bspwm is a tiling window manager based on binary space partitioning. It represents windows as the leaves of a full binary tree. bspwm supports multiple monitors and is configured and controlled through messages.
It only responds to X events, and the messages it receives on a dedicated socket.
bspc is a program that writes messages on bspwm’s socket.
bspwm doesn’t handle any keyboard or pointer inputs: a third party program (e.g. sxhkd) is needed in order to translate keyboard and pointer events to bspc invocations.
Key Features
- Manual mode – specify a region in the insertion point where the next new window should appear by sending a node -p|–presel-dir DIR message to bspwm.
- Automatic mode – unlike the manual mode, there’s no need for user choice. The way the new window is inserted is determined by the value of the automatic scheme and the initial polarity settings. There are various schemes: Longest side scheme, alternate scheme, and spiral scheme.
- Supports RandR and Xinerama protocols
- Partial support for the EWMH and ICCCM standards.
Website: github.com/baskerville/bspwm
Support:
Developer: Bastien Dejean and contributors
License: BSD 2-Clause “Simplified” License
bspwm is written in C. Learn C with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
Related Software
| X11 Tiling Window Managers | |
|---|---|
| i3 | Improved tiling window manager |
| StumpWM | Common Lisp window manager |
| bspwm | Based on binary space partitioning |
| EXWM | Full-featured tiling X window manager for Emacs |
| herbstluftwm | Basic tiling concept is that the layout is represented by a binary tree |
| wmderland | Offers no bloated features, an easy-to-use config, and a very small footprint |
| Notion | Originally a fork of Ion |
| zwm | Minimal, opinionated window manager with a keyboard-driven workflow |
| Ratpoison | Keyboard-only window manager |
| NWM | Lightweight window manager with a simple, efficient workflow |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
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