swaywm/sway

i3-compatible Wayland compositor

C

17,421

6,399 commits

updated Sep 21, 2026

See the code

README

sway

English - عربي - Azərbaycanca - Česky - Deutsch - Dansk - Español - Français - ქართული - Ελληνικά - हिन्दी - Magyar - فارسی - Italiano - 日本語 - 한국어 - Nederlands - Norsk - Polski - Português - Română - Русский - Српски - Svenska - Türkçe - Українська - 中文-简体 - 中文-繁體

sway is an i3-compatible Wayland compositor. Read the FAQ. Join the IRC channel (#sway on irc.libera.chat).

Release Signatures

Releases are signed with E88F5E48 and published on GitHub.

Installation

From Packages

Sway is available in many distributions. Try installing the "sway" package for yours.

Compiling from Source

Check out this wiki page if you want to build the HEAD of sway and wlroots for testing or development.

Install dependencies:

  • meson *
  • wlroots
  • wayland
  • wayland-protocols *
  • pcre2
  • json-c
  • pango
  • cairo
  • gdk-pixbuf2 (optional: additional image formats for system tray)
  • swaybg (optional: wallpaper)
  • scdoc (optional: man pages) *
  • git (optional: version info) *

* Compile-time dep

Run these commands:

meson setup build/
ninja -C build/
sudo ninja -C build/ install

Configuration

If you already use i3, then copy your i3 config to ~/.config/sway/config and it'll work out of the box. Otherwise, copy the sample configuration file to ~/.config/sway/config. It is usually located at /etc/sway/config. Run man 5 sway for information on the configuration.

Running

Run sway from a TTY or from a display manager.

compositor
wayland

swaywm/sway

i3-compatible Wayland compositor

C

17,421

6,399 commits

updated Sep 21, 2026

See the code

README

sway

English - عربي - Azərbaycanca - Česky - Deutsch - Dansk - Español - Français - ქართული - Ελληνικά - हिन्दी - Magyar - فارسی - Italiano - 日本語 - 한국어 - Nederlands - Norsk - Polski - Português - Română - Русский - Српски - Svenska - Türkçe - Українська - 中文-简体 - 中文-繁體

sway is an i3-compatible Wayland compositor. Read the FAQ. Join the IRC channel (#sway on irc.libera.chat).

Release Signatures

Releases are signed with E88F5E48 and published on GitHub.

Installation

From Packages

Sway is available in many distributions. Try installing the "sway" package for yours.

Compiling from Source

Check out this wiki page if you want to build the HEAD of sway and wlroots for testing or development.

Install dependencies:

  • meson *
  • wlroots
  • wayland
  • wayland-protocols *
  • pcre2
  • json-c
  • pango
  • cairo
  • gdk-pixbuf2 (optional: additional image formats for system tray)
  • swaybg (optional: wallpaper)
  • scdoc (optional: man pages) *
  • git (optional: version info) *

* Compile-time dep

Run these commands:

meson setup build/
ninja -C build/
sudo ninja -C build/ install

Configuration

If you already use i3, then copy your i3 config to ~/.config/sway/config and it'll work out of the box. Otherwise, copy the sample configuration file to ~/.config/sway/config. It is usually located at /etc/sway/config. Run man 5 sway for information on the configuration.

Running

Run sway from a TTY or from a display manager.

compositor
wayland

Project health

Overall

5.9/10

Maintained

10/10

Code review

10/10
OpenSSF Scorecard

Significant stargazers

(top 24 of 372)

Allan Nordhøy

425 followers · starred Oct 2019

Steven Allen

796 followers · starred Dec 2015

Folke Lemaitre

10,619 followers · starred Oct 2021

Daniel Martí

2,563 followers · starred Feb 2017