Sway
Sway (contracted from SirCmpwn's Wayland compositor [1]) is a compositor for Wayland designed to be fully compatible with i3. According to the official website:
- Sway is a tiling Wayland compositor and a drop-in replacement for the i3 window manager for X11. It works with your existing i3 configuration and supports most of i3's features, plus a few extras.
If you are interested in eye-candy, swayfxAUR exists as a fork of sway with popular eye-candy effects.
Installation
Sway can be installed with the sway package. The development version can be installed using sway-gitAUR. It is advisable to always update wlroots when you update sway, due to tight dependencies.
--unsupported-gpu.You may also install swaylock, swayidle, and swaybg to lock your screen, set up an idle manager, and set wallpapers, respectively. Additionally, AUR provides development versions of these packages under the names swaylock-gitAUR, swayidle-gitAUR, and swaybg-gitAUR. These packages offer the latest features and updates from the Git repositories of their respective projects.
The default application launcher is wmenu (but the default configuration still relies on dmenu_path provided by dmenu) and the default terminal emulator is foot. Before starting sway it is advisable to either install them or set a new launcher and terminal in the configuration. For other Wayland-compatible version of some useful i3 packages you can look the migration guide on the sway wiki.
Starting
Before Sway can be started, it needs access to your hardware devices such as your keyboard, mouse, and graphics card. The collection of these hardware devices is called a seat, as mentioned in sd-login(3).
On Arch Linux, Sway can get access to your seat using either
- systemd-logind(8) and polkit, or
- seatd, which will be installed alongside Sway as a dependency of wlroots
If polkit is already installed on your system, Sway should automatically get access to your seat.
Alternatively, if polkit is not installed on your system and you want to use seatd instead, add yourself to the seat user group and enable/start seatd.service, re-log and pick one of the following methods to start Sway.
Manually
To start Sway, simply type sway in the Linux console.
Automatically on TTY login
Similarly to X, Sway can be started by adding the following to your shell initialization file (see Command-line shell#Login shell):
if [ -z "$WAYLAND_DISPLAY" ] && [ -n "$XDG_VTNR" ] && [ "$XDG_VTNR" -eq 1 ] ; then
exec sway
fi
For more details, see Xinit#Autostart X at login
From a display manager
The sway session is located at /usr/share/wayland-sessions/sway.desktop. It is automatically recognized by modern display managers like GDM and SDDM.
It is also possible to start sway as a systemd user service through the display manager.
Also you can use text-based session manager, see Display manager#Console.
Configuration
If you already use i3, you may copy your i3 configuration to ~/.config/sway/config and it should work out of the box. Otherwise, copy the sample configuration file located at /etc/sway/config to ~/.config/sway/config. See sway(5) for information on the configuration.
include /etc/sway/config.d/* in order to apply configuration snippets from drop-in files. The sway package provides the 50-systemd-user.conf drop-in file, which imports several environment variables into the systemd user session and dbus. This is required for several applications such as xdg-desktop-portal-wlr.Keymap
By default, sway starts with the US QWERTY keymap. To configure per-input:
~/.config/sway/config
input * {
xkb_layout "us,de,ru"
xkb_variant "colemak,,typewriter"
xkb_options "grp:win_space_toggle"
}
input <identifier> xkb_model "pc101"
More details are available in xkeyboard-config(7) and sway-input(5).
The keymap can also be configured using environment variables (XKB_DEFAULT_LAYOUT, XKB_DEFAULT_VARIANT, etc.) when starting sway. The configuration options take precedence over environment variables.
Typematic delay and rate
To change typematic delay and rate, you can add the following lines to your input section:
~/.config/sway/config
input <identifier> repeat_delay 300 input <identifier> repeat_rate 30
Statusbar
Sway ships with a default status bar in the form of swaybar which runs in a pure Wayland environment. swaybar can call a shell script or other program to show information in the status bar. See sway-bar(5) and swaybar-protocol(7) for details.
Installing i3status is an option to obtain a practical, default status bar under Wayland. All you have to do is add the following snippet at the end of your sway config:
~/.config/sway/config
bar {
status_command i3status
}
If you want to enable colored output for i3status, you need to adjust the following part in the i3status configuration:
~/.config/i3status/config
general {
colors = true
interval = 5
}
Outputs
The output command in sway allows for the detailed configuration of different display outputs. This includes settings for wallpaper, scale factor, position, and more. You can combine multiple output commands into one line, as needed.
~/.config/sway/config
output HDMI-A-1 mode 1920x1080 pos 1920 0 bg ~/wallpaper.png stretch
Outputs can be specifically addressed by employing their designated output names, by universally matching all outputs with "*", or through utilizing the distinct names of the displays (a string consisting of the make, model and serial). For example:
~/.config/sway/config
output "Some Company ABC123 0x00000000" pos 1920 0
You can get a list of output names and additional information using the command:
$ swaymsg -t get_outputs
For a deeper dive into configurations and additional options, consult sway-output(5).
Wallpaper
The displaying of a wallpaper in sway is handled by a dedicated program. The simplest example is swaybg, which sway can manage directly. swaybg must be installed if needed in order to run the output ... bg command.
The following line, which can be included anywhere in sway's configuration file, sets a background image on all displays:
~/.config/sway/config
output "*" bg /path/to/image fill
Of course /path/to/image should be replaced with the path to an existing image file.
Solid colors may be set as follows:
output * bg #000000 solid_color
See the Sway wiki for additional tools and utilities for wallpaper management.
HiDPI
Automatic
Sway automatically applies integer scaling by default. If the following conditions hold: [3]
- The screen provides valid physical dimension information via EDID.
- Both dimensions have a ratio of
(resolution dimension in pixels) / (physical dimension in inches)(DPI) of at least 192. - The screen resolution has a height of at least 1200px.
then Sway will use 2x scaling. Some devices, such as the Framework Laptop 16, have a DPI that is close to (but not quite) 192. In these cases, you may want to manually configure fractional scaling.
Manual
Set your displays scale factor with the output command in your configuration file. The scale factor can be fractional, but it is usually 2 for HiDPI screens.
~/.config/sway/config
output <name> scale <factor>
You can find your display name with the following command:
$ swaymsg -t get_outputs
Input devices
It is possible to tweak specific input device configurations. For example, to enable tap-to-click and natural scrolling for all touchpads:
~/.config/sway/config
input type:touchpad {
tap enabled
natural_scroll enabled
}
To set the configuration for a particular touchpad, use swaymsg -t get_inputs to obtain a device identifier and use it instead of type:touchpad.
swaymsg -t get_inputs command may contain "\" to escape symbols like "/" (e.g. "2:14:ETPS\/2_Elantech_Touchpad"). These need to be removed.More documentation and options like acceleration profiles or disabling input entirely can be found in sway-input(5).
If you use a graphics tablet, see Graphics tablet#Sway.
Touch display mapping
Touch input targets for touch displays used in a multi-display environment can be mapped to only that touch display.
~/.config/sway/config
set $display1 "Dell Inc. DELL P2414H VHVTW542165L" set $display2 "Dell Inc. DELL P2418HT MYDM775F152L" set $display2-touch "8146:24835:Melfas_LGD_AIT_Touch_Controller" input $display2-touch map_to_output $display2
Custom keybindings
Special keys on your keyboard can be used to execute commands, for example to control volume, monitor brightness or media players:
~/.config/sway/config
bindsym XF86AudioRaiseVolume exec pactl set-sink-volume @DEFAULT_SINK@ +5% bindsym XF86AudioLowerVolume exec pactl set-sink-volume @DEFAULT_SINK@ -5% bindsym XF86AudioMute exec pactl set-sink-mute @DEFAULT_SINK@ toggle bindsym XF86AudioMicMute exec pactl set-source-mute @DEFAULT_SOURCE@ toggle bindsym XF86MonBrightnessDown exec brightnessctl set 5%- bindsym XF86MonBrightnessUp exec brightnessctl set 5%+ bindsym XF86AudioPlay exec playerctl play-pause bindsym XF86AudioNext exec playerctl next bindsym XF86AudioPrev exec playerctl previous bindsym XF86Search exec bemenu-run
For details and alternative utilities, see:
- PulseAudio#Keyboard volume control,
- WirePlumber#Keyboard volume control,
- ALSA#Keyboard volume control,
- Backlight#Backlight utilities,
- MPRIS.
To allow a keybinding to be executed while the lockscreen is active add the --locked parameter to bindsym.
bindsym --locked XF86AudioPlay exec playerctl play-pause
Graphical indicator bars
It is often desirable to have the current level of some percentage-valued setting, such as brightness or volume, be indicated by a graphical bar when it is adjusted. A good option for providing this facility in Sway is wob (alternatively wob-gitAUR), which provides a subset of the functionality of the popular X tool xobAUR but as a native Wayland utility implementing the layer-shell protocol. See the project website for usage examples.
Overview of workspaces
If you are using a lot of workspaces with a lot of windows and cannot follow what is where any more, then sovAUR can come in handy. It is an overlay that shows schemas for all workspaces to make navigation in sway easier. It shows program names, window titles, supports multi-output setup. See the project page for more information.
Idle
Sway has a dedicated idle management daemon named swayidle to handle idling sessions. There are different ways to start and parameterize the daemon. The simplest is to use the configuration of sway itself. swayidle accepts a multitude of arguments to configure events like timeout (a.k.a. idling), resume (resume from sleep), before-sleep etc. See swayidle(1) for more details and further explanations of the events. Each event can then be assigned an action. To assign multiple actions to an event simply repeat the trigger.
The following instructs swayidle to lock the screen after 30 minutes and turn it off five seconds after:
~/.config/sway/config
exec swayidle -w \ timeout 1800 'swaylock -f' \ timeout 1805 'swaymsg "output * power off"' \ resume 'swaymsg "output * power on"'
To turn off a locked screen much sooner e.g. after 10 seconds, grep the process list for your locking manager and execute swaymsg "output * power off" accordingly like so:
timeout 10 'if pgrep -x swaylock; then swaymsg "output * power off"; fi'
In order to lock the screen before suspending and pause any playing media, append the following instruction to the swayidle command:
before-sleep 'playerctl pause; swaylock'
If you do not want swaylock to trigger while videos are playing in Firefox, Chrome or VLC, you can use idlehack-gitAUR to listen for dbus screensaver inhibit requests and invoke swayidle-inhibit. Programs like Firefox, Chrome and VLC emit these events to prevent the system from going idle.
Floating windows
To enable floating windows or window assignments, open the application and then use the app_id, the class, the instance and the title attributes to enable floating windows/window assignments. The following command will list the properties of all the open windows.
$ swaymsg -t get_tree
To get only the app_id's of all open windows use:
$ swaymsg -t get_tree | grep "app_id"
To get the app_id of the focused window use:
$ swaymsg -t get_tree | jq -r '..|try select(.focused == true)'
X11 windows do not have an app_id property. However, you can use attributes like class, window_type, window_role and/or the instance to match them. You can search the output of swaymsg -t get_tree and create fine grained rules for your windows.
~/.config/sway/config
for_window [app_id="galculator"] floating enable for_window [window_type="dialog"] floating enable for_window [window_role="dialog"] floating enable assign [class="firefox"] -> 3 assign [class="^Urxvt$" instance="^htop$"] -> 9
This is similar to using xorg-xprop to find the class or wm_name attributes in X11.
When using multiple monitors, the floating scratchpad window can get too large, covering more than one monitor. This command centers and resizes the floating window to 80% of the current monitor's size:
$ swaymsg move position center; swaymsg resize set 80ppt 80ppt
Clipboard
By default, the clipboard is emptied whenever a window is closed. This can be a surprising default behaviour.
A "clipboard manager" must be installed to make the clipboard's content shared amongst windows.
One example of a clipboard manager, designed for Wayland, is clipman, which can be installed from clipmanAUR or clipman-gitAUR.
To start clipman with Sway, add the following line to your configuration file:
~/.config/sway/config
exec wl-paste -t text --watch clipman store --no-persist
Xresources
Copy ~/.Xresources to ~/.Xdefaults to use them in Sway.
Xwayland
See Wayland#Xwayland for details and an overview of available packages.
The use of Xwayland is enabled by default.
If you would like to disable Xwayland entirely and run a "pure" Wayland session, set the following to deactivate the use of Xwayland:
~/.config/sway/config
xwayland disable
If you would like to be able to tell at a glance which windows are using Xwayland, set the following:
~/.config/sway/config
for_window [shell="xwayland"] title_format "[XWayland] %title"
Use another wlroots renderer
You can use another wlroots renderer by specifying the WLR_RENDERER environment variable. The list of available ones is on the wlroots documentation. You may need to have vulkan-validation-layers installed for the vulkan renderer, otherwise sway might fail to start.
Autostart
See i3#Autostart, adjusting the configuration file name for sway.
Tips and tricks
Initially enable CapsLock/NumLock
By default, sway initially disables the CapsLock and NumLock keys on startup. To instead enable them on startup, set the xkb_capslock and/or xkb_numlock input configurations to enable for your keyboards. For example, to do so on all keyboards, add the following lines to your sway configuration:
~/.config/sway/config
input type:keyboard xkb_capslock enabled input type:keyboard xkb_numlock enabled
In either case, the CapsLock and NumLock keys may be toggled by pressing the relevant keys on a keyboard.
Current keyboard layout
The current keyboard layout can be retrieved as follows, where kbd_identifier needs to be replaced with your keyboard's identifier:
$ swaymsg -t get_inputs | jq -r '.[] | select(.identifier == "kbd_identifier") | .xkb_active_layout_name'
Compose key
To set up PrintScreen as the compose key:
$ swaymsg 'input * xkb_options compose:prsc'
The available key combinations can be looked up as shown in Xorg/Keyboard configuration#Configuring compose key. The combinations for the compose key can also be configured in the XCompose file. Applications need to be restarted for this change to take effect.
Backlight toggle
To turn off (and on) your displays with a key (e.g. Pause) bind the following script in your Sway config:
#!/bin/sh
read lcd < /tmp/lcd
if [ "$lcd" -eq "0" ]; then
swaymsg "output * power on"
echo 1 > /tmp/lcd
else
swaymsg "output * power off"
echo 0 > /tmp/lcd
fi
Or you can use the toggle option directly, but you need to specify an output explicitly if you have multiple monitors:
$ swaymsg "output output_name power toggle"
Screen capture and screen sharing
Color temperature adjustment
See Backlight#Wayland.
Color profile
It is possible to use a color profile by adding the following line to your config file:
~/.config/sway/config
output * color_profile icc /path/to/your/color_profile.icc
Control swaynag with the keyboard
Swaynag, the default warning/prompt program shipped with sway, only supports user interaction with the mouse. A helper program such as swaynagmodeAUR may be used to enable interaction via keyboard shortcuts.
Swaynagmode works by first launching swaynag, then listening for signals which trigger actions such as selecting the next button, dismissing the prompt, or accepting the selected button. These signals are sent by launching another instance of the swaynagmode script itself with a control argument, such as swaynagmode --select right or swaynagmode --confirm.
Swaynagmode by default triggers the sway mode nag upon initialization, followed by default on exit. This makes it easy to define keybindings in your sway configuration:
~/.config/sway/config
set $nag exec swaynagmode
mode "nag" {
bindsym {
Ctrl+d mode "default"
Ctrl+c $nag --exit
q $nag --exit
Escape $nag --exit
Return $nag --confirm
Tab $nag --select prev
Shift+Tab $nag --select next
Left $nag --select next
Right $nag --select prev
Up $nag --select next
Down $nag --select prev
}
}
Note that, beginning in sway version 1.2, mode names are case-sensitive.
You can configure sway to use swaynagmode with the configuration command swaynag_command swaynagmode.
Change cursor theme and size
To set the cursor theme and size:
~/.config/sway/config
seat seat0 xcursor_theme my_cursor_theme my_cursor_size
Where my_cursor_theme can be set to or replaced by a specific value like default, Adwaita or Simple-and-Soft, and my_cursor_size a value like 48.
You can inspect their values with echo $XCURSOR_SIZE and echo $XCURSOR_THEME.
Note that you need to restart the application to see the changes.
$XCURSOR_SIZE and $XCURSOR_THEME.Manage Sway-specific daemons with systemd
Systemd provides a graphical-session.target which is a user unit which is active whenever any graphical session is running, whether Xorg or Wayland. User services which should run in all graphical environments can be bound to that target. It also allows for a window-manager-specific target to be bound to graphical-session.target to start and stop services which should run only under that window manager. See systemd.special(7)
Users may want to start some services/daemons (such as swayidle or kanshi) only when the current window manager is Sway, and they may also want these services to stop when Sway stops. Additionally, users who are running systemd-oomd.service(8) may want to have the services be in separate cgroups so that a single memory-hungry service does not take down the whole Sway session (see the Fedora bug report).
Some or all of this functionality is provided by Arch Sway packages. For example, both sway and sway-gitAUR provide a 50-systemd-user.conf drop-in file (see #Configuration).
If you intend to provide functionality using the roll-your-own method described below or by using a specialist package such as sway-systemd-gitAUR, sway-services-gitAUR or uwsmAUR, you should consider removing files that provide the same functionality.
This functionality can be provided on a roll-your-own basis by creating a sway-session.target and let those daemons/services wanted by sway-session.target. This systemd target should be a user target (see systemd/User). For example:
~/.config/systemd/user/sway-session.target
[Unit] Description=Sway compositor session Documentation=man:systemd.special BindsTo=graphical-session.target Wants=graphical-session-pre.target After=graphical-session-pre.target
Then, add the following line to Sway's configuration file (for example, append the line to ~/.config/sway/config, or add a new file to /etc/sway/config.d/):
~/.config/sway/config
... ... ... exec_always systemctl --user start sway-session.target
With the above line in the configuration file, whenever Sway starts, it also activates sway-session.target.
Finally, link the desired services to sway-session.target. For example, adding a kanshi (or kanshi-gitAUR) service:
~/.config/systemd/user/kanshi.service
[Unit] Description=Dynamic output configuration for Wayland compositors Documentation=https://sr.ht/~emersion/kanshi BindsTo=sway-session.target [Service] Type=simple ExecStart=/usr/bin/kanshi [Install] WantedBy=sway-session.target
When this user unit is enabled, it is only activated when Sway is running and deactivated when Sway stops.
The creation of the sway-session.target file and the importing of the environment can also be accomplished by installing sway-systemd-gitAUR. In addition to separating services into cgroups, sway-systemd also places each GUI application in its own cgroup. This enables imposition of per-cgroup resource constraints on individual application. See the sway-systemd README. Alternatively, a more comprehensive solution is provided by uwsmAUR.
Change screen resolution after start
You can use the graphical programs wdisplaysAUR, swayrandrAUR or the terminal program wlr-randr to change the resolution, rotate and arrange displays or set the scaling factor.
Create headless outputs
Create outputs not related to a physical video interface, HEADLESS-1, HEADLESS-2, etc.:
$ swaymsg create_output
Print a description of the new output:
$ swaymsg -pt get_outputs | grep -A 10 HEADLESS
Configure the new output with the output command, for example:
~/.config/sway/config
output HEADLESS-1 {
pos 1920,0
mode 1280x720@75Hz
}
Change modifier to CapsLock and keep Super
To change the modifier key to CapsLock and keep the Super key functional on a US keyboard layout, create ~/.config/xkb/symbols/custom with contents
~/.config/xkb/symbols/custom
xkb_symbols "basic" {
include "us"
name[Group1]= "English (US Custom)";
key <CAPS> { [ Hyper_L ] };
modifier_map Mod4 { Hyper_L };
key <LWIN> { [ Super_L ] };
modifier_map Mod5 { Super_L };
};
For other languages, edit the second and third lines. Then include this keyboard layout in your sway config near the top of the file:
~/.config/sway/config
input * xkb_layout custom set $mod Mod4 set $super Mod5
Access headless Sway session remotely using VNC
The following code can, for example, be run over SSH to start a headless Sway session and access it remotely over VNC.
wayvnc is a VNC server for wlroots-based Wayland compositors and can serve a headless Sway session.
Start a headless Sway session by setting WLR_BACKENDS to headless and (optionally) WLR_LIBINPUT_NO_DEVICES to 1 (see the FAQ of wayvnc):
$ WLR_BACKENDS=headless WLR_LIBINPUT_NO_DEVICES=1 sway
& to the end of the command to run it in the background.Now, run wayvnc to serve the VNC server:
$ WAYLAND_DISPLAY=wayland-1 wayvnc
man wayvnc). You might want to consider forwarding the port as described in OpenSSH#Forwarding other ports. By default, wayvnc uses no encryption and no authentication!Troubleshooting
Application launchers
dmenu, and rofi function relatively well in Sway, but all run under Xwayland and suffer from the same issue where they can become unresponsive if the cursor is moved to a native Wayland window. The reason for this issue is that Wayland clients/windows do not have access to input devices unless they have focus of the screen. The Xwayland server is itself a client to the Wayland compositor, so one of its Xwayland clients must have focus for it to access user input. However, once one of its clients has focus, it can gather input and make it available to all Xwayland clients through the X11 protocol. Hence, moving the cursor to an Xwayland window and pressing Escape should fix the issue, and sometimes running pkill does too.
bemenu is a native Wayland dmenu replacement. Both can optionally be combined with j4-dmenu-desktop to provide a Wayland-native combination for launching desktop files (as i3-dmenu-desktop does). For example:
j4-dmenu-desktop --dmenu='bemenu -i --nb "#3f3f3f" --nf "#dcdccc" --fn "pango:DejaVu Sans Mono 12"' --term='termite'
You may need to set BEMENU_BACKEND environment variable to "wayland" if you choose not to disable Xwayland.
You can also build your own with a floating terminal and fzf as discussed in a GitHub issue.
Also krunner binary provided by plasma-workspace package can serve as launcher, offering both Xwayland and native Wayland support.
rofi-wayland is a fork of rofi that works in Wayland and also has an -x11 flag if you need to launch it in an X11 session.
wofi is a command launcher, that provides some of the same features as rofi but running under Wayland. wofi lacks some features from rofi like an SSH mode and a window-switching mode. It is based on wlroots library and use GTK3 for rendering. It works pretty well with sway.
fuzzel is an application launcher for wlroots based Wayland compositors, similar to rofi's drun mode.
Virtualization
Sway works with both VirtualBox and VMware ESXi.
For Sway to work in QEMU, QEMU must be started with -vga qxl. See also QEMU#qxl.
Unable to start Sway from tty
For ESXi, you need to enable 3D support under the Hardware Configuration > Video card settings. See also VMware#Enable 3D graphics on Intel, Optimus and AMD.
No visible cursor
When using certain graphics drivers (e.g. the VMSVGA graphics controller or the proprietary NVIDIA driver), the cursor is invisible. This can be fixed by using software cursors as discussed in [4]:
$ export WLR_NO_HARDWARE_CURSORS=1
Sway socket not detected
Using a swaymsg argument, such as swaymsg -t get_outputs, will sometimes return the message:
sway socket not detected. ERROR: Unable to connect to
when run inside a terminal multiplexer (such as GNU Screen or tmux). This means swaymsg could not connect to the socket provided in your SWAYSOCK.
To view what the current value of SWAYSOCK is, type:
$ env | grep -F "SWAYSOCK"
SWAYSOCK=/run/user/1000/sway-ipc.1000.4981.sock
To work around this problem, you may try attaching to a socket based on the running sway process:
$ export SWAYSOCK=/run/user/$(id -u)/sway-ipc.$(id -u).$(pgrep -x sway).sock
To avoid this error, run the command outside of a multiplexer.
Failed to connect to a Wayland server
Tmux creates local environment variables for each session (to see them type: tmux show-environment). Therefore, if you re-attach to a previous tmux session with tmux-resurrect or tmux-continuum, or your tmux server runs before sway starts, the environment variables are outdated.
You can use update-environment to instruct tmux to update them whenever you attach to the session by adding the following to your .tmux.conf:
set-option -g update-environment "DISPLAY WAYLAND_DISPLAY SWAYSOCK SSH_AUTH_SOCK"
Unable to retrieve socket path
Requesting messages from swaymsg -t on a tty may return the following message:
Unable to retrieve socket path
SWAYSOCK environment variable is set after launching Sway, therefore a workaround to this error is to request swaymsg -t [message] in a terminal inside Sway.
Keybindings and keyboard layouts
By default, if you are using more than one keyboard layout, e.g. input * xkb_layout "us,ru", bindings may become broken when you switch on some secondary layout.
Thanks to https://github.com/swaywm/sway/pull/3058, all you need is to add --to-code key to sensitive bindsym lines like this:
bindsym --to-code {
$mod+$left focus left
$mod+$down focus down
$mod+$up focus up
$mod+$right focus right
}
Alternatively you can create a variable set $mybind bindsym --to-code and then replace all instances of bindsym with $mybind like so: $mybind $mod+w thing
Java applications
Some Java-based applications will display blank screen when opened, for example any JetBrains editor such as IntelliJ, CLion, or PyCharm. To mitigate this, the application can be started with the _JAVA_AWT_WM_NONREPARENTING environment variable set to 1.
If you start the application from a launcher like rofi or dmenu, you might want to modify the application desktop entry as shown in Desktop entries#Modify environment variables.
Some issues with Java applications have been fixed in OpenJDK 11 and Sway 1.5. However, certain applications require additional configuration to use newer versions of OpenJDK, in the case of Android Studio you must set STUDIO_JDK=/usr/lib/jvm/java-11-openjdk/. [5]
The JRE has a hardcoded list of known window managers in which Sway is not present. If you experience grey panels, mislocated menus, or improperly resized windows, see Java#Impersonate another window manager.
Scroll on border
If using the mouse scroll wheel on an application's border crashes sway, you could use border none for the app_id (e.g. Firefox).
Program cannot open display
If a program crashes on start with the error message "cannot open display", it is likely that the program you are using is an X11 program. You can use the Xwayland compatibility layer to run X11 programs under Wayland, see #Xwayland for details.
Mouse not working in WINE applications
When running programs, WINE expects a primary monitor to be set, which can cause issues (such as clicks not registering) as Wayland has no concept of a primary monitor. Instead, you can specify a primary monitor for Xwayland to use via xrandr by adding this line to your Sway configuration:
~/.config/sway/config
... exec_always xrandr --output XWAYLAND0 --primary ...
For this to work your display position offset needs to be 0,0 because of a bug [6] in sway.
Note that XWAYLAND0 (or any XWAYLAND display name) may not represent your monitor, and may be susceptible to change in different sessions. Instead, you can specify the first XWAYLAND display using this line instead:
exec_always xrandr --output $(xrandr | grep -m 1 XWAYLAND | awk '{print $1;}') --primary
You may need to adjust these lines to suit your needs. You can find out which displays are mapped to what names by using the xrandr command with no arguments.
Flickering in games with NVIDIA GPUs
Although proprietary graphics drivers like NVIDIA are officially not supported, it is possible to use them, even for gaming. If you choose to do so, you may encounter flickering on the upper half of the screen, which can be worked around by replacing wlroots with wlroots-nvidiaAUR, or manually compiling your own version with the patch.