Sway: Difference between revisions

Latest revision as of 07:42, 17 March 2025

Sway is a tiling Wayland compositor and a drop-in replacement for the i3 window manager. It works with your existing i3 configuration and supports most of i3's features, plus a few extras.

Prerequisites

Internet connectivity, unless the packages have been pre-fetched into a local cache.
A non-root user account.
The community repositories must be enabled.
Install appropriate Graphics driver drivers for your hardware. Without graphics drivers errors are likely to occur.
Set up eudev.
Wayland compositors need raw access to input and output devices, typically mediated by a seat manager. Either seatd or elogind work fine, but installing both leads to conflicts.

Setup-desktop

The setup-desktop command automates the installation of a basic desktop setup.

Manual Installation

The below installation step allows you to pick and choose various componenents for your Sway Desktop.

Install fonts

Install DejaVu fonts, which has good Unicode coverage:

# apk add font-dejavu

Install Sway

# apk add sway \ xwayland \ # if you need xserver foot \ # default terminal emulator. Modify $term in config for a different one. wmenu \ # default wayland native menu for choosing program and screensharing monitor swaylock swaylockd \ # lockscreen tool swaybg \ # display wallpaper grim \ # screenshot tool wl-clipboard \ # clipboard management i3status \ # simple status bar swayidle # idle management (DPMS) daemon

For complimentary software alternatives, see sway wiki or Gentoo Wiki.

Starting sway

Manually launch sway

You can launch sway manually by issuing the command sway from TTY.

$ sway

Tip: When using Wayland, for PipeWire and screensharing to work in Firefox and Chromium, D-Bus is required. In the absence of a user service manager, consider running with dbus-run-session, a convenience wrapper that will explicitly export the path of the session bus.

Automatically launch sway on tty1

Adding the following lines to ~/.profile or other shell specific profile file will launch Sway automatically with D-Bus only in tty1.

Contents of ~/.profile

...
if [ "$(tty)" = "/dev/tty1" ]; then
     exec dbus-run-session sway 
fi
...

Use Wrapper script to launch sway

Instead of using ~/.profile or it's equivalent file, a wrapper script can be placed at /usr/local/bin/sway-run. This script can be used to launch sway from both TTY and greetd, a lightweight display manager as follows:

Contents of /usr/local/bin/sway-run

#!/bin/sh
# Session
export XDG_SESSION_TYPE=wayland
export XDG_SESSION_DESKTOP=sway
export XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP=sway

# Wayland stuff
export MOZ_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1
export QT_QPA_PLATFORM=wayland
export SDL_VIDEODRIVER=wayland
export _JAVA_AWT_WM_NONREPARENTING=1

# If using seatd instead of elogind uncomment the below line
# export LIBSEAT_BACKEND=seatd

# Launch Sway with a D-Bus server
exec dbus-run-session sway "$@"

Make the file executable: # chmod +x /usr/local/bin/sway-run

Configuration

Sway config file

Copy default sway configuration file to ~/.config/sway/config so that it can be customized per user:

$ mkdir -p ~/.config/sway $ cp /etc/sway/config ~/.config/sway/

Read through it to learn the default keybindings. Sway configuration is mostly backwards-compatible with that of i3 and if you are looking for a solution for a specific issue, you may also try checking if it hasn't been provided for i3WM.

For additional information, start at man 5 sway and read the upstream wiki.

PipeWire and Screensharing

The sway compositor has no involvement in audio playback. For screen sharing to work pipewire is needed. So installing PipeWire is recommended for audio playback too.

Launch PipeWire with Sway by adding the following to sway config file:

exec /usr/libexec/pipewire-launcher

From screensharing perspective, applications are split into two categories:

Those which use the native wayland protocol, wlr-screencopy
Those which use the API from Flatpak's xdg-desktop-portal (this portal is also used by native non-Flatpak applications).

Applications in the first group require no additional setup. Applications in the second group (which includes Firefox and Chromium) require setting up xdg portals in addition to PipeWire.

# apk add xdg-desktop-portal xdg-desktop-portal-wlr

If you are using dbus-run-session wrapper to launch sway, you also need to set D-Bus variables for the portal and screensharing features to work by adding the following to sway config file:

exec dbus-update-activation-environment WAYLAND_DISPLAY XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP=sway

Screen lock and suspend-to-RAM

Tip: For a seat manager and de/wm agnostic tools consider zzz utility or powerctl utility available in testing repository to manage suspend and hibernation.

Putting the system to sleep with loginctl suspend command from Elogind requires elevated privileges or additional configuration.

To put the system to sleep after 600 seconds, use:

exec swayidle -w timeout 600 'doas /bin/loginctl suspend'

Do not lock the screen if program is running in full screen:

for_window [app_id="^.*"] inhibit_idle fullscreen

Todo: The below option related to wayland-pipewire-idle-inhibit needs to be tested. If you find the below option working, please remove this todo.

If you do not want to lock the screen, when media is being played through PipeWire, Install wayland-pipewire-idle-inhibit package and add the following to sway config file:

exec wayland-pipewire-idle-inhibit

Make changes to the config file ~/.config/wayland-pipewire-idle-inhibit/config.toml if required, as per project website.

Elogind and swayidle

swayidle has integration with elogind and can handle before-sleep events.

If using swayidle before-sleep, there will be a race condition, so that when you resume the computer from suspend, the screen shows the contents of the unlocked screen for a second before showing the actual lock screen. This can be a privacy concern.

To solve this issue, do the following:

Create this file /etc/elogind/system-sleep/10-swaylock.sh, then add the following script to this file:

#!/bin/sh
if [ "${1}" == "pre" ]; then
  touch /tmp/swaylock-sleep
  sleep 1
fi

Then set it to executable.

Later, once sway is installed, add the following line to sway config file:

exec touch /tmp/swaylock-sleep && inotifyd swaylock /tmp/swaylock-sleep

With this line, the screen will be promptly locked before suspend-to-RAM starts.

Brightness control

Refer to Backlight for information on brightness control.

Output scaling for high resolution displays

Without further configuration, program interfaces might be too small to use on high resolution displays.

Sway supports the per-display configuration of

fractional (e.g., 1.5x), and
integer scaling (e.g., 2x)

However, fractional scaling is discouraged due to both the performance impact and the blurry output it produces. In this case, where 1x scaling is too small and 2x scaling is too large, program-specific GTK/QT based scaling is recommended. See below.

To enable Sway scaling, the user can first preview different scaling factors with wdisplays package. Note the output name (eDP-1, LVDS-1) and try apply scaling factors such as 1 and 2. To make changes permanent, add below to sway config file.

output <name> scale <factor>

To use toolkit scaling, use

# for GTK-based programs such as firefox and emacs: export GDK_DPI_SCALE=2 # for QT-based programs export QT_WAYLAND_FORCE_DPI="physical" # or if still too small, use a custom DPI export QT_WAYLAND_FORCE_DPI=192 # 2x scaling export QT_QPA_PLATFORM="wayland-egl"

Screenshots

A simple tool that works well under Wayland is Grimshot. Example keybindings:

bindsym Print exec grimshot copy area
bindsym Shift+Print exec grimshot copy screen
bindsym Control+Print exec grimshot save area ~/Pictures/$(date +%d-%m-%Y-%H-%M-%S).png
bindsym Control+Shift+Print exec grimshot save screen ~/Pictures/$(date +%d-%m-%Y-%H-%M-%S).png

See the sway wiki's article for a list of screenshot tools.

Make clipboard content persistent

By default the clipboard content does not persist after terminating the program: you copy some text from Firefox and then exit Firefox, the copied text is also lost.

Install clipman from testing repo and add the following to sway config file:

exec wl-paste --type text/plain --watch clipman store --histpath="~/.local/state/clipman-primary.json"
bindsym $mod+h exec clipman pick --tool wofi --histpath="~/.local/state/clipman-primary.json"

Firefox picture-in-picture mode/floating windows

Add this to your sway config file (modify the numeric values to suit your needs and your display):

for_window [app_id="firefox" title="^Picture-in-Picture$"] floating enable, move position 877 450, sticky enable, border none

Start with NumLock enabled

Add this to your sway config file:

input type:keyboard xkb_numlock enabled

Change mouse cursor theme and size

Add to your sway config file:

seat seat0 xcursor_theme my_cursor_theme my_cursor_size

For example, set a mouse cursor, using GNOME Adwaita theme:

seat seat0 xcursor_theme Adwaita 16

You can inspect their values with echo $XCURSOR_SIZE and echo $XCURSOR_THEME. If reloading your config does not result in change, try logging out and in.

Note: Wayland allows for client-side cursors. It is possible that applications do not evaluate the values of $XCURSOR_SIZE and $XCURSOR_THEME.

Custom keyboard layout

To use custom keyboard layout, just use

input type:keyboard {
  xkb_file /path/to/my/custom/layout
}

Flatpaks

Due to their sandboxing, flatpaks require the use of a portal frontend (xdg-desktop-portal) and backends (such as xdg-desktop-portal-wlr, xdg-desktop-portal-gtk, xdg-desktop-portal-gnome) that implement the methods. When in doubt, install multiple backends. For more information on backends, see flatpak's page on the subject. In addition to the steps under the screensharing section, it may also be necessary to launch additional backends in your Sway config file. Otherwise, you may run into GDBus errors as your flatpak fails to interface with the portal. This can cause issues such as with opening your file directories from a flatpak application.

After installing different backends, you might need to add the relevant backends to your sway config file similarly to in the "Firefox Screensharing" section above. For example, an autostart section of your sway config file may include:

exec /usr/libexec/xdg-desktop-portal-gtk
exec /usr/libexec/xdg-desktop-portal-wlr
exec /usr/libexec/xdg-desktop-portal-gnome

This is only needed if they are not started automatically via other means.

Troubleshooting

If you encounter any issues, try running sway -Vc /etc/sway/config. It will run sway with the default config file and set the output to be more verbose. It is generally a good idea to track your config files with git (when and if at all you use a remote repository for them, keep it private for security reasons).

To capture the sway error log in a file for troubleshooting, replace sway in your startup file by sway -d 2> ~/sway_error.log.

Alternately, you can also issue the below command from TTY.

$ sway -d 2> ~/sway_error.log

Video Driver Issues

After installing sway, while launching it for the first time, lack of proper video drivers causes various error messages such as:

"unable to create backend"
"Failed to create renderer"

Do install necessary drivers for your graphics card for sway to work.

XDG_RUNTIME_DIR is not set in the environment. Aborting

If seatd is used instead of elogind, the error message XDG_RUNTIME_DIR is not set in the environment. Aborting might be encountered.

Ensure that the mandatory steps outlined in seatd page to set the XDG_RUNTIME_DIR variable is completed.

No backend was able to open a seat

If no seat manager is available, the below error will appear.

[libseat] [libseat/libseat.c:73] libseat_open_seat : No backend was able to open a seat
[backend/session/libseat.c:102] Unable to create seat : Function not implemented
[backend/backend.c:303] Failed to open any DRM device
[sway/server.c:49] Unable to create backend

Ensure either Elogind or Seatd is properly configured and running.

Firefox (Flatpak) and/or GTK apps

Disappearing cursor

You may need to get an icon pack and possibly a theme from Pling store and set GTK_THEME environmental variable. Alternatively you can Install a icon theme package for all users.

Missing file picker/cannot download

Go to about:config and set widget.use-xdg-desktop-portal.file-picker to 0.

Nvidia Issues

As of Dec 31 2022, Nvidia still doesn't fully support Wayland. Therefore, the possible solutions are as outlined in the link, or setting your WLR_BACKENDS environmental variables to drm,libinput or x11 (add libinput here as well if you cannot use your mouse and keyboard after starting Sway). The latter also works for AMD/ATI cards (make sure to install libinput first).