speedwm is a window manager forked from suckless.org's dwm or dynamic window manager. It manages the user's open windows and tiles them according to a set layout (dynamic).
Just like dwm, speedwm also tries to be minimal but also has functionality and aesthetics as a goal. It is also much more minimal than other window managers like i3-gaps while offering many more features.
Tiling window managers (unlike floating window managers that you may be used to) tile windows based on a set layout making them easy to get productive on.
They also encourage the user to use their keyboard instead of the mouse so that the user doesn't have to move their hands much but there are mouse keybinds and more can be added.
## Installation
In order to install this build of speedwm, all dependencies must be installed.
You can see (Dependencies) for a list of all dependencies required to use this fork.
- git clone https://codeberg.org/speedie/speedwm
- cd speedwm
- make clean install
- If any warnings show up, fix it by installing the missing dependency.
- If a .xinitrc is used, add 'speedwm_run' to the end.
- NOTE: Your .xinitrc should ONLY contain 'speedwm_run'. speedwm will automatically start everything else. If not, edit autostart.h and 'make clean install'. If a .xinitrc is not used then you don't need to worry. A .desktop file is automatically created when you run 'make clean install'.
## Layouts
speedwm comes with the following layouts:
- Tile
- Monocle
- Grid
- Deck
- Centered Master
- Centered Floating Master
- Spiral
- Dwindle
- Three Column
- Bottom Stack
- Horizontal Bottom Stack
- Horizonal Grid
- Tatami
- Tilewide
- Stairs
- Tiling (5:4)
- Column
- Dynamic Grid
They can be switched between using a little menu (See Keybinds for more information) or by right clicking the Layout indicator.
The more commonly used layouts can be switched between using a quick keybind.
There are also keybinds for statuscmd, but you must implement it into your own status bar.
See mouse.h for more information.
## Dependencies
These are absolutely necessary, speedwm will NOT compile without them
- libxft-bgra (Can be installed through 'make <distro>-libxftfix')
- NOTE: libXft will do but will cause speedwm and as such all your applications to crash if a colored emoji is displayed in the status bar. This includes the Emoji picker.
- libXinerama
- Can be disabled through editing toggle.mk if you're not interested in multiple monitors.
- imlib2
- Tag previews, Window icons. Can be disabled through editing toggle.mk and toggle.h if you don't want these features.
## Features
These are dependencies if you wanna use certain features
NOTE: Do not add any of these to .xinitrc or similar. They are going to be autostarted by speedwm.
If you want to use an alternative, change it in options.h.
- dmenu
- NOTE: dmenu is required for most scripts included with this build of speedwm. My build is required for proper Pywal support.
- If you do not have the password, grid and center patches, you must disable them in ~/.config/speedwm-de/global/config by setting two variables to false.
- picom
- Optional but speedwm looks sort of ugly without it.
- xclip (Required for clipboard support by a few scripts, will start automatically)
- xwallpaper (Required to set wallpapers)
- xmodmap
- Required if you want the Alt+Tab to have proper keybinds.
- Install if you want Escape instead of Caps Lock and Right Super+hjkl for arrow keys
- xrdb (Install if you want .Xresources support)
- pywal (Install if you want pywal support. Requires swal aka the default way to set wallpapers)
- wmctrl (Needed for proper window management)
- xsetroot (Needed for most scripts including Pywal support)
- slock (Required for screen locking)
- If you want to display a message, you need the text patch.
- If you have the background image patch, you can set the image to ~/.config/speedwm-de/swal/CurrentWallpaper. It is a symlink to the current wallpaper.
- maim (Required for built in 'speedwm-screenshotutil' script)
## Software
This build of speedwm comes with binds for software.
These must be installed by default but you can change what software is required by editing 'options.h' and running 'make clean install'.
You can also remove keybinds by editing 'keybinds.h' and running 'make clean install'.
After you've edited one of the files, you need to run 'make clean install' to reinstall speedwm.
Remember that you can change colors through your .Xresources file (see .Xresources and Pywal) meaning you do not need to recompile speedwm.
Another important detail you must keep in mind is that this build comes with a status bar simply named 'status'.
It can be found in the speedwm source code directory. It is just a shell script which adds stuff to your status bar. It will automatically be started when speedwm starts.
You can edit the status bar simply by editing 'status' and running 'make clean install'.
You can also configure it by editing '~/.config/speedwm-de/status/config'.
Please note that most status bars including the built in 'status' depends on xsetroot which must be installed. speedwm-compatcheck is going to tell you about this when compiling.
If you want to change status bar, edit options.h and set 'static char status' to your status bar binary (must be in $PATH).
Alternatively, you can also set speedwm.status: <statusbar> in .Xresources (See .Xresources and Pywal)
## .Xresources and Pywal
This fork of speedwm has .Xresources support thanks to the .Xresources patch.
It also has pywal support (tool which grabs colors based on your wallpaper).
Colors reload automagically because of a reloadxresources function this build has combined with fsignal and a wallpaper script I wrote.
Therefore, if you want colors to reload instantly, you're unfortunately forced to use the bundled wallpaper script. But that's alright because it's pretty good.
Below is a list of all .Xresources values you can define. The .Xresources file should be placed in ~ or ~/.config by the user.
If it is not or you want it somewhere else, you can edit 'autostart.h' and 'make clean install'.
Note that the 'xrdb' dependency is required for both pywal and .Xresources support and 'xsetroot' is required for automatic reloading of colors, the built in status bar, and more so you should install this.
These files are pretty important so it is recommended that you do not delete them.
If you do end up deleting them though, you can just make clean install on speedwm again.
## Maintaining settings easily
speedwm is a personal fork of dwm and will therefore likely have keybinds and other options you may not like. Because of this, I recommend that you use the patching system to manage your custom settings
speedwm has a patching system. It allows you to create a patch with your changes to options.h, options.mk, toggle.h and toggle.mk. To create a patch, simply make clean install once and then the docs folder will contain backups of your source code. If you perform changes to any of these four files, run make patch to create patches against the backups in docs and your modified files. Then once you're updating, do make patch_remove, git pull, make patch_install, and make clean install and all your settings will be there.
The only (obvious) problem with doing this is that eventually the backup files patches are being created against will be pretty old causing patches to no longer apply correctly. If this is the case you will need to create new patches and backups.
If this seems like more effort than it is worth, maintaining your own fork is always an option. This allows you to perform any options you want yourself. This however doesn't allow you to grab any updates so this should be your second choice.
If you wish to add autostart entries without recompiling, consider using $HOME/.config/speedwm-de/autostart.sh. This is a path added to autostart.h and you can fill it with anything you want.
Do note that it will NOT just run once. It will run every time you restart and start speedwm (signum 30 and 31 count as well).
To get around this, you may wrap stuff in a function in the script and have some way of checking if it has ran before. If it hasn't, call the function.
An alternative is to use the $HOME/.config/speedwm-de/autostart_once.sh path. This one is autostarted by speedwm_run and is therefore not hardcoded and not affected by speedwm restarting. Just like the previous autostart script, it does not exist so you need to create it.