river (Wayland compositor)

River (Wayland compositor)

River is a tiling Wayland compositor focused on simplicity and familiarity. It uses dynamic tiling to automatically arrange windows and supports keyboard shortcuts for navigation. River aims to provide a lightweight and customizable desktop experience.
river (Wayland compositor) image
wayland compositor tiling dynamic-tiling keyboard-shortcuts lightweight customizable

River: Tiling Wayland Compositor

River is a tiling Wayland compositor focused on simplicity and familiarity. It uses dynamic tiling to automatically arrange windows and supports keyboard shortcuts for navigation. River aims to provide a lightweight and customizable desktop experience.

What is River (Wayland compositor)?

River is a dynamic tiling Wayland compositor designed to provide a simple yet powerful desktop environment. Some key features of River include:

  • Automatic window tiling - Windows are arranged automatically to make optimal use of screen space. Common layouts like monocle and bsp are supported.
  • Keyboard-driven workflow - Customizable shortcuts for window navigation, resizing, minimizing etc. Allows efficient window management without needing a mouse.
  • Minimal and customizable - River is lightweight with relatively few dependencies. The UI and shortcuts can be modified by the user to suit their preferences.
  • Wayland support - As a Wayland compositor instead of X11, River can provide improved security and newer graphical capabilities.
  • Dynamic configuration - Settings like fonts, themes, window gaps etc. can be changed on-the-fly without restarting River.

River focuses mainly on window tiling management rather than being a full-fledged desktop environment. For users who want efficient use of screen space and keyboard-focused window control, River provides a fast and customizable Wayland option.

River (Wayland compositor) Features

Features

  1. Dynamic tiling
  2. Automatic window arrangement
  3. Keyboard shortcuts for navigation
  4. Lightweight
  5. Customizable

Pricing

  • Open Source

Pros

Simple and easy to use

Familiar workflow for users coming from other tiling window managers

Good performance due to lightweight design

Highly customizable

Cons

Limited configuration options compared to more complex tiling window managers

Less flexible tiling algorithms than some alternatives

Relatively new project so may have bugs


The Best River (Wayland compositor) Alternatives

Top Gaming Software and Compositing Window Managers and other similar apps like River (Wayland compositor)

Here are some alternatives to River (Wayland compositor):

Suggest an alternative ❐

Sway icon

Sway

Sway is a digital storytelling app developed by Microsoft as part of the Microsoft Office family of products. It allows users to create interactive reports, presentations, personal stories, newsletters, training modules and more using a simple drag and drop interface.One of the key features of Sway is its built-in design...
Sway image
Hyprland icon

Hyprland

Hyprland is a fast, lightweight and customizable Wayland compositor geared towards power users. It features dynamic tiling, allowing windows to be arranged efficiently while also supporting floating and fullscreen modes. Configuration is done mainly through YAML files, providing fine-grained control over most aspects of the compositor.Some key features of Hyprland...
Hyprland image
Xmonad icon

Xmonad

Xmonad is a highly configurable and customizable tiling window manager for Linux and other Unix-like operating systems. It is written and configured in Haskell, which allows advanced users to easily modify and extend its functionality.Some of the key features of Xmonad include:Dynamic tiling - It automatically arranges windows in a...
Xmonad image
Yabai icon

Yabai

Yabai is an open-source, lightweight tiling window manager for macOS that is designed to provide an efficient and customizable workflow for power users. It brings many of the advanced window management features found in tiling window managers for Linux, like i3 and bspwm, to macOS.Some of the key features of...
Yabai image
Qtile icon

Qtile

Qtile is a dynamic tiling window manager for Linux that is designed to be simple, lightweight, and extensible. It is written in Python and uses OpenGL for rendering. Some key features of Qtile include:Customizable layouts and workflows - Qtile supports floating, monocle, max, grid, spiral, and other layouts. You can...
Qtile image
StumpWM icon

StumpWM

StumpWM is an advanced, keyboard-driven tiling window manager for Linux and BSD systems. It dynamically organizes windows on the screen into a customizable tiling layout, where windows take up the entire screen space with no overlapping or wasted space.Some key features of StumpWM include:Keyboard-driven navigation and window management with customizable...
StumpWM image