I've been using i3-gaps without automatic tiling and I never thought about changing it. Your video made me think about that potential upgrade, but I never felt like I needed it!
Just converted to i3-gaps from xfce as my first twm on Artix. Loving it so far, with my 40% planck olkb, I fly across zsh in kitty, links, nvim, like the wind....now if only my brain could keep up with my fingertips...aaaanywho, installed this using paru after watching your vid. Awesome change to the ui. Thanks Brodie.
I'm on a single ultrawide monitor. Default splitting direction in i3 is fine 99% of the time and I very rarely have more than 3 windows per desktop. I don't really see the upside for dynamic tiling (tried awesome and qtile). The defaults on i3 are much better for my workflow and the documentation is by far the best out of any window manager that I've seen. I'm much happier than I was on AwesomeWM. Maybe I'm just too used to this from using PopOS for a while.
I used this autotiling script when I was on i3-gaps. It works great except that it makes i3 behave weird if you try to change the window layout to stacking (mod+s) or tabbed(mod+w). Otherwise its great.
I’m a big fan of bspwm. I don’t know if it’s a dynamic or manual tiler because I’m still confused about the difference but it works great. It does that “swirl” styled tile by default for me. Really easy to configure too
Thank you for introducing me to this script! If you are a stack/tabbed layout user, maybe give it another try and use the `--limit` option. You might like the behavior with `--limit 2` and then only switch to stack/tabbed on the lowest level.
When I started with tiling managers and i3, the manual tiling was the reason why I searched for an alternative. There was a dynamic tiling script, but it was wonky and did not work 100% perfectly like native. I find manual tiling is so much work. Edit: Forgot to mention that I am on Qtile now and have a layout that emulates manual tiling like i3. lol. But I have bunch of layouts, one emulating bsp, one that is monad like and so on and so fort.
I run ArcoLinux i3 with autotiling which I never make use of. Default i3 doesn't work for me, but my i3 does. I scrapped the status bar for Polybar or Bumblebee-status, borders, tabs, stacking, focus parent, focus child, every mode (particularly the ridiculous exit, and the nearly as ridiculous resize mode). I'm really not into programming or scripting and run most apps fullscreen because I'm ridiculously visual. Hat's off to those who can handle computer languages. As always, there's no accounting for taste. :)
Ah yes, the BSPWM's cool-fibinocci-thingy. I didn't know this was called "dynamic" tiling, but yes, I miss this on wayland very much. The script I copied and modified from somebody's github that replaces this works, but bearly. It tends to break when I move the windows around a bit. What doesn't really have a full replacement is the "monocle mode", which I much prefer to tabs/stacking. I miss this feature very much. There is this thing WM called "river", which should be a proper BSPWM replacement for Wayland, but aparently it's still quite early in development.
The vertical windows are not useful side by side, but is it useful to have that many windows open with a dynamic window manager and do you ever use that many? How is that useful either? I would never have more than two windows open at a time, typically side by side vertically or use more workspaces. If I was using a terminal and wanted more windows I would create them with tmux.
I use tab layout in sway. And very rear I split to two windows. And never to three. Just see no point to have so many windows on the screen. But I actively use scratchpads for terminal and for my emacs windows
The only reason I prefer i3 over dynamic WM is because i3 automatically lauches apps on vertical mode if you are using a vertical display, and it launches apps horizontally if you are using a horizontal display but ever since I found out about this script I just move the windows arround on vertical display if I want them to be vertical, I find it's way more convenient than stock i3
Your Sway journey is probably going to be the first one I don't join in on. I'm decently happy with Awesome and after the hassle setting it up how I want it to be, I have no impetus nor desire to change. Still, interesting to see this adventure. (You never did do an awesomebar video)
I know I never did, there's a lot of stuff for awesome I never did. Part of my reason for going over a lot of Wayland stuff is because I want Wayland to be better, I'm not trying to convince anyone else to put themselves through it.
This is a good idea if spawning terminals directly in i3. Personally I fell in love with tmux. Only need one terminal window. Can't see the use for dynamic tiling for the other apps in i3 + I like the tabbing and moving windows in and out of them.
Do you know you can drag tiled windows in sway just like floating ones? I didn't know at first and found out accidentally. AFAIK that doesn't exist in i3. At least I don't remember having it at the time I moved from i3 to sway.
I hated tiling window managers because i3 was the first I tried. Moved to DWM and never looked back. I will try this though, i3’s bar is a lot better than DWM‘s out of the box.
I just realised It's almost poetic when you mentioned that - after going to a dynamic tiler, you couldn't go back to manual tiler With regards to convenience. This could almost be said about windows users, they have the convenience of just having to go to the website to download and install, not worrying about what Distros to use, what package managers to use? What if my packages break? Things like that I might just be thinking too deep tho
Sometimes it's not about convenience, especially in workplaces. If it only about convenience, any distro with KDE or gnome would be enough for many (if not most) use case. I use linux as my daily driver because I have my own workflow and I want my OS to do exactly it. It's a choice I could make but not every other users could.
@@TheSuperhafizh Yes, exactly your point is right, but in the context of what i was referring to, THAT entire portion was primarily on convenience factor, with lack of a better word Its not entirely about convenience but thats the main point I gathered...
As soon as you get used to a package manager it’s way more convenient than going to a website to download things. I get annoyed having to do that on windows. I’m glad they added winget
this is awesome, I tried another script but it had some issues when toggling tabbed/stack mode, so does this script, I'm thinking of moving into bspwm since I moved by shortcuts to sxhkd completely.
@@007arek I3 only works on X11? I used wayland once for like 5 minutes, then I heard it doesn't work like screensharing/recording so I installed xorg instead.
Try herbstluftwm, it's simpler and is a hybrid between manual and dynamic. You can have pretty round corners and borders with picom. Still don't know why i3 is so ugly with rounded corners, shadows (tab mode), broken transparency (tab mode) ... I was on i3 for a long time, then I started looking.
@@BrodieRobertson How would you compare it to i3? I think bspwm is slicker. i3 has these container things that make swapping windows a pain for example.
@@oredaze for an out of box experience i3 is objectively better, bspwn is basically unusable in that case. But as for long term usage I love the amount of freedom that bspwn offers
i use AwesomeWM, because it is the only WM that do what xrandr tell it, i go to a lot of meeting with diff. monitors and AwesomeWM make this so much easier, just plug it in and arandr and you are done, it just works. i was on BSPWM, and i was making a autoscreen script that got the data from xrandr and try to swap desktops to match xrandr and remove and set the workspaces on the right desktops, but this is so much of a pain, any thing else is perfect in BSPWM, but this part is a deal breaker. i can only use WMs that can work with sxhkd, i got keybinding that WM can't do normaly, and AwesomeWM work perfect with sxhkd
To many complications with outside scripts. My solution on i3: _ manual dynamic tiling: mod+q split toggle _ autotiling: for_window [class="URxvt"] split toggle.
I dont kow, after a certain amount of windows you gotta switch desktops. Now one is gonna use a "galaxy swirl" on a 14" laptopcreen, thats insane. I think its better to be able to chose where my windows open.
Interesting. I don't think I'd find it particularly useful, as I mostly just use i3 for the application rules to assign certain apps to certain desktops ans certain desktop to one of my two screens. Mostly the only things that aren't fullscreen are terminals. But the autotiling tool is cool.
@@BrodieRobertson The two reasons I can't go back to desktops, one is the lack of workspace/desktop per screen with multi-monitor (gnome comes closest but still misses) and poor or non-existent window rules (plasmas kwin has a fairly complete setup, but it's operation is incomplete without desktop per screen). I love how when I launch mpv from my filemanager it opens on workspace 5 and focus gets shifted to it on my second screen.
I see this xwayland BS---- is that required? I hate WAYLAND-- it's NOT stable and several distros have already said it will NOT be used as default of their stuff- EVER... so will this work on X11???
I really didn't like this bsp functionality. I just moved to river which is wonderful in these regards, implementing master and stack by default but allowing for other layouting engines!
I like the POP OS tiling-- and it seems to me that if mint etc. will "snap' and tile etc.. they can be easily made to AUTO-TILE like pop... why isn't it?? I'm like you- I want AUTO- TILING.. none of that stupid waste of time keybanging BS...
The autotiling script is a nice helper script, but it does nothing akin to dynamic tiling. Autoling is EXTREMELY limited in scope (which is exactly what the author states), and doesn't do various dynamic layouts like you'd get in fantastic projects like xmonad, it doesn't have the concept of a layout, or a master window, etc. It's fine for what it is, but it's not dynamic tiling.
I've been using i3-gaps without automatic tiling and I never thought about changing it. Your video made me think about that potential upgrade, but I never felt like I needed it!
It you like it as is that's fine but it doesn't hurt to try out a new way of working.
Just converted to i3-gaps from xfce as my first twm on Artix. Loving it so far, with my 40% planck olkb, I fly across zsh in kitty, links, nvim, like the wind....now if only my brain could keep up with my fingertips...aaaanywho, installed this using paru after watching your vid. Awesome change to the ui. Thanks Brodie.
I'm on a single ultrawide monitor. Default splitting direction in i3 is fine 99% of the time and I very rarely have more than 3 windows per desktop. I don't really see the upside for dynamic tiling (tried awesome and qtile).
The defaults on i3 are much better for my workflow and the documentation is by far the best out of any window manager that I've seen.
I'm much happier than I was on AwesomeWM.
Maybe I'm just too used to this from using PopOS for a while.
I used this autotiling script when I was on i3-gaps. It works great except that it makes i3 behave weird if you try to change the window layout to stacking (mod+s) or tabbed(mod+w). Otherwise its great.
Comment out the lines in the config.
@@madthumbs1564 which lines? I wanna know!!!
@@un9286 they probably just mean to comment out the lines that set the stacking or tabbed mode shortcuts
I just started customizing AwesomeWM so for me it works just fine.
I’m a big fan of bspwm. I don’t know if it’s a dynamic or manual tiler because I’m still confused about the difference but it works great. It does that “swirl” styled tile by default for me. Really easy to configure too
it's a hybrid. so by default it tiles in the golden ratio or the Fibonacci way but you can specify the tiling direction like in a manual tiler.
Thank you for introducing me to this script!
If you are a stack/tabbed layout user, maybe give it another try and use the `--limit` option. You might like the behavior with `--limit 2` and then only switch to stack/tabbed on the lowest level.
When I started with tiling managers and i3, the manual tiling was the reason why I searched for an alternative. There was a dynamic tiling script, but it was wonky and did not work 100% perfectly like native. I find manual tiling is so much work.
Edit: Forgot to mention that I am on Qtile now and have a layout that emulates manual tiling like i3. lol. But I have bunch of layouts, one emulating bsp, one that is monad like and so on and so fort.
@Deepak Negi No, I am on X11. But Qtile works on Wayland as well.
Discovering Autotiling is the moment I considered windows obsolete
I've been using that script for a while in sway. It's great :)
6:58 how did he click and drag to resize?
one small tip
if you want a dynamic tiling wm based on wayland take a look at river
and for the bar you can also use waybar
I use DWL, It's basically dwm. It works well.
I run ArcoLinux i3 with autotiling which I never make use of. Default i3 doesn't work for me, but my i3 does. I scrapped the status bar for Polybar or Bumblebee-status, borders, tabs, stacking, focus parent, focus child, every mode (particularly the ridiculous exit, and the nearly as ridiculous resize mode). I'm really not into programming or scripting and run most apps fullscreen because I'm ridiculously visual. Hat's off to those who can handle computer languages. As always, there's no accounting for taste. :)
i use sway without an autotiler, but this script seems pretty cool
I've been using i3-master-layout , i like it better than autotiling or i3-alternating-layout
Ah yes, the BSPWM's cool-fibinocci-thingy. I didn't know this was called "dynamic" tiling, but yes, I miss this on wayland very much. The script I copied and modified from somebody's github that replaces this works, but bearly. It tends to break when I move the windows around a bit. What doesn't really have a full replacement is the "monocle mode", which I much prefer to tabs/stacking. I miss this feature very much. There is this thing WM called "river", which should be a proper BSPWM replacement for Wayland, but aparently it's still quite early in development.
The vertical windows are not useful side by side, but is it useful to have that many windows open with a dynamic window manager and do you ever use that many? How is that useful either? I would never have more than two windows open at a time, typically side by side vertically or use more workspaces. If I was using a terminal and wanted more windows I would create them with tmux.
I always manually did this by using shortcuts and my mouse has a lot of keys for my i3 I'll try this, looks neat.
I use tab layout in sway. And very rear I split to two windows. And never to three. Just see no point to have so many windows on the screen. But I actively use scratchpads for terminal and for my emacs windows
The only reason I prefer i3 over dynamic WM is because i3 automatically lauches apps on vertical mode if you are using a vertical display, and it launches apps horizontally if you are using a horizontal display but ever since I found out about this script I just move the windows arround on vertical display if I want them to be vertical, I find it's way more convenient than stock i3
Your Sway journey is probably going to be the first one I don't join in on. I'm decently happy with Awesome and after the hassle setting it up how I want it to be, I have no impetus nor desire to change. Still, interesting to see this adventure. (You never did do an awesomebar video)
I know I never did, there's a lot of stuff for awesome I never did. Part of my reason for going over a lot of Wayland stuff is because I want Wayland to be better, I'm not trying to convince anyone else to put themselves through it.
Which alacritty theme do you use?
You have very interesting configs
I use dynamic tiler 😀, autotiling is great because I also love i3.
Nice i'm using it now as well. Thx.
This is a good idea if spawning terminals directly in i3. Personally I fell in love with tmux. Only need one terminal window. Can't see the use for dynamic tiling for the other apps in i3 + I like the tabbing and moving windows in and out of them.
Maybe you'll like to give a try to PaperWM which turn the gnome window manager inta a tilling which is amazing
I created something similar, but I don't know if it works with older versions of i3
Hey Brodie! Can you do a video on other wayland compositors like River or Hikari?
I would like to at some point
Do you know you can drag tiled windows in sway just like floating ones? I didn't know at first and found out accidentally. AFAIK that doesn't exist in i3. At least I don't remember having it at the time I moved from i3 to sway.
Does it not exist in i3, maybe I'm misremembering
@@BrodieRobertson Just tried it does indeed work on i3
I hated tiling window managers because i3 was the first I tried. Moved to DWM and never looked back. I will try this though, i3’s bar is a lot better than DWM‘s out of the box.
I don't know diddly about scripting etc.. and don't f.. with that.. so will have to learn how.. but at least now I know it's POSSIBLE.. THANKS.
I just realised
It's almost poetic when you mentioned that - after going to a dynamic tiler, you couldn't go back to manual tiler
With regards to convenience.
This could almost be said about windows users, they have the convenience of just having to go to the website to download and install, not worrying about
what Distros to use,
what package managers to use?
What if my packages break?
Things like that
I might just be thinking too deep tho
Sometimes it's not about convenience, especially in workplaces.
If it only about convenience, any distro with KDE or gnome would be enough for many (if not most) use case.
I use linux as my daily driver because I have my own workflow and I want my OS to do exactly it. It's a choice I could make but not every other users could.
@@TheSuperhafizh Yes, exactly
your point is right, but in the context of what i was referring to, THAT entire portion was primarily on convenience factor, with lack of a better word
Its not entirely about convenience but thats the main point I gathered...
As soon as you get used to a package manager it’s way more convenient than going to a website to download things. I get annoyed having to do that on windows. I’m glad they added winget
Any way to get windows to spawning on the left?
this is awesome, I tried another script but it had some issues when toggling tabbed/stack mode, so does this script, I'm thinking of moving into bspwm since I moved by shortcuts to sxhkd completely.
1:24 komorebi window manager on windows offers both _and_ even more.
Why using sway instead of it? I've been using i3-gaps for a while now.
Because he is on the wayland.
@@007arek I3 only works on X11? I used wayland once for like 5 minutes, then I heard it doesn't work like screensharing/recording so I installed xorg instead.
@Watcher Oh nono, I didn't use I3 on wayland, didn't even knew that, now I'm really not using it lol.
QTile seems to solve this in a much more simple way.
I really should try out Qtile at some point
Good video.
Try herbstluftwm, it's simpler and is a hybrid between manual and dynamic. You can have pretty round corners and borders with picom. Still don't know why i3 is so ugly with rounded corners, shadows (tab mode), broken transparency (tab mode) ... I was on i3 for a long time, then I started looking.
Sounds to me like you should try bspwm.
I used it for a year lol
@@BrodieRobertson How would you compare it to i3? I think bspwm is slicker. i3 has these container things that make swapping windows a pain for example.
@@oredaze for an out of box experience i3 is objectively better, bspwn is basically unusable in that case. But as for long term usage I love the amount of freedom that bspwn offers
how is i3 manual? Someone explain pls
Manual tiling is where you have control over which direction a split is going to occur
@@BrodieRobertson Oh to me manual is like "Windows float by default and if you want to tile them you gotta use keybindings to do so."
Im using the rust variant with sway myself
Hey this is a good bspwm alternative for Wayland!
sick m8
i use AwesomeWM, because it is the only WM that do what xrandr tell it, i go to a lot of meeting with diff. monitors and AwesomeWM make this so much easier, just plug it in and arandr and you are done, it just works.
i was on BSPWM, and i was making a autoscreen script that got the data from xrandr and try to swap desktops to match xrandr and remove and set the workspaces on the right desktops, but this is so much of a pain, any thing else is perfect in BSPWM, but this part is a deal breaker.
i can only use WMs that can work with sxhkd, i got keybinding that WM can't do normaly, and AwesomeWM work perfect with sxhkd
try "riverwm".
maybe try riverwm
Considering it
To many complications with outside scripts. My solution on i3:
_ manual dynamic tiling: mod+q split toggle
_ autotiling: for_window [class="URxvt"] split toggle.
How tha hell do you make a gap between windows?...
gaps inner 5
I've been using i3-alternating-layout for a while. Simple python script, works great.
I dont kow, after a certain amount of windows you gotta switch desktops. Now one is gonna use a "galaxy swirl" on a 14" laptopcreen, thats insane. I think its better to be able to chose where my windows open.
Interesting.
I don't think I'd find it particularly useful, as I mostly just use i3 for the application rules to assign certain apps to certain desktops ans certain desktop to one of my two screens. Mostly the only things that aren't fullscreen are terminals.
But the autotiling tool is cool.
I do use those rules, just not to the same extent I always like to have my email client spawn on a seperate workspace for example
@@BrodieRobertson The two reasons I can't go back to desktops, one is the lack of workspace/desktop per screen with multi-monitor (gnome comes closest but still misses) and poor or non-existent window rules (plasmas kwin has a fairly complete setup, but it's operation is incomplete without desktop per screen).
I love how when I launch mpv from my filemanager it opens on workspace 5 and focus gets shifted to it on my second screen.
I see this xwayland BS---- is that required? I hate WAYLAND-- it's NOT stable and several distros have already said it will NOT be used as default of their stuff- EVER... so will this work on X11???
I really didn't like this bsp functionality. I just moved to river which is wonderful in these regards, implementing master and stack by default but allowing for other layouting engines!
I like the POP OS tiling-- and it seems to me that if mint etc. will "snap' and tile etc.. they can be easily made to AUTO-TILE like pop... why isn't it?? I'm like you- I want AUTO- TILING.. none of that stupid waste of time keybanging BS...
The autotiling script is a nice helper script, but it does nothing akin to dynamic tiling. Autoling is EXTREMELY limited in scope (which is exactly what the author states), and doesn't do various dynamic layouts like you'd get in fantastic projects like xmonad, it doesn't have the concept of a layout, or a master window, etc. It's fine for what it is, but it's not dynamic tiling.
Goodbye manual tiling !