How To Make Your Tiling Window Manager Look Amazing

I've been getting a lot of questions from new tiling window manager users asking how to make their setups look amazing--like those gorgeous screenshots you see on r/unixporn. So I briefly cover a few of the basics when it comes to theming your tiling window manager desktops.
REFERENCED:
► gitlab.com/dwt1 - DT's GitLab repositories
► / unixporn - The Unixporn subreddit
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FREE AND OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE THAT I USE:
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🗒️ Doom Emacs: github.com/hlissner/doom-emacs
Your support is very much appreciated. Thanks, guys!

[@repnzscasb560]

It's very satisfying to watch those headphones wrap nicely around that freshly shaved head!

[@giacomodelillo1719]

😶

[@BlessedDog]

r/unixporn

[@itzmeshervin]

😂

[@coronaklledmebot4856]

r/sounding

[@adityavikramsinha408]

😂😂

[@Burak-pl1jl]

Just installed i3 yesterday, and then i3-gaps. Your videos are amazing. I don't know how many of them I've watched in one day. Can't stop watchiiiiiiing.

[@mashygreen6974]

What I normally do is open the wallpaper in gimp and use a colorpicker to choose colors for the terminal, window decorations and bar to match the wallpaper and be consistent accross everything.

[@justins7796]

this! or just the Brave/Chrome color picker extensions make theming much easier

[@nqtural1322]

@@justins7796 Firefox*

[@mashygreen6974]

@eelaroune they are very limited and don’t choose the colours you might want where you want them. It’s fine for some nice looking screen shot but for a system you run daily for years it’s worth investing that extra time to tune it in a manner that emphasises the things you want to draw your attention to and create contrast by using more minor colours of the overall theme.

[@zukxxxx0]

Please let me know about the progress in contrast am curious to know

[@plokil]

@@justins7796 Chr🤮me

Is really nice to watch this video while you’re using Arch-Qtile, and you know how it feels to spend between a couple of hours or days customizing your tiling window manager. Greetings from Colombia 🇨🇴

[@victorhugo-wo2ci]

Started using i3 5 days ago and i like it so far, dead simple configuration and pretty easy install

[@liviuq]

im down a rabbithole because of your channel and im thankful for this. peace

[@MikeyFL59]

Hey DT thanks for the info. I'm about to jump into tiling WM's. Played with Awesome a little but still deciding where to go.

[@attemptedpolymath9660]

7:30 - this is what I was looking for. Thankyou.

[@VitisCZ]

bspwm has pseudo tiling mode for the big gaps so it looks nice on screenshots

[@MrGarkin]

Blur is a game changer Tile modded KDE plasma looks amazing. And more usable tbh, than just transparent panels.

[@thingsthatareart.andwhytha5713]

Thank you so much for this one

[@13thravenpurple94]

Great work 🥳🥳🥳 Thank you 💜💜💜

[@capta1nt0ad]

great guide, works well on my macOS tiling wm

[@Jeff_Seely]

Yes sir. And aesthetically pleasing desktop can help productivity a bit. I think I'm a little more like you in the respect that I am a function over form type of guy but everybody enjoys a pretty desktop and your desktops are certainly gorgeous. Take care and peace

[@programorprogrammed]

Window manager agnostic, nice video!

[@hexa3389]

Nice profile pic.

[@diegonayalazo]

Thanks for sharing

[@erichanson5628]

Wonderful video!

[@alexgeorgousis1948]

Around 4:12 DT presses a hotkey that brings up a search bar at the top that reads "Edit config file:" and seems to list of all config files on the system. Is that dmenu (and if yes, how is it configured to do that?) or something else?

[@copper4eva]

I haven't watched the video yet, but I hope it covers unifying color schemes. I've never quite figured that out, but also never bothered too hard cause it's just low on my priority list.

[@Your_Degenerate]

6:00 the downward spiral of ricing begins mwahahahaha. Change one element and reconsider the entire theme.

[@wherami]

Nice info.

[@prankobano9076]

Thanks a lot!

[@twb0109]

Hey DT, how do you record the screen with picom running? My setup doesn't seem to be able to do that

[@birdofhermes6152]

Hey, thanks a lot!

[@JazzMachine77]

Something seems wrong with your terminal. Every time you maximize it, vim is very small on the top left side of the terminal it take some time to refresh it seems. Anyway, great video and I love the wallpapers.

[@arcadesoft294]

Thanks

[@drishalballaney6590]

Whish is the best power manager for WMs?(ie to control brightness, lid actions ,battery details etc and should have hybrid sleep as well) bcz that's the only thing that stops me from switching to WMs(note that xfce4 one has a weird memory leak)

[@nojus963]

Thanks.

[@etherialwell6959]

so many years have passed, but solarized color scheme never gets old for me...

[@AndreKorsak]

Hey, in the polybar settings there is the possibility of a vertical gradient, but there is no horizontal one like in tint2, is it really possible? Does everyone have the same problem under Waylan status bar?

[@fuseteam]

'most people using tiling window managers use terminal apps' _me spams surf apps_

[@zoeythebee1779]

Genuinely the main reason why im thinking of switching to linux is how pretty it is. Every time I open up my system settings in windows I vomit a little.

[@Sinnersmight]

I'm looking into Base16 for consistent theming, but I don't understand how to theme gtk2.0 from the gtkrc files provided.

[@YuraJayRJay]

Hi, thanks for the great content! Are you running Qtile under Wayland or X?

[@tokiomutex4148]

qtile has no Wayland support

[@killertigergaming6762]

@@tokiomutex4148 it does now

[@tokiomutex4148]

@@killertigergaming6762 needs more polish

[@killertigergaming6762]

@@tokiomutex4148 true

[@jmjl2]

How you created the animation of the Qtile Videos? DistroTube thanks for the video

[@spaceyfounder5040]

bspwm newbie ricer here, gonna post on unixporn like som crazy-ass dude probably in a week (hopefully)

[@viro101]

26 looked nice lol

[@dejanzabaljac6950]

Hey DT! Is there any big difference between i3wm and qtile? I am on i3 for almost two years and i don't really like changes. So if qtile is better for a mile long then i guess i will start thinking about it.

[@riseabove3082]

I'd be curious on this answer as well.

[@apostrophe07]

@@riseabove3082 qtile is easier to config then i3, both do the same thing so choose your own poison

[@TheToniz4]

There it is my rice at the thumbnail again ;)

[@daniellemerlot749]

Someone knows how to change the border width in Awesome? i can't figure it out.

[@mohammedmohammed519]

Debian Stable installed today

[@uuu12343]

I'm using window manager and ricing for the first time, currently using qtile Are there any good overall guides for beginners? I'm trying to memorise but the number of keystrokes are piling up

[@MikeyFL59]

I'd like to find the same.

[@apereirafernandez]

What's the point of using a window manager instead of a DE? I just installed Awesome and i3 just to see how much RAM would I save (I use XFCE) and they end up eating as much ram as my DE. I love keyboard shortcuts, I use them all the time, day to day I like to learn and faster ways to improve my productivity and that's why I ended interested in Window Managers. What I see is that we need to employ some time to learn how windows managers work and in the end, they end up eating as much RAM as a DE so the only improvement is that I would end up doing things faster after a lot of time with config and learn? by the way, I love your channel and your videos! thanks!

[@wojtekburzynski654]

How did you make colorful ls command? I mean not only directories and files, but permissions, size etc. as well?

[@JasonPhillips30]

the program is called: lsd It's in the standard arch repos.

[@apesevolved]

The wallpaper at the beginning looks like giygas

[@myfavouritecolorisgreen]

How to theme qt apps inside of window managers? I can theme gtk apps using lxappearance.

[@jean-baptistedelabroise5391]

I like pywal + wpgtk for color schemes

[@ReloadedK]

Just in time

[@tice2229]

I just started hacking on qtile this week. Using arch I just can’t figure out fonts. In the bar I want a battery icon but I can’t find any single fonts that have these special unicode icons. The nerd font pack is 2gb and it doesn’t give me the icon I want. Which fonts (aside from my robotomono for terminals etc) do you recommend for good unicode characters?

[@TarebossT]

Monospace

[@fuseteam]

every time he says 'sexy' eat a snickers

[@Saahil.]

can you do a ricing guide for i3 ?

[@marioschroers7318]

Using i3-gaps (considering the switch to dwm soon). How can I get rid of colored window borders or change these? Never found a setting for that.

[@marioschroers7318]

@@vuraniute9571 Thanks!

[@alpacamale2909]

what tiling window manager would you recommend me if I wanted to run programs in window mode but not want the bloat of xfce. Some people have told me AWESOME is good for this. I actually envy how debloated you guys are but I can't live without my clicks when I enter lazy mode. Some times you just want to do everything with your mouse.

[@GreyDeathVaccine]

if you get lazy, install mouse gestures :-)

[@huahuapro]

Hi DT, what’s the random stuff when you open a new terminal? Thanks!

[@DistroTube]

Look for the shell-color-scripts repository on my GitLab: gitlab.com/dwt1

[@huahuapro]

@@DistroTube thanks man!

[@prithvij9844]

I am getting an error property not allowed in alacritty.yml file. Can you help me?

[@grim.reaper]

How to get the blur effects, that's one of the configs that I can never get right. Those r/unixporn blurs are kinda hard to configure. I tried once and it broke what I had running, I got scared and never tried again. It would be great if you can do a video on getting blur 😅

[@DistroTube]

Haven't played with blur in picom in a long time. But be warned, it will turn your CPU into a thermonuclear reactor. Not something I would recommend out side of setting it up just to make a nice screenshot.

[@grim.reaper]

@@DistroTube Ohh, okay. I didn't realize that until now, realtime blur especially on windows will hit the CPU, but I am pretty sure there must be a way around it, no? Thanks for making that point.

[@quarkquark1]

@@grim.reaper I use Kawase blur from ibhagwan's picom fork. It works without a problem for me.

[@grim.reaper]

Jonathan Davies can you link me to the repo 😅 please

[@quarkquark1]

@@grim.reaper www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=github.com/ibhagwan/picom-ibhagwan-template&ved=2ahUKEwj14uCyn6PrAhUGi1wKHW4oCJkQFjAAegQIAxAB&usg=AOvVaw1zpv7vTeVmKmjbEjQxOVhA. There are a couple of similar forks. I use this one because it also lets you have rounded corners. You need to add `blur-method = "dual _kawase";` to your picom.conf. You can find all the possible options in `man picom`.

[@millankumar9245]

Hey DT, how do I get Vim to look good? You have a nice 'bar' in Vim, and the Numbered lines, and the colors. Where to I set this up? Also what is the .Xresource file? I didn't understand when I looked it up.

[@agenttank]

i asked someone somewhere for the vim bottom line thingy and he sent me this github.com/edkolev/tmuxline.vim

[@TheToniz4]

lightline for the status bar, probably dracula for the theme, and for numbers, use set number and set relativenumber

[@mr_beezlebub3985]

I think I'll start using a tiling WM. Maybe xmonad or i3

[@hexa3389]

i3 is pretty easy to work with. I started with it today.

[@oswaldorodriguez5728]

Right now I'm doing my rice. Want to post on unixporn, but idk if its good enought. Its very simple and some parts are inconsistent, but its my first try and want to receive some help. What do u guys think ?

[@slothguy_]

hotair baloon wallpaper with a rainbow and sunrise is the most boomer wallpaper ever.

[@orion55]

silly DT, u were making the terminal *less* opaque :)

[@celestialadministration]

Sum magic eye wallpapers could be cool.

[@ethansuresh2322]

Please make a podcast

[@mathematicalninja2756]

Artix Linux on runit with dwm here baby

[@mohdshahril6983]

Can you show the complete tutorial how to get the exact what you have on your video here. ?

[@yes.6411]

yes.

[@lunchdotbox]

Does this tutorial work with dwm

[@baransunger4954]

how set a keybind for rofi on qtile

[@Redyf]

How can i do that on i3wm

[@xanrerkazuki9929]

Hmm, am i the only dead soul who just likes black background and no dock at all?

[@skajam4830]

r/usabilityporn

[@antagonizingusername]

@@skajam4830 this subreddit is nothing but n00bs using bloated DE's. Absolutely disgusting.

[@Arctic740]

Yes

[@riseabove3082]

I don't see anything wrong with that. I'm pretty much using a black background too. I do have a bar at the top but I can totally see a reason not to.

[@jr_Linux]

DT id' love to have some up to date newer. Arco Awesome Tutorials. i recently moved to arco to force myself to learn more linux and because i love that you can preinstall anything and when i learned what the TWM actually is. it's a desktop and i want to learn how to customize and find some things to customize my own.

[@luffytaro689]

How did he open config file as in which shortcut did he use?

[@geisterkranker]

he has an dmenuscript for that

[@k3a]

"What's the first thing you really notice about this desktop?" The low BTC price in the top bar like, only 12k?

[@janAkaliKilo]

How to customize your terminal? Every other terminal emulator: open config file, change a setting, save. Xterm and Urxvt: we don't do that here

[@tuerda]

Yes you do. The config file for those programs is ~/.xresources

[@janAkaliKilo]

@@tuerda you can ADD setting, not change them (by default .Xresources is almost blank)

[@tuerda]

@@janAkaliKilo This is a strange distinction. If you take almost any other terminal emulator as it ships and replace the default config with a blank one, you will find absolutely no difference. You can then fill this blank file with your own, and find that it conforms to your preferences . . .

[@mdnomannoman4430]

Hi I'm Bangladesh tanks

[@andrewwigglesworth3030]

I use my monitors for programmes ... therefore I only ever see the "wallpaper" for a few moments when my computer (Debian GNU/Linux and Stumpwm) gets rebooted, which isn't all that often. And as for all these gaps between frames/windows etc. Why? I want all the space I can get for my GNU Emacs frames and buffers, why waste space with irritating glimpses of slices or edges of some background image? To me it doesn't look "great" or "cool", it just looks like a mess.

[@micaelviana]

Hey DT, what the differences between Dmenu and Dmenu-distro tube on your repository?

[@DistroTube]

Its patched for a few things. Like alpha transparency, centering, extra color options. If you need that stuff.

[@micaelviana]

@@DistroTube Now I understand, thank you

[@stevet7522]

Next time on happy fun time with DT: how to make your tilling window manager more usable and efficient. #usabilityporn

[@zweitlander874]

:)

[@sanjaythakur8883]

Which Linux operating system is this?🤔

[@larry_the]

Hey DT, what is your opinion on Luke Smith getting arrested?

[@edwinlundmark]

Huh? When? He uploaded a couple of hours ago, I haven’t seen it yet. Did he say anything about it there?

[@aymanbelhaj2853]

wait what ?!

[@phalcon23]

Ideas for a video... for us VM users.... I like setting up all my computers with so of the same apps, and such, settings and so forth. I like fish over bash etc.... Is there a way to synchronize some of this between computers when you install, and or update preferences? I'm getting fast at doing everything I want, but seems like there has to be a better way to automate some of this.

[@asswhole4195]

1

[@DistroTube]

Yep.

[@folkrav]

Congratulations, Ass Whole.

[@asswhole4195]

@@folkrav Thank you sir

[@MrJueKa]

the last 😉😎

[@oleksandrbabichuk9734]

Qtile

[@lokeshgujjar177]

hi

[@lokeshgujjar177]

@@____-gy5mq i am vegetarian

[@Desktop31]

Bitcoin on $12k lol

[@zygmuntkiller8224]

I Downloaded alacritty, and i want to modify its config file. i followed steps from alacritty's man page Configuration Alacritty searches for a configuration file at the following places in this order: $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/alacritty/alacritty.yml $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/alacritty.yml $HOME/.config/alacritty/alacritty.yml $HOME/.alacritty.yml Copy the example configuration file at /usr/share/doc/alacritty/example/alacritty.yml to one of those places and uncomment the settings you want to change. Most settings take effect as soon as you save the file. I copie that file and put in ~/.config/alacritty but editing it and saving, makes no effect. what am i doing wrong?

[@DistroTube]

If you are editing the config file, and see no changes and no error messages, then make sure you don't have a config in one of the other places it would look for a config. It's possible it created one for you and placed it in one of those locations.

[@zygmuntkiller8224]

@@DistroTube yeah but i dont know what are these directories... $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/alacritty/alacritty.yml $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/alacritty.yml

[@DistroTube]

CONFIG_HOME would usually by /home/yourname/.config/

[@thenextpoetician6328]

Folks who can't live outside their beloved terminals and terminal apps are welcome to that, but I run i3 as my daily driver because DEs compete for screen space, while TWMs cooperate in the available space, and i3 does everything I require of a TWM. It's both an ergonomic and philosophical decision. Competition separates good and evil, so DEs immediately are on my shit list, and I primarily do research with my computer, so I prefer to see what I'm looking at without obstruction because I'm a visual learner. Side note: Einstein's theory of relativity has been 100% proved incorrect. This is a plasma universe, and as the earth's magnetosphere weakens, we become increasingly susceptible to solar eruptions, which when earth-facing and on the order of an X-class flare will bring down the grid and the internet and knock us back into the stone age. Not if but when. Research that while you still can.

[@thenextpoetician6328]

@IAm Rejected Does your mommy know you're trolling?

[@fordonmekochgalenskaper5665]

Why it's need to look good, don't understand the point, only waste resources and I think I never se my wallpaper