How I Set Up My Sway Window Manager on Debian 12

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.

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.

your the man, the myth ,you are legend!

My only problem with Sway is, that I need proprietary Nvidia drivers for the time being. But hey, i3 is nice too, and easy on resources.

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

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

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

Never thought I would switch away from a desktop environment like gnome/kde but sway converted me and I’ll never go back.

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!

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

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.

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

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.

for nvidia hyprland seems to be better than sway

Thank you manito.

Cries in Nvidia

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.

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

why stacked instead of tabbed tho?

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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!

Sway and i3 are awesome and they where my port drugs to word of tiling window managers. I installed Sway a week ago because I wanted switch to Wayland and it was very painless process.

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

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.