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About dwl
dwl brings the approach of the dwm tiling window manager to Wayland. It is a small compositor written in C on top of wlroots, arranging windows automatically in dynamic tiling layouts and keeping the codebase compact.
Like dwm, it is meant to be customised, and a separate dwl-patches repository collects community patches that add features. It is actively developed on Codeberg, with version 0.9 added to the changelog in September 2026. It suits dwm users moving to Wayland and people who like a minimal, hackable compositor.
Strengths
- dwm-style dynamic tiling on Wayland
- Small C codebase built on wlroots
- Community patch collection for extra features
- Actively maintained
Limitations
- Customisation usually means editing source and recompiling
- Minimal by design, so bars and extras come from other tools
Details
- Pricing
- FreeFree and open source.
- License
- Open source, license not stated
- Developer
- The dwl contributors
- Platforms
- Linux
- How it runs
- Downloadable app
- Account
- Not required
- Works offline
- Yes
- Best suited for
- dwm users moving to Wayland who want a minimal tiling compositor
- Categories
- Window tools
- Last verified
- Added
- Provenance
- Facts checked against the developer's own pages and store listings, 1 sources on file.
Alternatives to dwl
Compare allSoftware that can replace dwl for an important use case, and what changes if you switch.
dwm
Use a small dynamic window manager for X11 with tiling and floating layouts.
dwm is the X11 dynamic tiling window manager dwl imitates, with the same compact code and edit-and-recompile customisation, but it runs on X11 instead of Wayland.
Sway
Use an i3-style tiling workflow on Wayland.
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.
Hyprland
Arrange Linux application windows with a configurable tiling Wayland compositor.
Hyprland is a dynamic tiling Wayland compositor with animations and extensive keyboard and layout configuration, under a BSD-3-Clause license, instead of a minimal patched C codebase.
river
A non-monolithic Wayland compositor that leaves window management to a separate program.
river separates window management into a replaceable program with a documented protocol, and building it from source needs the Zig toolchain.
niri
A scrollable-tiling Wayland compositor that places windows in columns on an endless horizontal strip.
niri places windows in scrollable columns on an endless strip so opening windows never resizes existing ones, and provides an IPC interface for scripting.
miracle-wm
A hackable tiling Wayland compositor for Linux built on Mir, with i3-style tiling and animations.
miracle-wm is a Mir-based tiling Wayland compositor with i3-style tiling, animations, shader effects and plugin support, packaged as a Snap and Debian package.
Qtile
Configure a tiling window manager using Python.
Qtile is a tiling window manager configured in Python with programmable layouts and widgets, and offers both X11 and Wayland back ends.
Wayfire
A wlroots-based Wayland compositor with plugin-driven window management and 3D desktop effects.
Wayfire is a wlroots-based Wayland compositor with plugin-driven window management and 3D desktop effects, though releases can be far apart.
Similar software
Related functionality, not necessarily a direct replacement.
Waybar
Add a customizable status bar to compatible Wayland desktops.
Ironbar
A customisable GTK4 status bar for Wayland compositors, written in Rust.
nwg-panel
Add desktop panels to Sway and Hyprland using GTK.
rofi
A keyboard-driven window switcher, application launcher and dmenu replacement for Linux desktops.
labwc
A lightweight wlroots-based stacking Wayland compositor inspired by Openbox.
