A small and light tiling Wayland compositor in Rust.

Window management:

• Dynamic tiling layout (main/stack)
• Floating windows (auto-detected from hints, rules, or toggled)
• Tag system with per-tag layout and window order
• Keyboard-driven (mouse optional)
• Rule-based runtime configuration
• Autostart (shell script)
• Smart borders and smart gaps
• Focus-follows-mouse
• Screen lock and idle protocols

Rendering and backend:

• DRM/KMS backend with session handling
• Hardware accelerated (EGL/GBM render path, GLSL shaders)
• Server-side decorations (rounded corners, shadows, borders)
• Damage tracking and direct scanout
• Layer shell (panels, bars, overlays)
• Clipboard protocols (wl-copy/wl-paste)
• IPC for status bars (monotile-ipc-v1, dwl-ipc-v2)
• Screen sharing

Not yet implemented:

• Multi-monitor support
• Output management
• Gamma control
• HiDPI / multi-DPI support
• Hide cursor when typing
• Monocle layout

Requires Rust 1.85 or later.

Add the flake to your system config and rebuild, or install to your user profile:

nix profile add github:lx7/monotile

For development:

nix develop
cargo build --release

sudo pacman -S rust pkgconf wayland libxkbcommon libdrm libinput seatd mesa libdisplay-info
cargo build --release

# rust toolchain (1.85+)
# Debian 13+ / Ubuntu 25.04+:
sudo apt-get install -y cargo
# older distros:
curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh

# build dependencies
sudo apt-get install -y libwayland-dev libxkbcommon-dev libgbm-dev libdrm-dev libudev-dev libinput-dev libseat-dev libegl1-mesa-dev libdisplay-info-dev

# runtime dependencies
sudo apt-get install -y libwayland-server0 libxkbcommon0 libgbm1 libudev1 libinput10 libseat1 libegl1 libdisplay-info2

cargo build --release

Configuration files are in $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/monotile/:

• config.ron: Rule-based configuration
• autostart.sh: Commands to run on startup

On first run, monotile creates a default config if none exists. Edit it to customize keybindings, layout, appearance, and input devices.

Custom paths can be specified: monotile [-c <config>] [-s <autostart>]

monotile is not a desktop environment. You need a terminal emulator and an application launcher. The defaults use foot and fuzzel - adjust the config to match your setup.

• Cosmic: Wayland desktop with tiling compositor by System76.
• niri: Continuous side-scrolling-tiling wayland compositor.
• dwl: dwm for wayland.
• bspwm: bsp-tree based tiling window manager for X11.

• smithay - monotile is based on the Smithay Wayland library, and the smallvil example.
• niri - Clipping and decoration shader technique. Also, the idea for the integration test fixture.