Open a window and it ripples outward like a drop landing on a pond. Drag one and it sways. Switch workspaces and a wave sweeps the whole screen. It's not a screensaver sitting on top of your desktop, it's your desktop, and it runs fine on a laptop from 2015.
Underneath the water is a real tiling window manager: fast keyboard-driven layouts, multi-monitor, your older X11 apps still work, and a config file you edit and reload without restarting anything.
Full-quality video (mp4) if the GIF is too compressed for your taste.
| Classic workspaces | The Ocean canvas |
|---|---|
 |
 |
- It actually looks like something. Ripples on open, wave transitions between workspaces, glass and shadow on your windows, floating windows that drift like they're sitting on water. Every bit of it is a config toggle, and none of it costs you performance you'll notice.
- Two ways to work. Stick with classic numbered workspaces, or switch to Ocean: one endless zoomable canvas where every window lives in real 2D space instead of a workspace number. Switch between them live, no restart.
- Runs on what you already own. As little as ~600MB of RAM with the effects off, scaling up only as far as you actually turn things on.
- Genuinely yours. Every ripple, wave, border, and shadow is a value in a config file, hot-reloaded on save. Nothing about how it looks is hardcoded.
TideWM builds from source, there's no package yet. Rust stable plus a handful of Wayland/GPU dev libraries:
# Arch
sudo pacman -S pkg-config wayland systemd-libs libinput libxkbcommon mesa libdrm seatd
# Fedora
sudo dnf install pkgconf-pkg-config wayland-devel systemd-devel libinput-devel libxkbcommon-devel mesa-libEGL-devel mesa-libgbm-devel libdrm-devel libseat-devel
# Debian / Ubuntu
sudo apt install pkg-config libwayland-dev libudev-dev libinput-dev libxkbcommon-dev libegl1-mesa-dev libgbm-dev libdrm-dev libseat-devgit clone https://github.com/Fi3w0/TideWM.git
cd TideWM
# `--features screencast` enables the portal screen-share backend (off by
# default: it pulls in the zbus async runtime and PipeWire threads).
# Without it, OBS/portal clients see no capture sources at all.
cargo build --release --locked --features screencast
cargo run --locked --features screencast # opens nested inside your current session, safe to tryopenSUSE and everything else, plus setting it up as a real login session: see TECHNICAL_REPORT.md.
| Shortcut | Action |
|---|---|
Super+Enter |
Open a terminal |
Super+H/J/K/L |
Focus a direction |
Super+V |
Float a window |
Super+F |
Fullscreen |
Super+1..Super+0 |
Switch workspace |
Super+O |
Workspace overview |
Everything here is rebindable, and this is a small slice of what's available. The full action/keybind/IPC catalog lives in DOCUMENTATION.md.
~/.config/tidewm/config.wave, generated with working defaults the first time you run it, already split into config.wave and keybinds.wave the way most people end up organizing it anyway. Save either one and TideWM picks up the change immediately, no restart.
# config.wave
include "keybinds.wave"
$mod = SUPER
terminal = $wave(kitty, alacritty, foot, xterm)
# keybinds.wave
bind $mod+Return = spawn:kitty
bind $mod+Q = close-window
Everything hangs off that one $mod variable, so rebinding your primary modifier is a one-line change. Full key-by-key reference: DOCUMENTATION.md.
I'm building TideWM solo. I use AI coding agents to move fast, then verify everything myself on real hardware before I trust it. If something breaks on your setup, that's genuinely useful, not an inconvenience, open an issue or drop into Discord.
For what's actually implemented, what's verified on real hardware, and what's still in progress: TECHNICAL_REPORT.md.
The gates are open: issues, forks, and pull requests are all genuinely welcome. Testing reports matter most right now, especially on other GPUs and distros, but code contributions have a place too. See CONTRIBUTING.md.
GPL-3.0, see LICENSE. Copyright (C) 2026 Fi3w0.