Sway 1.9 Released: Improved Performance and New Features

A new release of Sway 1.9 is now available.

Sway is a Wayland-based tiling window manager heavily inspired by i3. It is packed with similar functionality and configuration options, allowing users to efficiently manage their desktops using keyboard shortcuts. Unlike traditional window managers that rely on dragging windows around, Sway automatically arranges windows in a logical grid, maximizing screen space and promoting focused workflows.

After 14 months of development, version 1.9 of the popular tiling window manager – Sway has been released, bringing with it a host of exciting new features and performance improvements.

Here is a quick round up of the features for you.

What’s New in Sway 1.9?

This latest release focuses on enhancing performance and introducing several user-centric features:

Performance Boost: Sway 1.9 leverages the new rendering API in the underlying wlroots library, resulting in smoother and more responsive window management.
Enhanced Wayland Protocol Support: Sway now supports several new Wayland protocols introduced in wlroots 0.17, including:
- content-type-v1: Improved handling of displayed content information.
- xwayland-shell-v1: Streamlined integration with X11 applications.
- wp-fractional-scale-v1: Fine-grained control over window scaling.
- security-context-v1: Enhanced security features for applications.
- cursor-shape-v1: Customization options for the cursor appearance.
Improved xdg-activation-v1 Support: This update brings better workspace tracking and multi-seat capabilities, facilitating seamless focus management across different workspaces and displays.
Configuration Flexibility: A new option allows users to disable the primary clipboard, catering to specific workflows.
Granular Input Device Control: Sway 1.9 introduces new commands for adjusting libinput settings, including rotation angle and scroll button behaviour, addressing potential issues with touchpads and mice.
Tablet Support Boost: Users can now leverage tablet buttons for resizing floating windows, further streamlining their workflow.
IPC Enhancements: The addition of output event support to IPC simplifies communication between Sway and other applications.
Default Menu Revamp: The wmenu project takes over as the default menu application, offering a potentially more user-friendly experience.
Streamlined Protocol Support: Sway discontinues support for the KDE-specific idle protocol, opting for the standard Wayland protocol idle-notify-v1 for broader compatibility.

Overall, Sway 1.9 represents a significant step forward for the tiling window manager, offering improved performance, enhanced features, and greater customization options.

You can download the source from this page (GitHub).

Arch Linux users can install this version within a week or so from the official “extra” repo. As of publishing this, Sway 1.9 is in “extra-testing” repo.

If you are using Fedora or EndeavourOS with Sway flavour, you should be getting this version in the next update.

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