I have been using the i3 tiling window manager under manjaro on my Lenovo Thinkpad laptop for years, but with the replacement of X11 by wayland, I became interested in a solution compatible with this new display protocol, Sway.

As I started to use it, I felt the need to summarise my findings here, especially the hotkeys, which are key to keeping your hands on the keyboard at all times.

General Keybindings

Description Keybinding
Change window focus Mod + arrow keys
Vim keys are supported Mod + H J K L
Close a window Mod + Backspace
Move a window Mod + Shift + arrow keys
Move window with mouse Mod + left click
Resize a window Mod + R, resize with arrow keys, Esc
Resize with right click Mod + right click
Change workspace Mod + 1, 2, 3, …
Send window to workspace Mod + Shift + 1, 2, 3, …
Toggle floating/tiling Mod + Space
Toggle fullscreen Mod + F
Grow text Ctrl + Shit + +
Reload Sway configuration Mod + Shift + C
Quit program Mod + Shift + Q

Application Shortcuts

Description Keybinding
Launch the terminal Mod + Enter
Launch the file explorer Mod + E
Launch the web browser Mod + B
Launch the text editor Mod + T
Launch the calculator Mod + C

Launchers and Menus

Description Keybinding
Open the launcher Mod + D
Open the application menu Mod + Shift + D
Open the power menu Ctrl + Alt + Delete
Switch back to previous window Alt + Tab
Activities overview Mod + Tab
Workspace overview Mod + Shift + Tab

Scratchpad

Description Keybinding
Move window to scratchpad Mod + Shift + -
Show next scratchpad window Mod + -

Screenshots

Description Keybinding
Snip a screenshot Print
Screenshot a window Ctrl + Print
Screenshot the display Shift + Print

Clipboard Manager

Description Keybinding
Launch cliphist Ctrl + Mod + V
Delete an entry from cliphist Ctrl + Mod + X

Other bindings

Description Keybinding
Shortcut to Sway config Mod + Shift + I

Arch Linux installation

pacman -S sway swaylock swayidle swaybg alacritty xorg-xwayland wtype
pacman -S wmenu foot # application launcher & terminal dependencies
pacman -S wayvnc # VNC server for sway

seatd is required for Wayland to give sway access to keyboard/mouse/..

systemctl start seatd
gpasswd -a <user> seat
gpasswd -a <user> video
gpasswd -a <user> input

Sway configuration

Copy the Sway default configuration to your config directory

cp /etc/sway/config ~/.config/sway/config

You can also reuse instead your i3 configuration file which is compatible with sway.

The default Mod key is the Meta/Super key.

  • On a Windows keyboard, this will be the “Windows” key.
  • On an Apple keyboard, this will be the “Cmd” key.

If you wish, you can change the Mod key to something else in your Sway config. In particular change the Mod key which should be Mod4 if you access Sway from MacOS thru a VNC client like I’m doing.

vi ~/.config/sway/config 
set $mod Mod1

Now grab the name of your display with

swaymsg -t get_outputs

You can now edit your display configuration for example

output * bg /usr/share/backgrounds/sway/Sway_Wallpaper_Blue_1920x1080.png
output HEADLESS-1 resolution 1920x1200 position 0,0

End the installation and configuration by reloading your configuration with Mod + Shift + C

You can easily remotely access using a VNC client by running the integrated server wayvnc <IP> 5901 and create a SSH tunnel from your client machine

ssh -L 5901:localhost:5901 <user>@<sway_srv_ip>

Conclusion

Once you start using a tiling window manager, after a while you become so productive that you don’t want to go back to a traditional one. Even people on MacOS are starting to use tiling window managers like Aerospace, Amethyst or yabai.