LeopardWM

A scrollable tiling window manager for Windows.

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What Makes It Different

Most Windows tilers use tree or BSP layouts. LeopardWM is scroll-first: windows sit on a horizontal strip, and your monitor acts as a viewport that scrolls over them. Navigation stays spatially consistent as windows are added — you move through context instead of constantly rebuilding split trees.

• Vsync-aligned animations — smooth scrolling powered by a DwmFlush-driven animation engine
• First-class touchpad gestures — three-finger swipes drive focus and scroll out of the box
• Disables Windows 11 Snap Layouts on managed windows — no more accidental edge-snap when you drag a tile
• Auto-detected per-window rounded corners and high-contrast/reduced-motion/battery awareness — system integration that respects user settings
• WebView2 settings GUI with Mica backdrop and live theme switching — not just a config file
• GPL-3.0 — commercial use without a paid license, written in safe Rust

In Action

Overview — zoom out to a map of your non-empty workspaces and jump anywhere

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Workspaces — per-monitor workspaces; switch between them and move windows across

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Tabbed columns — collapse a column into a tab strip, only the active tab fills the rect

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Scratchpad — stash a window out of the layout and summon it back as a floating overlay

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Sticky windows — pin a window so it follows you across workspaces, tiled or floating

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Design Philosophy

A few deliberate non-features, so you know what you're getting:

• Scroll-first, not multi-layout. No BSP, no DWindle, no Equal/Stair/UltrawideVerticalStack — and we won't add them. niri (Wayland) and PaperWM (GNOME) stay scrolling-only by choice; the horizontal strip is the identity. If you want 9 layout variants, komorebi is the right tool.
• No Virtual Desktop bridging. Per-monitor workspaces don't map cleanly to Windows' global Virtual Desktops, and the only library that bridges them (winvd) breaks every 3-6 months on Windows feature updates. Instead, Win+Ctrl+Arrow is intercepted and routed to LeopardWM's workspace prev/next so the native muscle memory still works.
• Named-pipe IPC, not WebSocket. Lower latency, no port allocation, no firewall prompts. If browser-based bar integration becomes a real ask, we'll add a thin bridge rather than make the daemon serve sockets directly.

Features

• Multi-monitor workspaces with monitor-aware focus and move (9 workspaces per monitor)
• Global hotkeys with live config reload
• Smooth scroll animations with layout transition effects (vsync-locked)
• Touchpad gestures with configurable swipe actions
• Drag-and-drop column reorder (Shift+drag to merge windows)
• Tabbed columns — toggle a column between vertical-stack and tab-strip mode (Ctrl+Alt+T); only the active tab fills the column rect, the rest sit in a clickable strip above
• Scratchpad — stash the focused window out of the layout (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+S) and summon it back as a floating, centered overlay on demand (Ctrl+Alt+S); stash it again to release it back to tiling
• Sticky windows — pin a window (Ctrl+Alt+Y) so it follows you across workspaces, keeping its current mode: a tiled window stays tiled (a column you can cycle to), a floating window stays a floating overlay
• Overview mode — Ctrl+Alt+Space opens a map of the monitor's non-empty workspaces; click a window card to jump to it, click a row to switch workspace, or drive it with arrows/Enter/digits
• Per-app window rules — float, ignore, or tile by class/title/executable, plus per-app open behavior: target workspace, initial column width, open maximized
• Floating and fullscreen toggles
• Width and height presets with column equalization, maximize-column, center-column
• Active focus border with auto-detected rounded corners
• System tray with pause, reload, settings, and diagnostics
• WebView-based settings GUI (Mica backdrop, live theme switching, dark mode)
• Safe mode for troubleshooting (--safe-mode)
• Built-in diagnostics (lwm doctor)
• Workspace persistence and session recovery
• Autostart via Registry, configurable from CLI / Settings / tray
• In-app update notifier — daily check against GitHub Releases, opt-out
• Windows 11 Snap Layouts disabled for managed tiled windows
• Battery-aware: animations auto-disable on battery / power saver
• Respects Windows reduced-motion and high-contrast settings
• DPI-aware gap and border scaling per-monitor

Installation

Via package manager (recommended)

winget install jcardama.LeopardWM         # Windows Package Manager
scoop install extras/leopardwm            # Scoop (after `scoop bucket add extras`)

Both fetch the signed MSI installer and put leopardwm, leopardwm-cli, and lwm on your PATH. winget upgrade / scoop update keep you on the latest release.

Via MSI installer

Download LeopardWM-x.y.z-x86_64.msi from GitHub Releases and run it. Re-running a newer MSI upgrades in place — no manual uninstall needed.

Via standalone zip

For users who prefer not to install:

1. Download LeopardWM-x.y.z-x86_64-windows.zip from GitHub Releases
2. Extract to a permanent location
3. Run leopardwm.exe
4. (Optional) Enable autostart: lwm autostart enable

Releases are signed via the SignPath Foundation program.

Quick Start (from source)

Prerequisites: Rust with the MSVC toolchain (stable-x86_64-pc-windows-msvc)

git clone https://github.com/jcardama/LeopardWM.git
cd LeopardWM
cargo build --release

Start the daemon:

./target/release/leopardwm.exe

A default config is created automatically at %APPDATA%\leopardwm\config\config.toml. Customize via the tray icon → Settings, or edit the file directly.

Default Hotkeys

Most hotkeys use Ctrl+Alt as the base modifier. Layered pattern: base = focus, +Shift = move, +Win = monitor scope. Every hotkey is rebindable in config.toml. Combos Windows reserves (like Win+Ctrl+Arrow) can't be bound directly, but the opt-in Reclaim Windows-reserved shortcuts setting lets you use them anyway.

Key	Action
Ctrl+Alt+H/L/J/K	Focus left / right / down / up
Ctrl+Alt+Home / End	Focus start / end of strip
Ctrl+Alt+Shift+H/L	Move column left / right
Ctrl+Alt+Shift+Home / End	Move column to start / end of strip
Ctrl+Alt+Shift+J/K	Move window down / up in column
Ctrl+Alt+[ / ]	Move window to left / right column
Ctrl+Alt+Shift+[ / ]	Expel window to new column left / right
Ctrl+Alt+, / .	Consume left / right column's window into the focused column
Ctrl+Alt+Minus / Ctrl+Alt+Equals	Cycle column width down / up
Ctrl+Alt+Shift+Minus / Ctrl+Alt+Shift+Equals	Cycle window height down / up
Ctrl+Alt+0	Equalize all column widths
Ctrl+Alt+Shift+0	Equalize window heights in column
Ctrl+Alt+M	Maximize focused column to viewport width
Ctrl+Alt+C	Center focused column in viewport
Ctrl+Alt+Win+,/.	Focus monitor left / right
Ctrl+Alt+Win+Shift+,/.	Move window to monitor
Ctrl+Alt+1...9	Switch to workspace 1–9
Ctrl+Alt+Shift+1...9	Move focused window to workspace 1–9
Ctrl+Alt+Space	Toggle workspace overview
Ctrl+Alt+Shift+Left / Right	Workspace prev / next (cycles)
Ctrl+Alt+W	Close focused window
Ctrl+Alt+F	Toggle floating
Ctrl+Alt+Shift+F	Toggle fullscreen
Ctrl+Alt+T	Toggle tabbed mode on focused column
Ctrl+Alt+S	Toggle scratchpad (summon / hide)
Ctrl+Alt+Shift+S	Stash focused window to scratchpad (or release it back to tiling)
Ctrl+Alt+Y	Toggle sticky (follow across workspaces, keeping tiled/floating mode)
Ctrl+Alt+P	Toggle pause
Ctrl+Alt+R	Refresh (re-enumerate windows)
Ctrl+Alt+Shift+R	Reload config
Win+Ctrl+Escape	Emergency restore + panic-revert

The scratchpad and sticky pins are session-scoped: they are keyed by window handle and reset when the daemon restarts.

Tabbed columns

Stack multiple windows into a clickable tab strip inside any column. Combine with the scrolling viewport for niri-style tabs that also pan horizontally — a combination no other Windows window manager ships today.

Basics

• Ctrl+Alt+T on the focused column toggles between vertical stacking (the default) and tabbed mode
• Ctrl+Alt+J / Ctrl+Alt+K cycle the active tab — same keys as intra-column focus, no new bindings to learn
• Click any tab in the strip to activate it; the click is a real focus change, so the border, foreground state, and IPC events all follow
• Tab titles and icons update live as windows rename themselves or swap notification badges

Per-tab actions

• Hover any tab to reveal a close-X at its right edge — click to close the tabbed window
• Middle-click does the same as the close-X
• Right-click any tab for a context menu: Close window / Untab this window / Rename tab…
• The implicit close gesture (X-button / middle-click) is configurable in Settings → Behavior → "Tab close action" — close_window (default, browser-style) or untab (rip the tab out into a new vertical column to the right)
• Right-click menu items always carry their literal action — Close window always closes regardless of the toggle, Untab this window always untabs
• "Rename tab…" opens a modal dialog seeded with the current tab title. Submitting saves a per-window override that survives untab, workspace moves, and daemon restart. Clearing the field removes the override and the live title returns

Drag-and-drop (Chrome semantics)

• Drop a window onto a tabbed column from anywhere — body or strip — and it appends as the rightmost tab and becomes active
• The drop-zone ghost spans the whole column rect so the target is unambiguous

Lifecycle

• A tabbed column with one window auto-reverts to vertical mode
• Tabbed state (and which tab is active) survives daemon restart, along with any per-tab title overrides
• Tab overrides for windows that no longer exist are pruned automatically at daemon startup
• The strip hides during fullscreen, pause, and on workspaces with no tabbed column

Customization — strip height, background, active/inactive text colours, active highlight, opacity, and the tab close action are configurable from the Settings UI or [appearance] / [behavior] (tab_strip_height, tab_strip_bg, tab_strip_active_bg, tab_strip_active_text, tab_strip_inactive_text, tab_strip_opacity, tab_close_action).

CLI

LeopardWM ships two interchangeable CLI binaries — both invoke the same code:

Binary	When to use
leopardwm-cli	Canonical name. Use in docs, scripts, and shared examples.
lwm	Short alias for daily typing.

Examples below use whichever is shorter for the line.

Daemon lifecycle

lwm run                # start the daemon (idempotent — no-op if already running)
lwm stop               # stop the daemon
lwm status             # show version, monitor count, window count, uptime

Query state

lwm query workspace    # current workspace placements as JSON
lwm query focused      # focused window info
lwm query all-windows  # every managed window across all workspaces

Layout commands

Most users drive the layout via hotkeys, but every hotkey has a CLI equivalent — useful for scripting or AutoHotkey integration.

lwm focus left | right | up | down
lwm move left | right                  # move focused column
lwm move-window up | down              # reorder within a column
lwm workspace 3                        # switch to workspace 3
lwm toggle-floating
lwm toggle-fullscreen
lwm scratchpad-stash                   # stash focused window (or release the scratchpad)
lwm scratchpad-toggle                  # summon / hide the scratchpad
lwm toggle-sticky                      # pin / unpin focused window on every workspace

Autostart (boot with Windows)

lwm autostart enable   # writes HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
lwm autostart disable  # removes it

This is also exposed as a Settings UI toggle and a tray menu item.

Subscribe to events (status bars, custom integrations)

lwm subscribe                                       # all events, newline-delimited JSON
lwm subscribe --events workspace,focused_window     # filtered subset
lwm subscribe | jq                                   # pretty-printed in another terminal

After the daemon answers Subscribed, the connection stays open and streams IpcEvent frames (workspace_changed, focused_window_changed, layout_changed, config_reloaded, heartbeat) as state changes occur. Pipe into a status bar (Yasb, eww, custom Tauri/Electron widgets) to re-render on each event without polling. Full schemas + sample clients in agent_docs/ipc-events.md.

Troubleshooting

lwm doctor             # diagnostic checks (config valid, daemon reachable, hotkey conflicts, etc.)
lwm collect-logs       # bundles logs + crash reports into a zip for bug reports
lwm reload             # reload config from disk without restarting
lwm refresh            # re-enumerate windows after weird state
lwm panic-revert       # emergency: uncloak everything, drop daemon out of management

Run lwm help (or lwm <subcommand> --help) for the full surface — there are ~40 subcommands.

Config & Runtime Paths

Note: Crate names and on-disk paths still use leopardwm internally. A full crate rename is future work.

Item	Path
Config	%APPDATA%\leopardwm\config\config.toml
State	%APPDATA%\leopardwm\data\workspace-state.json
Log (stdout)	%TEMP%\leopardwm-daemon.log
Log (stderr)	%TEMP%\leopardwm-daemon.err.log

Architecture

LeopardWM is a Rust workspace with five crates:

Crate	Responsibility
leopardwm-core-layout	Platform-agnostic scrolling layout engine
leopardwm-platform-win32	Win32 integration, window operations, DwmFlush animation engine
leopardwm-ipc	Named-pipe command/response protocol
leopardwm-daemon	Runtime event loop, state management, dedicated message-pump threads
leopardwm-cli	User-facing CLI (also installed as lwm for shorter typing)

Platform Constraints

LeopardWM is a window controller, not a compositor. DWM remains the compositor. Behavior can vary across app frameworks (Win32, WPF, Electron, UWP).

LeopardWM runs unprivileged. A window running at a higher privilege level (elevated/administrator, or a protected process) can't be repositioned by an unprivileged process, so LeopardWM leaves it floating instead of reserving an empty column for it, and lists it under lwm doctor. Run LeopardWM as administrator if you need those windows tiled (note: an elevated WM has the inverse limitation, drag-and-drop from normal apps into it is blocked).

Built-in Window Exclusions

LeopardWM automatically skips certain windows that should never be tiled. You can add your own rules via [[window_rules]] in the config, but these are always active.

Skipped window classes (platform layer)

These windows are filtered out during enumeration and never enter the layout engine:

Class	Why
Progman	Program Manager (desktop)
Shell_TrayWnd / Shell_SecondaryTrayWnd	Taskbar
WorkerW	Desktop worker
Windows.UI.Core.CoreWindow	UWP system windows
XamlExplorerHostIslandWindow / TopLevelWindowForOverflowXamlIsland	XAML islands
RAIL_WINDOW	WSLg RemoteApp — RDP-projected Linux windows that break when repositioned
Ghost	DWM hung-window replacement — tiling would duplicate the original
#32770	Standard Win32 dialog (Open/Save/Print/Properties)
Chrome_RenderWidgetHostHWND	Internal Electron/Chrome render widget, not a real window

Ignored executables (window rules)

These processes are ignored via built-in window rules (action = ignore):

Executable	Why
smartscreen.exe	Windows Defender SmartScreen
consent.exe	UAC elevation prompt
msiexec.exe	Windows Installer
CredentialUIBroker.exe	Windows credential/login prompt
SnippingTool.exe	Screen capture overlay

Focus Border Corners

The focus border tries to match each window's actual corner radius. Apps that explicitly set DWMWA_WINDOW_CORNER_PREFERENCE are honored (DONOTROUND → 0 px, ROUNDSMALL → 4 px, ROUND → 8 px); everything else falls back to the 8 px Win11 default.

Some apps draw their own non-DWM-composited frame with square corners while still reporting the OS default — Firefox / Zen Picture-in-Picture popups are the most common example. Override the corner style per window rule:

[[window_rules]]
match_class = "MozillaDialogClass"
corner_style = "square"  # also: "rounded" | "small_rounded"

The MozillaDialogClass → square rule ships in the default config as a working example. Open Settings → Window rules and use the Corners column (Auto / Square / Rounded / Small rounded) to edit, remove, or add new rules for other apps.

Support

If you find LeopardWM useful, consider supporting development:

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md.

License

GPL-3.0