komorebi

Tiling Window Management for Windows.

About

komorebi is a tiling window manager that works as an extension to Microsoft's Desktop Window Manager in Windows 10 and above.

komorebi allows you to control application windows, virtual workspaces and display monitors with a CLI which can be used with third-party software such as AutoHotKey to set user-defined keyboard shortcuts.

Translations of this document can be found in the project wiki:

There is a Discord server available for komorebi-related discussion, help, troubleshooting etc. If you have any specific feature requests or bugs to report, please create an issue in this repository.

Articles, blog posts, demos, and videos about komorebi can be added to this list by PR:

GitHub Sponsors Early Access

GitHub Sponsors is enabled for this project. Users who sponsor my work on komorebi at any of the predefined monthly tiers will be given access to a private fork of this repository where I push features-in-progress that are not yet quite ready to be pushed on the main repository.

There will never be any feature of komorebi that is gated behind sponsorship; every new feature will always be available for free in the public repository once it meets the requisite level of code quality and completion.

Features-in-progress that are available in early access will be tagged in the issues with an "early access" label.

Charitable Donations

komorebi, like vim, is a free and open-source project, and one that encourages you to make charitable donations if you find the software to be useful and have the financial means.

I encourage you to make a charitable donation to Fresh Start Refugee before you consider sponsoring me on GitHub.

Demonstrations

@haxibami showing komorebi running on Windows 11 with a terminal emulator, a web browser and a code editor. The original video can be viewed here.

0vadqFOyIJHglPRY.mp4

@aik2mlj showing komorebi running on Windows 11 with multiple workspaces, terminal emulators, a web browser, and the yasb status bar with the komorebi workspace widget enabled. The original video can be viewed here.

0e0dd7fc-7115-11ec-a064-42a1fbc2e1e9-v4_t10000011-wbjnuX5De6.mp4

Description

komorebi only responds to WinEvents and the messages it receives on a dedicated socket.

komorebic is a CLI that writes messages on komorebi's socket.

komorebi doesn't handle any keyboard or mouse inputs; a third party program (e.g. AutoHotKey) is needed in order to translate keyboard and mouse events to komorebic commands.

This architecture, popularised by bspwm on Linux and yabai on macOS, is outlined as follows:

     PROCESS                SOCKET
ahk  -------->  komorebic  <------>  komorebi

Design

komorebi is the successor to yatta and as such aims to build on the learnings from that project.

While yatta was primary an attempt to learn how to work with and call Windows APIs from Rust, while secondarily implementing a minimal viable tiling window manager for my own needs (largely single monitor, single workspace), komorebi has been redesigned from the ground-up to support more complex features that have become standard in tiling window managers on other platforms.

komorebi holds a list of physical monitors.

A monitor is just a rectangle of the available work area which contains one or more virtual workspaces.

A workspace holds a list of containers.

A container is just a rectangle where one or more application windows can be displayed.

This means that:

Every monitor has its own collection of virtual workspaces
Workspaces only know about containers and their dimensions, not about individual application windows
Every application window must belong to a container, even if that container only contains one application window
Many application windows can be stacked and cycled through in the same container within a workspace

Getting Started

GitHub Releases

Prebuilt binaries are available on the releases page in a zip archive. Once downloaded, you will need to move the komorebi.exe and komorebic.exe binaries to a directory in your Path ( you can see these directories by running $Env:Path.split(";") at a PowerShell prompt).

Alternatively, you may add a new directory to your Path using setx or the Environment Variables pop up in System Properties Advanced (which can be launched with SystemPropertiesAdvanced.exe at a PowerShell prompt), and then move the binaries to that directory.

Winget

You can use the builtin package manager from Windows to install the latest komorebi release:

winget install LGUG2Z.komorebi

Scoop

If you use the Scoop command line installer, you can run the following commands to install the binaries from the latest GitHub Release:

scoop bucket add extras
scoop install komorebi

# To download the example configuration
iwr https://raw.githubusercontent.com/LGUG2Z/komorebi/master/komorebi.sample.ahk -OutFile $Env:USERPROFILE\komorebi.ahk
iwr https://raw.githubusercontent.com/LGUG2Z/komorebi/master/komorebic.lib.ahk -OutFile $Env:USERPROFILE\komorebic.lib.ahk
iwr https://raw.githubusercontent.com/LGUG2Z/komorebi/master/komorebi.generated.ahk -OutFile $Env:USERPROFILE\komorebi.generated.ahk

If you install komorebi using Scoop, the binaries will automatically be added to your Path.

Thanks to @sitiom for getting komorebi added to the popular Scoop Extras bucket.

Building from Source

If you prefer to compile komorebi from source, you will need a working Rust development environment on Windows 10. The x86_64-pc-windows-msvc toolchain is required, so make sure you have also installed the Build Tools for Visual Studio 2019.

You can then clone this repo and compile the source code to install the binaries for komorebi and komorebic:

cargo install --path komorebi --locked
cargo install --path komorebic --locked

Running

Once you have either the prebuilt binaries in your Path, or have compiled the binaries from source (these will already be in your Path if you installed Rust with rustup, which you absolutely should), you can run komorebic start --await-configuration at a Powershell prompt, and you will see the following output:

Start-Process komorebi -WindowStyle hidden

This means that komorebi is now running in the background, tiling all your windows, and listening for commands sent to it by komorebic. You can similarly stop the process by running komorebic stop.

Configuring

Once komorebi is running, you can execute the komorebi.sample.ahk script to set up the default keybindings via AHK (the file includes comments to help you start building your own configuration).

If you have AutoHotKey installed and a komorebi.ahk file in your home directory (run $Env:UserProfile at a PowerShell prompt to find your home directory), komorebi will automatically try to load it when starting.

There is also tentative support for loading a AutoHotKey v2 files, if the file is named komorebi.ahk2 and the AutoHotKey64.exe executable for AutoHotKey v2 is in your Path. If both komorebi.ahk and komorebi.ahk2 files exist in your home directory, only komorebi.ahk will be loaded. An example of an AutoHotKey v2 configuration file for komorebi can be found here.

Using Different AHK Executables

The preferred way to install AutoHotKey for use with komorebi is to install it via scoop:

scoop install autohotkey

If you install AutoHotKey using a different method, the name of the executable file may differ from the name given by scoop, and thus what is expected by default in komorebi.

You may override the executables that komorebi looks for to launch and reload komorebi.ahk configuration files using by setting one of the following two environment variables depending on which version of AutoHotKey you wish to use:

$Env:KOMOREBI_AHK_V1_EXE
$Env:KOMOREBI_AHK_V2_EXE

Please keep in mind that even when setting a custom executable name using these environment variables, the executables are still required to be in your Path.

Common First-Time Tips

Generating Common Application-Specific Configurations

A curated selection of application-specific configurations can be generated to help ease the setup for first-time users. komorebi-application-specific-configuration contains YAML definitions of settings that are known to make tricky applications behave as expected. These YAML definitions can be used to generate an AHK file which you can import at the start of your own komorebi.ahk file, leaving you to focus primarily on your desired keybindings and workspace configurations.

If you have settings for an application that you think should be part of this curated selection, please open a PR on the configuration repository.

In the event that your PR is not accepted, or if you find there are any settings that you wish to override, this can easily be done using an override file.

# Clone and enter the repository
git clone https://github.com/LGUG2Z/komorebi-application-specific-configuration.git
cd komorebi-application-specific-configuration

# Use komorebic to generate an AHK file
komorebic.exe ahk-app-specific-configuration applications.yaml

# Application-specific generated configuration written to C:\Users\LGUG2Z\.config\komorebi\komorebi.generated.ahk
#
# You can include the generated configuration at the top of your komorebi.ahk config with this line:
#
# #Include %A_ScriptDir%\komorebi.generated.ahk

# Optionally, provide an override file that follows the same schema as the second argument
komorebic.exe ahk-app-specific-configuration applications.yaml overrides.yaml

Setting a Custom KOMOREBI_CONFIG_HOME Directory

If you do not want to keep komorebi-related files in your $Env:UserProfile directory, you can specify a custom directory by setting the $Env:KOMOREBI_CONFIG_HOME environment variable.

For example, to use the ~/.config/komorebi directory:

# Run this command to make sure that the directory has been created
mkdir -p ~/.config/komorebi

# Run this command to open up your PowerShell profile configuration in Notepad
notepad $PROFILE

# Add this line (with your login user!) to the bottom of your PowerShell profile configuration
$Env:KOMOREBI_CONFIG_HOME = 'C:\Users\LGUG2Z\.config\komorebi'

# Save the changes and then reload the PowerShell profile
. $PROFILE

If you already have configuration files that you wish to keep, move them to the ~/.config/komorebi directory.

The next time you run komorebic start, any files created by or loaded by komorebi will be placed or expected to exist in this folder.

Adding an Active Window Border

If you would like to add a visual border around the currently focused window, two commands are available:

komorebic.exe active-window-border [enable|disable]
komorebic.exe active-window-border-colour [R G B] --window-kind single

# optionally, if you want a different colour for stacks of windows
komorebic.exe active-window-border-colour [R G B] --window-kind stack

It is important to note that the active window border will only apply to windows managed by komorebi.

Removing Gaps

If you would like to remove all gaps from a given workspace, both between windows themselves, and between the monitor edges and the windows, you can set the following two configuration options to 0 for the desired monitors and workspaces:

komorebic.exe container-padding <MONITOR_INDEX> <WORKSPACE_INDEX> 0
komorebic.exe workspace padding <MONITOR_INDEX> <WORKSPACE_INDEX> 0

Multiple Layout Changes on Startup

Depending on what is in your configuration, when komorebi is started, you may experience the layout rapidly being adjusted with many retile events.

If you would like to avoid this, you can start komorebi with a flag which tells komorebi to wait until all configuration has been loaded before listening to and responding to window manager events: komorebic start --await-configuration.

If you start komorebi with the --await-configuration flag, you must send the komorebic complete-configuration command at the end of the configuration section of your komorebi.ahk config (before you start defining the key bindings). The layout will not be updated and komorebi will not respond to komorebic commands until this command has been received.

Floating Windows

Sometimes you will want a specific application to never be tiled, and instead float all the time. You add add rules to enforce this behaviour:

komorebic.exe float-rule title "Control Panel"
# komorebic.exe float-rule exe [EXE NAME]
# komorebic.exe float-rule class [CLASS NAME]

Windows Not Getting Managed

In some rare cases, a window may not automatically be registered to be managed by komorebi. When this happens, you can manually add a rule to force komorebi to manage it:

komorebic.exe manage-rule exe TIM.exe
# komorebic.exe manage-rule class [CLASS NAME]
# komorebic.exe manage-rule title [TITLE]

Tray Applications

If you are experiencing behaviour where closing a window leaves a blank tile, but minimizing the same window does not , you have probably enabled a 'close/minimize to tray' option for that application. You can tell komorebi to handle this application appropriately by identifying it via the executable name or the window class:

komorebic.exe identify-tray-application exe Discord.exe
# komorebic.exe identify-tray-application class [CLASS NAME]
# komorebic.exe identify-tray-application title [TITLE]

Microsoft Office Applications

Microsoft Office applications such as Word and Excel require certain configuration options to be set in order to be managed correctly. Below is an example of configuring Microsoft Word to be managed correctly by komorebi.

# This only needs to be added once
komorebic.exe float-rule class _WwB

# Repeat these for other office applications such as EXCEL.EXE etc
# Note that the capitalised EXE is important here- double check the
# exact case for the name and the file extension in Task Manager or
# the AHK Window Spy

komorebic.exe identify-layered-application exe WINWORD.EXE
komorebic.exe identify-border-overflow-application exe WINWORD.EXE

Focus Follows Mouse

komorebi supports two focus-follows-mouse implementations; the native Windows Xmouse implementation, which treats the desktop, the task bar, and the system tray as windows and switches focus to them eagerly, and a custom komorebi implementation, which only considers windows managed by komorebi as valid targets to switch focus to when moving the mouse.

To enable the komorebi implementation you must start the process with the --ffm flag to explicitly enable the feature. This is because the mouse tracking required for this feature significantly increases the CPU usage of the process (on my machine, it jumps from <1% to 4), and this CPU increase persists regardless of whether focus-follows-mouse is enabled or disabled at any given time via komorebic's configuration commands.

When calling any of the komorebic commands related to focus-follows-mouse functionality, the windows implementation will be chosen as the default implementation. You can optionally specify the komorebi implementation by passing it as an argument to the --implementation flag:

komorebic.exe toggle-focus-follows-mouse --implementation komorebi

Mouse Follows Focus

By default, the mouse will move to the center of the window when the focus is changed in a given direction. This behaviour is know is 'mouse follows focus'. To disable this behaviour across all workspaces, add the following command to your configuration file:

Run, komorebic.exe toggle-mouse-follows-focus, , Hide

Saving and Loading Resized Layouts

If you create a BSP layout through various resize adjustments that you want to be able to restore easily in the future, it is possible to "quicksave" that layout to the system's temporary folder and load it later in the same session, or alternatively, you may save it to a specific file to be loaded again at any point in the future.

komorebic.exe quick-save # saves the focused workspace to $Env:TEMP\komorebi.quicksave.json
komorebic.exe quick-load # loads $Env:TEMP\komorebi.quicksave.json on the focused workspace

komorebic.exe save ~/layouts/primary.json # saves the focused workspace to $Env:USERPROFILE\layouts\primary.json
komorebic.exe load ~/layouts/secondary.json # loads $Env:USERPROFILE\layouts\secondary.json on the focused workspace

These layouts can be applied to arbitrary collections of windows on any workspace, as they only track the layout dimensions and are not coupled to the applications that were running at the time of saving.

When layouts that expect more or less windows than the number currently on the focused workspace are loaded, komorebi will automatically reconcile the difference.

Creating and Loading Custom Layouts

Particularly for users of ultrawide monitors, traditional tiling layouts may not seem like the most efficient use of screen space. If you feel this is the case with any of the default layouts, you are also welcome to create your own custom layouts and save them as JSON or YAML.

If you're not comfortable writing the layouts directly in JSON or YAML, you can use the komorebi Custom Layout Generator to interactively define a custom layout, and then copy the generated JSON content.

Custom layouts can be loaded on the current workspace or configured for a specific workspace with the following commands:

komorebic.exe load-custom-layout ~/custom.yaml
komorebic.exe workspace-custom-layout 0 0 ~/custom.yaml

The fundamental building block of a custom komorebi layout is the Column.

Columns come in three variants:

Primary: This is where your primary focus will be on the screen most of the time. There must be exactly one Primary Column in any custom layout. Optionally, you can specify the percentage of the screen width that you want the Primary Column to occupy.
Secondary: This is an optional column that can either be full height of split horizontally into a fixed number of maximum rows. There can be any number of Secondary Columns in a custom layout.
Tertiary: This is the final column where any remaining windows will be split horizontally into rows as they get added.

If there is only one window on the screen when a custom layout is selected, that window will take up the full work area of the screen.

If the number of windows is equal to or less than the total number of columns defined in a custom layout, the windows will be arranged in an equal-width columns.

When the number of windows is greater than the number of columns defined in the custom layout, the windows will begin to be arranged according to the constraints set on the Primary and Secondary columns of the layout.

Here is an example custom layout that can be used as a starting point for your own:

- column: Secondary
  configuration: !Horizontal 2 # max number of rows
- column: Primary
  configuration: !WidthPercentage 50 # percentage of screen
- column: Tertiary
  configuration: Horizontal

Dynamically Changing Layouts Based on Number of Visible Window Containers

With komorebi it is possible to define rules to automatically change the layout on a specified workspace when a threshold of window containers is met.

# On the first workspace of the first monitor (0 0)
# When there are one or more window containers visible on the screen (1)
# Use the bsp layout (bsp)
komorebic workspace-layout-rule 0 0 1 bsp

# On the first workspace of the first monitor (0 0)
# When there are five or more window containers visible on the screen (five)
# Use the custom layout stored in the home directory (~/custom.yaml)
komorebic workspace-custom-layout-rule 0 0 5 ~/custom.yaml

However, if you add workspace layout rules, you will not be able to manually change the layout of a workspace until all layout rules for that workspace have been cleared.

# If you decide that workspace layout rules are not for you, you can remove them from that same workspace like this
komorebic clear-workspace-layout-rules 0 0

Configuration with `komorebic`

As previously mentioned, this project does not handle anything related to keybindings and shortcuts directly. I personally use AutoHotKey to manage my window management shortcuts, and have provided a sample komorebi.ahk AHK script that you can use as a starting point for your own.

You can run komorebic.exe to get a full list of the commands that you can use to customise komorebi and create keybindings with. You can run komorebic.exe <COMMAND> --help to get a full explanation of the arguments required for each command.

AutoHotKey Helper Library for `komorebic`

Additionally, you may run komorebic.exe ahk-library to generate a helper library for AutoHotKey which wraps every komorebic command in a native AHK function.

If you include the generated library at the top of your ~/komorebi.ahk configuration file, you will be able to call any of the functions that it contains. A sample AHK script that shows how this library can be used is available here.

Features

Multi-monitor
Virtual workspaces
Window stacks
Cycle through stacked windows
Change focused window by direction
Change focused window by direction across monitor boundary
Move focused window container in direction
Move focused window container in direction across monitor boundary
Move focused window container to monitor and follow
Move focused window container to workspace follow
Send focused window container to monitor
Send focused window container to workspace
Move focused workspace to monitor
Mouse follows focused container
Resize window container in direction
Resize window container on axis
Set custom resize delta
Active window border
Quicksave and quickload layouts with resize dimensions
Save and load layouts with resize dimensions to/from specific files
Mouse drag to swap window container position
Mouse drag to resize window container
Configurable workspace and container gaps
BSP tree layout (bsp)
Flip BSP tree layout horizontally or vertically
Equal-width, max-height column layout (columns)
Equal-height, max-width row layout (rows)
Main half-height window with vertical stack layout (horizontal-stack)
Main half-width window with horizontal stack layout (vertical-stack)
2x Main window (half and quarter-width) with horizontal stack layout (ultrawide-vertical-stack)
Load custom layouts from JSON and YAML representations
Dynamically select layout based on the number of open windows
Floating rules based on exe name, window title and class
Workspace rules based on exe name and window class
Additional manage rules based on exe name and window class
Identify applications which overflow their borders by exe name and class
Identify 'close/minimize to tray' applications by exe name and class
Configure work area offsets to preserve space for custom taskbars
Configure and compensate for the size of Windows invisible borders
Toggle floating windows
Toggle monocle window
Toggle native maximization
Toggle mouse follows focus
Toggle Xmouse/Windows focus follows mouse implementation
Toggle Komorebi focus follows mouse implementation (desktop and system tray-aware)
Toggle automatic tiling
Pause all window management
Load configuration on startup
Manually reload configuration
Watch configuration for changes
Helper library for AutoHotKey
View window manager state
Query window manager state
Subscribe to event and message notifications

Development

If you would like to contribute code to this repository, there are a few requests that I have to ensure a foundation of code quality, consistency and commit hygiene:

Flatten all use statements
Run cargo +nightly clippy and ensure that all lints and suggestions have been addressed before committing
Run cargo +nightly fmt --all to ensure consistent formatting before committing
Use git cz with the Commitizen CLI to prepare commit messages
Provide at least one short sentence or paragraph in your commit message body to describe your thought process for the changes being committed

If you use IntelliJ, you should enable the following settings to ensure that code generated by macros is recognised by the IDE for completions and navigation:

Set Expand declarative macros to Use new engine under "Settings > Langauges & Frameworks > Rust"
Enable the following experimental features:
- org.rust.cargo.evaluate.build.scripts
- org.rust.macros.proc

Logs and Debugging

Logs from komorebi will be appended to %LOCALAPPDATA%/komorebi/komorebi.log; this file is never rotated or overwritten, so it will keep growing until it is deleted by the user.

Whenever running the komorebic stop command or sending a Ctrl-C signal to komorebi directly, the komorebi process ensures that all hidden windows are restored before termination.

If however, you ever end up with windows that are hidden and cannot be restored, a list of window handles known to komorebi are stored and continuously updated in %LOCALAPPDATA%/komorebi//komorebi.hwnd.json.

Restoring Windows

Running komorebic restore-windows will read the list of window handles and forcibly restore them, regardless of whether the main komorebi process is running.

Panics and Deadlocks

If komorebi ever stops responding, it is most likely either due to either a panic or a deadlock. In the case of a panic, this will be reported in the log. In the case of a deadlock, there will not be any errors in the log, but the process and the log will appear frozen.

If you believe you have encountered a deadlock, you can compile komorebi with --features deadlock_detection and try reproducing the deadlock again. This will check for deadlocks every 5 seconds in the background, and if a deadlock is found, information about it will appear in the log which can be shared when opening an issue.

Window Manager State and Integrations

The current state of the window manager can be queried using the komorebic state command, which returns a JSON representation of the State struct, which includes the current state of WindowManager.

This may also be polled to build further integrations and widgets on top of (if you ever wanted to build something like Stackline for Windows, you could do it by polling this command).

Window Manager Event Subscriptions

It is also possible to subscribe to notifications of every WindowManagerEvent and SocketMessage handled by komorebi using Named Pipes.

First, your application must create a named pipe. Once the named pipe has been created, run the following command:

komorebic.exe subscribe <your pipe name>

Note that you do not have to include the full path of the named pipe, just the name.

If the named pipe exists, komorebi will start pushing JSON data of successfully handled events and messages:

{"event":{"type":"AddSubscriber","content":"yasb"},"state":{}}
{"event":{"type":"FocusWindow","content":"Left"},"state":{}}
{"event":{"type":"FocusChange","content":["SystemForeground",{"hwnd":131444,"title":"komorebi – README.md","exe":"idea64.exe","class":"SunAwtFrame","rect":{"left":13,"top":60,"right":1520,"bottom":1655}}]},"state":{}}
{"event":{"type":"MonitorPoll","content":["ObjectCreate",{"hwnd":5572450,"title":"OLEChannelWnd","exe":"explorer.exe","class":"OleMainThreadWndClass","rect":{"left":0,"top":0,"right":0,"bottom":0}}]},"state":{}}
{"event":{"type":"FocusWindow","content":"Right"},"state":{}}
{"event":{"type":"FocusChange","content":["SystemForeground",{"hwnd":132968,"title":"Windows PowerShell","exe":"WindowsTerminal.exe","class":"CASCADIA_HOSTING_WINDOW_CLASS","rect":{"left":1539,"top":60,"right":1520,"bottom":821}}]},"state":{}}
{"event":{"type":"FocusWindow","content":"Down"},"state":{}}
{"event":{"type":"FocusChange","content":["SystemForeground",{"hwnd":329264,"title":"den — Mozilla Firefox","exe":"firefox.exe","class":"MozillaWindowClass","rect":{"left":1539,"top":894,"right":1520,"bottom":821}}]},"state":{}}
{"event":{"type":"FocusWindow","content":"Up"},"state":{}}
{"event":{"type":"FocusChange","content":["SystemForeground",{"hwnd":132968,"title":"Windows PowerShell","exe":"WindowsTerminal.exe","class":"CASCADIA_HOSTING_WINDOW_CLASS","rect":{"left":1539,"top":60,"right":1520,"bottom":821}}]},"state":{}}

You may then filter on the type key to listen to the events that you are interested in. For a full list of possible notification types, refer to the enum variants of WindowManagerEvent in komorebi and SocketMessage in komorebi-core.

An example of how to create a named pipe and a subscription to komorebi's handled events in Python by @denBot can be found here.

An example of how to create a named pipe and a subscription to komorebi's handled events in Rust can also be found in the komokana repository.

Subscription Event Notification Schema

A JSON Schema of the event notifications emitted to subscribers can be generated with the komorebic notification-schema command. The output of this command can be redirected to the clipboard or a file, which can be used with services such as Quicktype to generate type definitions in different programming languages.

Communication over TCP

A TCP listener can optionally be exposed on a port of your choosing with the --tcp-port=N flag. If this flag is not provided to komorebi or komorebic start, no TCP listener will be created.

Once created, your client may send any SocketMessage to komorebi in the same way that komorebic would.

This can be used if you would like to create your own alternative to komorebic which incorporates scripting and various middleware layers, and similarly it can be used if you would like to integrate komorebi with a custom input handler.

If a client sends an unrecognized message, it will be disconnected and have to reconnect before trying to communicate again.

Socket Message Schema

A JSON Schema of socket messages used to send instructions to komorebi can be generated with the komorebic socket-schema command. The output of this command can be redirected to the clipboard or a file, which can be used with services such as Quicktype to generate type definitions in different programming languages.

GitHub - LGUG2Z/komorebi: A tiling window manager for Windows