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i3 window manager

A tiling window manager controlled from the keyboard.

i3 arranges windows automatically into non-overlapping tiles according to a tree of containers. Splitting horizontally or vertically, switching between tabbed and stacked layouts within a container, and moving windows between workspaces are all driven by configurable keybindings rather than mouse drag. The intended workflow is keyboard-first; the mouse is rarely needed.

i3 popularised the modern tiling-WM revival on Linux around 2009-2012. The configuration file (~/.config/i3/config) is plain text with one directive per line — straightforward to read and edit, and easy to share between machines. The i3status companion provides a small status bar with clock, network, battery, and similar widgets.

Michael Stapelberg started i3 and led development for many years before stepping back. The project is BSD-3-Clause licensed. Sway, the Wayland descendant, takes the same configuration file format almost unchanged. Together, i3 and Sway are the most widely adopted tiling window managers on Linux today, with strong communities of dotfile-sharing users.

Debian/Ubuntu: sudo apt install i3
Fedora/RHEL:   sudo dnf install i3
Arch:          sudo pacman -S i3-wm