Dwm is an extremely fast, small, and dynamic window manager for X. This is my personal build of dwm. I used a number of patches in this build to make dwm more "sensible" rather than "suckless." The patches I added to this build include:
- alpha (for transparency)
- attachaside (new clients appear in the stack rather than as the master)
- restartsig (allows dwm to be restarted with a keybinding)
- statuspadding (horizontal and vertical padding in the status bar are now configurable options)
- uselessgap (adding gaps when more than one window)
- bartabgroups (show tabs in title bar section for all windows in the current tag)
./make.sh bootstrap
./make.sh install
./make.sh font
modify the ~/.config/sxhkd/sxhkdrc file to use your selected browser and terminals etc
to mimic my current keyboard uses, add the following line into your ~/.bashrc
# check more binding info using : grep alt /usr/share/X11/xkb/rules/evdev.lst | grep win
setxkbmap -option "altwin:swap_alt_win"
setxkbmap -option "caps:escape"
The MODKEY is set to the Win/Super/Command key.
| Keybinding | Action |
|---|---|
MODKEY + RETURN |
opens terminal (alacritty is the terminal but can be easily changed) |
MODKEY + SHIFT + RETURN |
opens run launcher (dmenu is the run launcher but can be easily changed) |
MODKEY + q |
quit application with focus |
MODKEY + w |
untag current window from current tag |
MODKEY + f |
toggle monocle mode to maximize the current window |
MODKEY + z |
set the current window to be first one in list |
MODKEY + b |
toggle statur bar at the top |
MODKEY + SHIFT + r |
restarts dwm |
MODKEY + 1-9 |
switch focus to workspace (1-9) |
MODKEY + SHIFT + 1-9 |
tag current window with the new tag and switch to the tag (1-9) |
Super + SHIFT + 1-9 |
send focused window to workspace (1-9) |
MODKEY + j |
focus stack +1 (switches focus between windows in the stack) |
MODKEY + k |
focus stack -1 (switches focus between windows in the stack) |
MODKEY + SHIFT + j |
move the window position down in the list of current tag |
MODKEY + SHIFT + k |
move the window position up in the list of current tag |
MODKEY + . |
focusmon +1 (switches focus next monitors) |
MODKEY + , |
focusmon -1 (switches focus to prev monitors) |
MODKEY + h |
setmfact -0.05 (expands size of window) |
MODKEY + l |
setmfact +0.05 (shrinks size of window) |
MODKEY + u |
increase the number of windows in master tile (left side of the screen) |
MODKEY + d |
decrease the number of windows in master tile (left side of the screen) |
MODKEY + LeftMouse |
make the window float to where mouse moves |
MODKEY + RightMouse |
make the window float and rezie the window |
MODKEY + MiddleMouse |
toggle the floating mode of the focused window |
MODKEY + SHIFT + f |
toggle the floating mode of the focused window |
If you do not use a login manager (like lightdm) then you can add the following line to your .xinitrc to start dwm using startx:
exec dwm
If you use a login manager (like lightdm), make sure that you have a file called dwm.desktop in your /usr/share/xsessions/ directory. It should look something like this:
[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=Dwm
Comment=Dynamic window manager
Exec=dwm
Icon=dwm
Type=XSession