i3 is a tiling window manager, completely written from scratch.
i3 is primarily targeted at advanced users and developers.
The program is free and open source software.
Key Features
- Layout saving/restoring. This allows you to load a JSON layout file so that you can have a base layout to start working with after starting your computer. You can save the layout of either a single workspace or an entire output.
- Uses the RandR (Rotate and Resize) API instead of Xinerama.
- i3 comes with i3bar by default, a simple bar that is sufficient for most users.
Website: i3wm.org
Support: User’s Guide, Reference Card, GitHub Code Repository
Developer: Michael Stapelberg and contributors
License: BSD license
i3 is written in C and Perl. Learn C with our recommended free books and free tutorials. Learn Perl 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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