🦅 maverick

Columnar tiling window manager with niri-style scrollable layout, written in Rust

🦅 columnar • 🦀 rust • 🖥 xlibre • 🧩 tiling • 🌙 minimal

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✨ About

maverick is a lightweight X11/XLibre tiling window manager built around a scrollable column layout inspired by niri. Written entirely in Rust using x11rb 0.13 — no Cairo, no Pango, no heavy runtimes.

Designed around:

• 🦅 horizontally scrollable columns (niri-inspired)
• ⚡ extremely low memory footprint (~3–4 MB)
• 🧠 direct X11/XLibre via x11rb — zero bloat
• 🔲 three layout modes: Column · Monocle · Grid
• 🖥 true multi-monitor support via RandR
• 🧩 floating + fullscreen window support
• 📐 configurable gaps, borders, bar, and split bias
• 🔧 declarative window rules
• 🚀 autostart programs
• 🎨 fully themeable status bar and borders with clickable workspaces
• 📋 EWMH compliant

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📸 Preview

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🚀 Installation

Build from source

git clone https://github.com/azytar/Maverick.git
cd Maverick
cargo build --release

Add to PATH

cp target/release/maverick ~/.local/bin/

Start with .xinitrc

exec maverick

Display manager — maverick.desktop

Create /usr/share/xsessions/maverick.desktop:

[Desktop Entry]
Name=maverick
Comment=Columnar tiling WM
Exec=maverick
Type=XSession

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🔲 Layouts

maverick ships three layout modes switchable at runtime:

Mode	Shortcut	Description
Column	Super+T	Scrollable columns. Each window lives in its own column by default.
Monocle	Super+M	One window at a time, fullscreen within the workarea.
Grid	Super+G	All windows in a uniform grid.

Cycle through all modes with Super+Space.

Layout is global across all monitors. Switching it rearranges all monitors simultaneously.

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⌨️ Keybindings

Super = Windows key (Mod4)

Spawn

Shortcut	Action
Super+Return	Open terminal (alacritty)
Super+P	App launcher (rofi -show drun)
Super+Shift+P	Command runner (rofi -show run)

Window Operations

Shortcut	Action
Super+Shift+C	Kill focused window
Super+Shift+Space	Toggle floating
Super+Shift+F	Toggle fullscreen
Super+B	Toggle bar visibility

Focus Navigation

Shortcut	Action
Super+H	Focus column to the left
Super+L	Focus column to the right
Super+K	Focus window above (within column)
Super+J	Focus window below (within column)
Super+Tab	Focus next monitor

Window Movement

Shortcut	Action
Super+Shift+H	Move window left
Super+Shift+L	Move window right
Super+Shift+K	Swap window upward within column
Super+Shift+J	Swap window downward within column
Super+Shift+Tab	Move window to next monitor

Move semantics: if the focused column has one window, Shift+H/L swaps the entire column with its neighbour (fully reversible). If the column has multiple windows, the focused window is extracted into its own new adjacent column.

Column Operations

Shortcut	Action
Super+Shift+Return	Move window to a new column
Super+Ctrl+H	Shrink current column (−50 px)
Super+Ctrl+L	Grow current column (+50 px)
Super+Ctrl+J	Collapse column into the one to its left

Workspaces

Shortcut	Action
Super+1 … Super+9	Switch to workspace 1–9
Super+Shift+1 … Super+Shift+9	Move focused window to workspace 1–9

Workspace tags are also clickable in the bar.

WM Control

Shortcut	Action
Super+Shift+Escape	Quit (with confirmation dialog)
Super+Shift+R	Hot restart maverick in-place
Super+F5	Hot restart maverick in-place

Mouse (floating windows)

Action	Result
Super+Left-drag	Move floating window
Super+Right-drag	Resize floating window
Click on bar tag	Switch to that workspace

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🔧 Configuration

maverick is configured in src/config.rs (recompile to apply).

Core Options

border_w:      2,      // border width in pixels
gaps:          6,      // gap between windows and screen edges (px)
bar_height:    22,     // status bar height in pixels
top_bar:       true,   // bar at top (false = bottom)
n_tags:        9,      // number of workspaces
default_col_w: 700,    // default column width when created (px)
split_bias:    0.6,    // focused-row size bonus in a split column (0.0–1.0)
focus_mouse:   false,  // focus window on mouse enter
warp_cursor:   false,  // warp cursor to focused window center

split_bias controls how much taller the focused window is compared to its siblings within a split column. 0.0 = equal heights, 1.0 = maximum bias.

Colors

Default palette: Catppuccin Mocha. All colors are 24-bit hex 0xRRGGBB:

col_normal:  0x45475a,  // unfocused window border   (Surface1)
col_focused: 0x89b4fa,  // focused window border      (Blue)
col_urgent:  0xf38ba8,  // urgent window border       (Red)
col_bar_bg:  0x1e1e2e,  // bar background             (Base)
col_bar_fg:  0xcdd6f4,  // bar foreground / text      (Text)
col_bar_sel: 0x89b4fa,  // selected workspace badge   (Blue)
col_bar_occ: 0xa6e3a1,  // occupied workspace dot     (Green)

Workspace Names

tag_names: ["1", "2", "3", "4", "5", "6", "7", "8", "9"].to_vec(),

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📋 Window Rules

Rules let you assign windows to specific workspaces or force them to float automatically, matched by WM_CLASS or title substring.

rules: vec![
    Rule { class: Some("xdg-desktop-portal"), title: None,                    float: true,  ws: None },
    Rule { class: Some("gpick"),              title: None,                    float: true,  ws: None },
    Rule { class: Some("pinentry"),           title: None,                    float: true,  ws: None },
    Rule { class: None, title: Some("file upload"),    float: true,  ws: None },
    Rule { class: None, title: Some("open file"),      float: true,  ws: None },
    Rule { class: None, title: Some("save file"),      float: true,  ws: None },
    Rule { class: None, title: Some("qt file dialog"), float: true,  ws: None },
],

Rule fields:

Field	Type	Description
class	Option<&str>	Match against WM_CLASS (case-insensitive substring)
title	Option<&str>	Match against window title (case-insensitive substring)
float	bool	Force floating mode
ws	Option<usize>	Send to workspace index (0-based)

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🚀 Autostart

Programs to launch when maverick starts:

autostart: vec![
    vec!["setxkbmap", "us", "-variant", "dvorak"],
    vec!["rviv", "--bg", "/home/star/Descargas/arch.png"],
    vec!["picom", "--active-opacity", "0.8", "--inactive-opacity", "0.8"],
    vec!["alacritty"],
],

Each entry is a Vec<String> — the first element is the binary, remaining elements are arguments. Processes are spawned with setsid in the background.

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🏗 Technical Details

maverick avoids unnecessary abstraction layers wherever possible:

• **X11 / XLibre via x11rb 0.13** — type-safe protocol bindings, no libx11.
• Custom XFT wrapper (xft.rs) — fonts via FFI instead of cairo-rs (~18MB saved).
• HashMap client map — O(1) window lookups by XID.
• Bar batching — queue is drained before each flush() to avoid O(N) redraws per event burst.
• O(N) column layout — row heights precomputed in a single forward pass, not re-summed per row.
• RandR monitor detection — correct workarea accounting for each monitor's bar.
• EWMH support — _NET_WM_STATE, _NET_WM_DESKTOP, _NET_ACTIVE_WINDOW, _NET_WM_STRUT_PARTIAL, client list.
• exec-based restart — replaces the process in-place, no X11 grab race condition.
• override_redirect isolation — bars and overlays are invisible to the WM itself.
• Float centering guard — prevents the float-center heuristic from misfiring on fullscreen capture tools (≥90% workarea coverage = skip centering).

Memory footprint: ~3–4 MB resident with a typical desktop open.

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📂 Project Structure

maverick/
├── src/
│   ├── main.rs          entry point, signal handling, autostart
│   ├── config.rs        configuration, keybinds, window rules
│   ├── types.rs         core types: State, Monitor, Workspace, Column, Client
│   ├── log.rs           lightweight logging
│   ├── core/
│   │   ├── mod.rs
│   │   ├── engine.rs    pure logic layer (layout engine)
│   │   ├── layout.rs    arrange_columns / arrange_monocle / arrange_grid
│   │   ├── events.rs    AppEvent enum
│   │   ├── commands.rs  Command enum (MoveResize, SetBorderColor, …)
│   │   └── tests.rs     unit tests (layout, move_dir, cycle_layout, …)
│   └── backend/
│       ├── mod.rs
│       ├── atoms.rs     EWMH / ICCCM atom cache
│       ├── bar.rs       status bar rendering via XFT
│       └── x11.rs       X11 event loop, window management, RandR
├── Cargo.toml
├── Cargo.lock
└── README.md

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🌌 Philosophy

one window, one column scroll, don't stack low memory, high control rust all the way down

maverick was built because most tiling WMs either carry decades of C legacy, rely on Lua runtimes, or ship a 20 MB Cairo dependency just to draw a bar. maverick uses none of that. Just Rust, x11rb, and XFT.

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🤝 Related

• mavshot — screenshot + annotation tool built specifically for maverick (override_redirect aware, zero WM interference).

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📜 License

GPL-3.0 license

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