How I Set Up My Sway Window Manager on Debian 12

Recently, I mentioned that I was switching each of my Linux installs to Debian. But what does that mean for my laptops and desktops? In this video, I'll show you the Sway window manager implementation I've been working on, and where it stands as of now. Plus, I'll show you how you can set this up for yourself!
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⏰ TIME CODES
00:00 - Intro
01:52 - Set up your own Linux server with Akamai's Connected Cloud (Sponsor)
03:12 - A tour of my Sway setup
06:47 - Required Debian packages
08:04 - Creating the required directories
09:24 - Config file overview
14:34 - Useful keyboard shortcuts
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[@RandyHanley]

You're, by far, the most open Linux pro I've seen - and you don't say things regularly like "this one is the best, or this one sucks, etc." You always show multiple ways to accomplish things which I think is great for users with various tastes. Cheers from Novi, neighbor.

[@thenargles]

I absolutely love the super clean and simple nature of this! It’s a work of art. Might have to give this a try.

[@AnalyticMinded]

Sway user here. Just a few additional tips. There's a fork called Swayfx that will let you have rounded corners, shadows, blur, etc. (though no animations as of yet). Some settings for things like idle, lockscreen, and audio can be set in Sway's main config file instead of having to create separate bash script files. There's also the tab mode for when the screen gets busy, which I personally find more pleasing to the eye than stacking. An alternative for wofi is tofi, which is great, if a bit ugly in its initial configuration. Honestly, though, since you can configure keys to open apps, I rarely open tofi to launch apps. Great video. I love that Sway is getting some exposure.

[@opfax163]

thank you

[@teenydragons1400]

Thank you for this video. This is leading me down a rabbit hole of reading about Sway and i3. I hope to set this up soon as it will sure help with some presentations I do.

[@BilatSlayer]

Nice vid🎉! Thanks for this vid cuz you give me idea on what to do when i setup my first sway wm.

[@jonathanchevallier7046]

Thank you for this presentation and this overview of your config.

[@RyanBragg84]

Thank You so much for doing this. So easy to follow along and set this up

[@Your_Degenerate]

I always liked the look of simple colored borders. I think I remember a theme like that for XFCE which is nice because I still like using a floating window manager. Custom desktops are enjoyable. Especially finding ways to add more functionality to them or just keeping it stripped down for a no nonsense workflow.

[@Romek_S]

In waybar config, down in audio section you have "/home/jay" hardcoded so it will throw an error for all non-Jays us here :D But that minor problem, everyone can easily fix it. More important is that I would like to thank you for this video as I always wanted to try tiling WM and was quite intimidated by how many WM's are in the wild and how to start customize them for own needs. And now, voila, 20 minutes and I'm ready and going. Thumb up!

[@unklebonehead]

Sway & i3 are the kings of window managers! I love them.

[@albertstrohmaier4034]

I'm really big on i3. Just came across sway for things that need Wayland. Is there a way to add visual goodies to sway? Like blur fade, rounded corners, etc? That's mostly what's holding me back. My i3 is awfully pretty.

[@greenhorngameplays5743]

I'm wondering if wayfire or sway is better for FreeBSD systems. I moved all my Linux servers to FreeBSD and now, I'm going to do the same for my desktops.

[@Roman-Pregolin]

I just got a Pinetab2 and want to save resources so I'm setting up Sway. I use a Ferris Sweep variant 34-key keyboard and was a bit worried about shortcuts for sway, but it's fine with very minor tweaking.

[@hydragyrumSC]

Curious why you wrote your own audio volume script when waybar has a built in `pulseaudio` module? It not only displays volume similarly to your script, with custom format options, but also supports changing the volume by scrolling on the module and changing the display based on whether you're using bluetooth or wired, etc.

[@nsstrails]

great video and explanation! One question (and possibly I missed it in the video): I'm using Ubuntu, and was able to initialize your environment by entering `sway` in the terminal, but it showed up within the default environment, not full-screen. How would I initiate it during system startup or otherwise as full-screen? Thanks if you take the time to answer this! I'll keep digging and try to figure it out in the meantime.

[@cynodont7391]

Here are font tips for Waybar. It is possible to display Emojis in texts if you have the proper fonts installed. For example, I am using Symbola for the monochrome emojis and Noto Color Emoji for the colored ones. I also have the Hack Nerd Font, a variation of the Hack monospace font with a few thousands additional symbols (See the Nerd Fonts project). The tricky part is to insert those special characters in the waybar config file. For the Nerd fonts, the additional characters are in the unicode range 0xf000 - 0xffff so I it is possible to use escape sequences in strings (e.g. "\uf7ca"). Emojis characters are a bit more problematic because they are in the unicode range 0x10000-0x1ffff and waybar has no syntax to represent them. So you will need an editor that can handle characters in that range (e.g. Emacs). The unicode variation selectors can be used to select between the monochrome and the color version of an emoji (if you have both installed). For example, "🔊\uFE0E" displays the monochrome speaker from Symbola and "🔊\uFE0E" the colored icon from Noto Color Emoji.

[@adjusted-bunny]

I have been on Debian/Trixie with sway, too.

[@Adam-mx8fp]

how do you change your screen brightness with this setup?

[@albertstrohmaier4034]

I'm really big on i3. Just came across sway for things that need Wayland. Is there a way to add visual goodies to sway? Like blur fade, rounded corners, etc? That's mostly what's holding me back. My i3 is awfully pretty.

[@maximmk6446]

There is a fork of Sway called Swayfx, you may have a look into that

[@gerryhoekema2561]

How do you exit from the wofi launcher once it’s on the screen? I really like your videos!

[@lsdowdle]

If I wanted to use sway (KDE Plasma user here), I'd probably use the Fedora SWAY spin or their immutable sway version named Sericea.

[@enriquegomez2581]

Will this config also work on Ubuntu?

[@alonso0188]

Thank you manito.

[@ogis]

Nice video. By the way, sway works very well with Nvidia open source video driver.

[@Whoknowsthatman]

Thank you.

[@LearnLinuxTV]

You're welcome!

[@raughboy188]

I am gonna build my desktop on sway and a dock so i don't need to waste my nerves on dealing with broken extensions, buggy kde plasma and so on. I am however gonna switch over to hyprland once trixie is out as a stable version.

[@CuttinEJ]

I would be more interested in seeing how to setup Hyprland on a laptop with Nvidia.

[@edbeckerich3737]

Your sway config file missing a back slash, it gave me errors until I found that.. At the end of this paragraph # Screen locking (automatic, with a timeout) set $lock swaylock -c 550000 exec swayidle -w \ timeout 600 $lock \ timeout 570 'swaymsg "output * dpms off"' \ resume 'swaymsg "output * dpms on"' \ before-sleep $lock

[@SouthFacedWindows]

I do want to try this out and then I wonder why I would pain myself when there is KDE and Cinnamon I am already used to!

[@nintendowiids12]

I mostly mess around with Sway for fun every once in a while. Setting it up to bring the perfect workflow for your usecase is way too time consuming lol.

[@helloimatapir]

The tiling manager workflow is very fast and efficient once you get used to it. If you are already familiar with Vim bindings, it's not hard to jump in.

[@ChaiBronz]

why stacked instead of tabbed tho?

[@nikolaus2688]

My only problem with Sway is, that I can't use proprietary Nvidia drivers for the time being. But hey, i3 is nice too, and easy on resources.

[@DarthDweeb]

What do you need to do to get NVIDIA cards to work? INPUT. Need INPUT.

[@mattvisaggio]

In all seriousness, what advantage does not using a desktop environment offer personally? Is it reduced clutter? Faster working? I just don't understand the appeal yet, but I'm still learning

[@Whoknowsthatman]

Is a Linux super user thing,

[@alexstone691]

IMO customizability as you basically create a desktop from parts

[@alionicle]

Late here, but it just gets rid of being distracted on having the home/desktop directory with too many elements, in "enables" productivity as in only enabling services that you need and opening specific programs/apps that you intend to work with, also multiple desktops Some of those functionalities may be enabled on other OS's (win, mac, even other linux desktop's managers) but WM let's you decide on what to operate, which function to add or get rid off, basically personalization

[@tmendoza6]

your the man, the myth ,you are legend!

[@puppy_BYTE]

Jay, since debian 12 (stable) does not support wayland does this work on 12?. debian 13 (testing) I believe support wayland...

[@ChaiBronz]

but Debian 12 (stable) supports wayland...

[@alexstone691]

Im using wayland on debian 12

[@tmendoza6]

Not as sexy as hyprland but it is a tank!

[@technicalthug]

You mentioned many moons ago that you were getting treatment for ADHD. How is your medication/treatment and original symptoms now?

[@michaelplaczek9385]

Cries in Nvidia

[@Aoitori365]

for nvidia hyprland seems to be better than sway

[@kencreten7308]

I hadn't heard of it, but I... swayed in this direction.... Sorry.

[@questofanswers]

2 days of using and ricing debian ..... man I don't want TWM but well would hurt to watch

[@Mangamaskinen]

I am on Debian 12 Bookworm too and I tried using Sway but the screen is all black whenever I go into it from SDDM. Whenever I run sway in KDE, it opens up but I cannot interact with it and the following errors are printed into the terminal: [wlr] [types/wlr_drm_lease_v1.c:705] No DRM backend supplied, failed to create wlr_drm_lease_v1_manager 00:00:00.071 [wlr] [xwayland/sockets.c:63] Failed to bind socket @/tmp/.X11-unix/X0: Address already in use Any solutions to this?