Alternatives to Sway
Use an i3-style tiling workflow on Wayland. The listings below can replace it for an important use case. Each note says what changes if you switch.
The original
Sway
Use an i3-style tiling workflow on Wayland.
Replacements
Listings that take over the same core job as Sway.
i3
Arrange X11 windows in a keyboard-controlled tiling workspace.
i3 is the X11 tiling manager whose configuration format Sway largely follows, so key bindings carry over, but it runs on X11 rather than Wayland.
Hyprland
Arrange Linux application windows with a configurable tiling Wayland compositor.
Hyprland is a BSD-3-Clause tiling Wayland compositor with dynamic tiling and animations, using its own extensive configuration rather than the i3 format.
Qtile
Configure a tiling window manager using Python.
Qtile is a tiling window manager configured in Python, with both X11 and Wayland back ends and built-in programmable widgets.
awesome
Build a keyboard-driven X11 desktop with a window manager configured in Lua.
awesome gives tiling and floating layouts with programmable widgets configured in Lua, but it runs on X11 instead of Wayland.
bspwm
Manage X11 windows as the leaves of a binary tree.
bspwm tiles X11 windows as a binary tree controlled by shell commands, and needs separate tools for key bindings and panels, unlike Sway's built-in bindings.
LeftWM
Arrange Linux windows with a tiling manager written in Rust.
LeftWM is an MIT-licensed tiling manager written in Rust with configurable layouts, though desktop bars and related components need separate configuration.
niri
A scrollable-tiling Wayland compositor that places windows in columns on an endless horizontal strip.
niri is a Wayland compositor with scrollable tiling, placing windows in columns on a horizontal strip so opening a window does not resize existing ones.
river
A non-monolithic Wayland compositor that leaves window management to a separate program.
river is a Wayland compositor that leaves window management policy to a separate program, so you pick or build the window manager yourself instead of using i3-style rules.
Also worth comparing
These listings name Sway as their own alternative, so the relationship runs both ways.
dwl
A dwm-like dynamic tiling Wayland compositor built on the wlroots library.
Sway offers an i3-style tiling workflow on Wayland configured through a text file compatible with much of i3's format, instead of recompiling source code.
dwm
Use a small dynamic window manager for X11 with tiling and floating layouts.
Sway moves an i3-style keyboard tiling workflow to Wayland, so some X11 applications and workflows need compatibility layers or alternatives.
labwc
A lightweight wlroots-based stacking Wayland compositor inspired by Openbox.
Sway is a Wayland compositor with an i3-style keyboard-driven tiling workflow instead of labwc's stacking windows, and supports much of the i3 configuration format.
miracle-wm
A hackable tiling Wayland compositor for Linux built on Mir, with i3-style tiling and animations.
Sway offers i3-style tiling on Wayland with support for much of the i3 configuration format, and has a larger community than miracle-wm.
Wayfire
A wlroots-based Wayland compositor with plugin-driven window management and 3D desktop effects.
Sway is an MIT-licensed Wayland compositor with i3-style keyboard-driven tiling, replacing Wayfire's plugin effects with a largely i3-compatible configuration.
Similar software
Related functionality, not a direct replacement.
Waybar
Add a customizable status bar to compatible Wayland desktops.
nwg-panel
Add desktop panels to Sway and Hyprland using GTK.
Eww
Create custom desktop widgets using declarative configuration and styling.
AGS
Scaffolding CLI for building custom Linux desktop shells and widgets.
rofi
A keyboard-driven window switcher, application launcher and dmenu replacement for Linux desktops.
