alttabway

Finally, an alt-tab window switcher with actual window previews. Currently supported compositors: Hyprland, Sway.

Usage

You will need cargo installed.

cargo install alttabway

alttabway is now installed! Follow compositor specific instructions to start the daemon and bind the hotkey.

• Hyprland

  Add the following lines to your ~/.config/hypr/hyprland.conf

  exec-once = alttabway daemon &
  binde = ALT, Tab, exec, alttabway show --next
  binde = ALT SHIFT, Tab, exec, alttabway show --previous
  
  # Optional - set this if you have blur enabled on Hyprland
  layerrule = blur on, ignore_alpha 0, match:namespace ^alttabway$
  

• Sway

  Add the following lines to your ~/.config/sway/config

  exec alttabway daemon
  bindsym Mod1+Tab exec alttabway show --next
  bindsym Mod1+Shift+Tab exec alttabway show --previous
  

Configuration

When running alttabway daemon, it will create a configuration file in ~/.config/alttabway/alttabway.toml with all the default configuration values if it doesn't exist. Here you can configure the colors and styles of the created window.

# Set the render backend. Options: Default, Vulkan, Gl, Software
render_backend = "Software"

[window]
padding = 10          # Outer padding around all items (px)
border_radius = 6.0   # Corner radius of the window (px)
background = "#222222ee"
gap = [10, 10]        # Horizontal and vertical gap between items (px)
max_width = 50        # If 1-100, the maximum width is the percentage of the total available width. If > 100, this is absolute maximum value in px

[item]
padding = 7           # Inner padding within each item (px)
border_radius = 6.0   # Corner radius of each item (px)
border_width = 2      # Border thickness (px)
border_color = "#eeeeee00"
hover_border_color = "#6f6f6f77"
active_border_color = "#ccccccff"
background = "#11111100"
hover_background = "#11111144"
active_background = "#11111144"
icon_size = 18        # App icon size (px)
text_color = "#bbbbbb"
gap = [7, 5]          # Horizontal and vertical gap inside the item (px)

FAQ

The window preview is sometimes missing. Why?

alttabway uses wlr-screencopy-unstable-v1 to generate a preview of your active window. Sometimes, it is unable to generate this preview if you open a window and navigate away from it too quickly.

Sometimes there's a delay between holding the alt-tab hotkey and the window showing up

Window preview resizing runs on the main thread and needs to move to a background thread. Should be fixed soon.

Can I use a different hotkey combination?

You can use a different modifier key by specifying it via the --modifiers-held flag. Example Hyprland configuration:

# Activate using Ctrl+Super+Tab
binde = CTRL SUPER, Tab, exec, alttabway show --next --modifiers-held ctrl,super
binde = CTRL SUPER SHIFT, Tab, exec, alttabway show --previous --modifiers-held ctrl,super

Please support $COMPOSITOR

alttabway currently supports Hyprland and Sway. Open an issue if you'd like support for your compositor. Typically the compositor should implement the following protocols.

• wlr-foreign-toplevel-management-unstable-v1 for the list of top level windows and to activate one
• wlr-screencopy-unstable-v1 to take a capture of a region on screen.
  • Window positions/dimensions are required as well, typically via ipc.

The alttabway window doesn't show up

Try setting render_backend to Vulkan, Gl or Software in the configuration.

Compile fails with "try setting PKG_CONFIG_PATH to the directory containing wayland-client.pc/xkbcommon.pc"

Some required dependencies are missing. On debian based distros, run apt install libwayland-dev libxkbcommon-dev