features --features=lefthk,sys-log

# Without `lefthk` and logging to file
cargo build --profile optimized --no-default-features --features=file-log

There are also multiple levels of optimization. These are specified by the cargo profiles, available are dev, release and optimized. The dev and release profiles are default profiles used by cargo, whereas the optimized profile is recomended for production builds.

Example:

# With the dev profile
cargo build --profile dev

# With the release profile
cargo build --profile release

For conveniece we also have a Makefile with the following rules:

Note that for build, install and install-linked, you can specify the build profile to use by adding the profile=<profile-name> argument. Currently available are dev, release and release-optimized.

Make sure this is at the end of your .xinitrc file:

# .xinitrc
exec dbus-launch leftwm

On some distros like Archlinux, the environment variables are being setup by sourcing /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc.d, as described in the Arch docs, please make sure you copy the default xinitrc like this:

cp /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc ~/.xinitrc

Note: In this case it is not necessary to start leftwm through dbus-launch and might even result in some cases in services like gnome-keyring to fail. In such an occasion just use:

# .xinitrc
exec leftwm

If you want to see more than a black screen when you login, select a theme:

leftwm-theme update
leftwm-theme install NAME_OF_THEME_YOU_LIKE
leftwm-theme apply NAME_OF_THEME_YOU_LIKE

mkdir -p ~/.config/leftwm/themes
cd ~/.config/leftwm/themes
ln -s PATH_TO_THE_THEME_YOU_LIKE current

LeftWM comes packaged with a couple of default themes. There is also a community repository for sharing themes.

For more information about themes check out our theme guide or the wiki.

Note: leftwm uses RON now as its default config language. Please consider migrating your toml configs.

You can configure key bindings, default mod key and many other options:

leftwm-config -n # Generate new config
leftwm-config    # Open configuration file in $EDITOR
leftwm-config -t # Edit configuration via TUI (Beta)

~/.config/leftwm/config.ron

Note: The configuration file is automatically generated when leftwm or leftwm-check is run for the first time.

Note: leftwm uses RON now as its default config language. Please consider migrating your toml configs.

Note: Although we encourage you to use Alacritty, LeftWM will set your default terminal to the first terminal it finds in this list (in the order presented):

1. Alacritty
2. Termite
3. Kitty
4. URXVT
5. RXVT
6. ST
7. ROXTerm
8. Eterm
9. XTerm
10. Terminator
11. Terminology
12. Gnome Terminal
13. XFCE4 Terminal
14. Konsole
15. UXTerm
16. Guake

You can optionally switch between tiling or floating mode for any window.

By default, workspaces have a one-to-one relationship with screens, but this is configurable. There are many reasons you might want to change this, but the main reason is for ultrawide monitors. You might want to have two or even three workspaces on a single screen.

Here is an example config changing the way workspaces are defined (~/.config/leftwm/config.toml)

workspaces: [
    ( y: 0, x: 0, height: 1440, width: 1720 ),
    ( y: 0, x: 1720, height: 1440, width: 1720 ),
],

You may optionally specify an ID for your defined workspaces. This is helpful if you want to assign different gutter settings to each workspace in your theme.

workspaces: [
    ( y: 0, x: 0, height: 1440, width: 1720, id: 0 ),
    ( y: 0, x: 1720, height: 1440, width: 1720, id: 1 ),
],

NOTE You do not have to define an ID for each workspace, but if you assign an ID to one workspace all subsequently defined workspaces without an ID will be assigned an ID incrementing from the largest ID currently assigned to any workspace. In the above example if the second workspace was not defined with ID = 0 it would be assigned ID = 2. Keep this in mind when creating or customizing themes.

The default tags are 1-9. They can be renamed in the config file by setting the list of tags.

Here is an example config changing the list of available tags. NOTE: tag navigation (Mod + #) doesn't change based on the name of the tag.

tags: ["Web", "Code", "Shell", "Music", "Connect"],

By default, all layouts are enabled. There are a lot of layouts so you might want to consider only enabling the ones you use. To do this add a layout section to your config.toml file. This enables only the layouts you specify.

Example:

layouts: ["MainAndHorizontalStack", "GridHorizontal", "Fibonacci", "EvenVertical", "EvenHorizontal", "CenterMain", "CenterMainFluid"],

Layouts may also be specified on individual workspaces, this is useful if you have monitors with different aspect ratios or orientation.

Example:

workspaces: [
    ( id: 0, y: 480, x: 0, height: 1600, width: 3840,
      layouts = ["CenterMain", "CenterMainBalanced", "EvenHorizontal"]),
    ( id: 1, y: 0, x: 3840, height: 2560, width: 1440,
      layouts = ["MainAndHorizontalStack", "EvenVertical"]),
],

NOTE When defining layouts per workspace, you will need to define workspace IDs explicitely.

More detailed configuration information can be found in the Wiki.

The default layouts are all of the kinds described by the Layout enum.

LeftWM now has a Discord channel for faster help.