Sway offers an i3-compatible tiling compositor for Wayland-based desktop sessions.
Open source
24 alternativesriver
river separates the Wayland compositor from the window manager, allowing a compatible manager to be chosen.
About river
River is a non-monolithic Wayland compositor that defers window management to a separate program. Users choose a window manager implementing the river-window-management-v1 protocol. It runs nested in an X11 or Wayland session or directly from a tty, and runs an init executable on startup to launch the manager and other programs.
Pricing is not clearly stated.
Key features
- Hot-swaps window managers without restarting the compositor and Wayland programs
- Offers Xwayland support through a build option
- Requires building with dependencies including zig 0.16 and wlroots 0.20
Best for: People who want to choose or write a separate window manager for Wayland.
river at a glance
- Website
- github.com/riverwm/river
- Category
- Software & Utilities › Desktop Customization
- Type
- Open-source project
- Pricing
- Not confirmed. Check the site
- Details verified
- Oct 23, 2026 · Official source
- Open source
- Yes · Source code
- Language
- English
- Last checked
- Oct 5, 2026 · Online when checked
- Listed
- Oct 5, 2026
river alternatives
Tools and sites you could use instead, ranked by how closely they match.
Sway is an i3-compatible tiling compositor for Wayland, documented in the ArchWiki.
labwc provides a Wayland compositor that stacks windows rather than tiling them.
Open source
24 alternatives
Mango provides a Wayland compositor built on dwl and includes several window layouts.
Wayfire offers a modular Wayland compositor with extension points and customizable behavior.
Open source
24 alternatives
Waybar provides a customizable status bar for Wayland compositors such as Sway and wlroots-based environments.
Open source
24 alternativesPopular in Desktop Customization
Well-known listings from the same topic.
Chezmoichezmoi.ioawesomewmawesomewm.orgdotfilesdotfiles.github.iobackieeapps.microsoft.com/store/detail/backiee-wallpa…Dynamic Themeapps.microsoft.com/detail/9nblggh1zbkwHydraPaperhydrapaper.gabmus.org
Is something wrong or out of date?
Tell us and an editor will check it.
Own this website?
Claim this listing
Claim the listing and suggest updates yourself. An editor checks every claim first.