instantWM

Window manager for instantOS

instantWM the window manager of instantOS.

Installation

InstantWM is preinstalled on instantOS. You can manually install the git build at your own risk by cloning the repo and then running build.sh, however you'll likely be missing a lot of other tools if you're not on instantOS. It is not recommended to use instantWM with other distributions.

git clone --depth=1 https://github.com/instantOS/instantWM.git
cd instantWM
just install

Wayland screen sharing and screenshots

For broad application compatibility on Wayland, instantWM follows the standard wlroots-style portal stack:

• xdg-desktop-portal
• xdg-desktop-portal-wlr
• xdg-desktop-portal-gtk as the fallback portal backend

The repository ships resources/instantwm-portals.conf, which routes ScreenCast and Screenshot to the wlr portal backend for XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP=instantwm.

This is the recommended setup for:

• OBS Studio
• Firefox / Chromium / Electron screen sharing
• portal-based screenshots in sandboxed applications

On a systemd-based session this additionally requires the Wayland session environment to be imported into D-Bus activation. instantWM does this automatically when starting its Wayland socket.

Documentation

Features

• General
  • Wayland and X11 support (Yes, really)
  • hybrid-wm: tiling and floating mode are both first-class citizens
  • Keyboard and Mouse based workflows
  • Start-menu
  • desktop bindings
  • Full multi monitor support
  • Tag system
  • Overview mode
  • Overlays
• Graphical Features
  • Animations
  • Hover indicators
  • Status markup
  • Color indicators for sticky windows, tag status etc.
• Mouse support
  • Drag windows by grabbing the title
  • Drag windows onto other tags
  • Rio-like drawing feature

This is just a quick list of some features. For a full list and explanation, please refer to the documentation.