AlbumWM

AlbumWM is a GNOME Shell extension which implements scrollable tiling support.

AlbumWM is a fork of PaperWM.

Differences from PaperWM

For now, there are mostly removals and code maintainability improvements. Features that the fork author considered useless or harmful are dropped.

• Ported to TypeScript

• Dropped the custom workspaces functionality and the hacky multi-monitor support

  Scrollable tiling is only done on the primary display, though.

  Rationale: PaperWM's custom emulation never worked good. Mutter should implement independent workspaces on different monitors, not the tiling extension whose job is positioning the windows.

• Preferences ui redesigned, migrated to Adwaita widgets and ported to Blueprint

• Better shortcut conflict detection and handling

  Instead of unconditionally deleting GNOME shortcuts, show a warning and let the user decide.

• Replaced the global scratch layer with a per-workspace floating layer

• Remember each column's last focused window and activate it on column focus

• Made workspaces-only-on-primary mode usable

• Implemented pointer warp on window focus (optional)

• Improved the scroll gesture

• Better default shortcuts (inspired by sway and niri)

• Improved the column management shortcuts (niri-style consume-or-expel-window-{left,right})

• Proper pointer warp on monitor focus

• Dropped drawing a custom top bar on secondary displays

• Dropped the window position indicator and top bar styling

• Dropped all the remnants of X11 support

• Dropped user.css and user.js support (the latter didn't work anyway)

• Dropped the open-window-position option, new windows always spawn in a new column to the right

• Dropped the maximize-within-tiling option, windows are now always properly maximized

• Dropped the focused-window border highlight

  Ratioale: the windows already indicate focus themselves.

• Dropped the "take window" navigation mode

• Dropped the custom "live alt-tab" switcher, use GNOME's native switcher instead

Installation

Manual

Install:

npm run install:ext

Re-login is required, because the shell can't be restarted on Wayland.

Uninstall:

npm run uninstall:ext

Nix

The flake provides a gnome-shell-extension-albumwm package, which can be installed and enabled like any regular GNOME extension package from nixpkgs, for example, via programs.gnome-shell.extensions in Home Manager configuration.

flake.nix:

albumwm = {
  url = "github:poli0iq/albumwm";
  inputs.nixpkgs.follows = "nixpkgs";
};

Home Manager:

programs.gnome-shell.extensions = [
  { package = inputs.albumwm.packages.${pkgs.stdenv.hostPlatform.system}.default; }
];

Related projects

Some projects also implement scrollable tiling, namely:

• Niri
• papersway