Last Updated on March 4, 2026
stagen is a simple experimental wlroots-based wayland compositor.
This is the Stage wayland compositor with some additional features.
This is free and open source software.
Key Features
- Tap to click support, for touchpad laptop users.
- Close window function, to close window via keybind.
- Window manipulation function via keybind.
- Move window to any direction (left, right, up, down and center).
- Resize window to any direction (left, right, up, down and half width and height of screen).
- Maximize window.
- Snap window to any direction (left, right, up, down and center).
- Pseudo minimize.
- Fullscreen window.
- Launcher (wofi).
- Screencopy protokol to support screenshot.
- Primary selection protocol.
- Simple background color.
- Simple exclusive zone to place a bar / panel at right, toggleable. The only tested and working panel is lxqt-panel.
- Simple rule for a specific app_id / title, e.g for lxqt-panel.
- Screenshot via external tool (grim), for fullscreen screenshot and focused-window screenshot.
- Simple show desktop.
- Send to desktop, send all minimized windows back to desktop / surface.
- Cursor theme option, we can set the cursor theme using these envs, XCURSOR_THEME (cursor theme) and XCURSOR_SIZE (cursor size).
- Window maximizing and minimizing via decoration button.
- Support for simple virtual keyboard and virtual pointer support, allowing us to use tools that need virtual keyboard and virtual pointer support (e.g. wtype, ydotool).
- Simple popup unconstrain, works on maximized window only.
- Workspace feature, optional.
- Half_width_height function, resizing window so the window has half width and height of screen.
- Support for compilation / build using meson.
Website: github.com/lidgnulinux/stagen
Support:
Developer: lidgnulinux
License: GNU Affero General Public License v3.0
stagen is written in C. Learn C with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
Related Software
| Tiling Wayland Compositors | |
|---|---|
| Sway | i3-compatible tiling Wayland compositor and a replacement for i3 |
| niri | Scrollable-tiling Wayland compositor |
| Hyprland | Dynamic tiling Wayland compositor based on wlroots |
| Qtile | Full-featured, hackable tiling window manager |
| Swayfx | Sway with eye candy |
| river | Compositor with flexible runtime configuration. |
| MangoWC | Lightweight yet a good set of features |
| dwl | dwm for Wayland |
| fht-compositor | Dynamic tiling Wayland compositor |
| newm-atha | Wayland compositor written with laptops and touchpads in mind |
| Cagebreak | Seeks inspiration from Ratpoison |
| Mahogany | Modeled after StumpWM |
| Jay | Wayland compositor written in Rust |
| Vivarium | Dynamic tiling Wayland compositor using wlroots |
| polonium | Tiling window manager for KWin |
| Volare | Tabbed, tiling Wayland compositor |
| japokwm | wlroots and dwl based tiling wayland compositor |
| velox | Simple window manager based on swc |
| stagen | wlroots-based Wayland compositor |
| newm | Written with laptops and touchpads in mind |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
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