Fans of tiling window managers which aren’t Sway, Hyprland or i3 may be keen to kick the proverbial tyres on the latest version of miracle-wm, which is now available.
Miracle-WM 0.6 is a bumper update to the Mir-based Wayland compositor developed by Canonical engineer Matthew Kosarek, who aims to create “a flashy, cozy tiling window manager” in the vein of Hyprland but with less up-front complexity.
The “big” ticket additions in this update is the new libmiracle-wm-config.so shared library, which offers a C interface that folks can use to write their own GUI configuration tools for miracle-wm (as Kosarek has done himself using Flutter).
Miracle-wm 0.6 also adds support for the wlr output management protocol, enabling users to use apps like wdisplays to change output settings at run time.
Other new features in miracle-wm 0.6 include:
- Improved display configuration
- Window border radius support
- Window events are now supported
- Added
miracle-wm-xdg-autostart.target - Better rendering of borders
- Smoother animations
- New ipc commands:
fullscreen togglefloating togglerename workspace...
Plus, lots of bug fixes, tweaks and other code buffs. The Miracle-WM GitHub release notes are available for those interested in the nitty-gritty.
Many of the key changes in miracle-wm 0.6 can be seen in this release demo video:
Install Miracle-WM on Ubuntu
Want to try Miracle-WM on Ubuntu? It’s easy enough.
You can install Miracle-WM on Ubuntu using the official Miracle-WM snap, which does need to be installed with the --classic flag to run properly, like so:
sudo snap install miracle-wm --classic
Alternatively, the official Miracle-WM PPA provides pre-packaged builds for Ubuntu 24.04 LTS (only), however the PPA is slow to be updated.
Once installed, select the ‘miracle-wm’ session using the menu on the GDM login screen, and log in as normal — don’t expect to see much when you do!
Miracle-WM is a window manager/compositor and not a full-blown desktop environment. You’ll need to craft a configuration file using a text editor, and define the tools and apps you want to use. You can log out of miracle-wm using super + shift + e.
The introduction docs on the project wiki give pointers on how to get going, plus suggested tools and utilities, like launchers and panels to use (waybar, swaybg and wofi are commonly used).
It’s also possible to run Miracle-WM as a window (on Wayland) inside of another desktop environment, like GNOME Shell. This is useful when editing or tweaking config files since you can refine your setup without the hassle of needing to log out (or reboot if you get it wrong).
If all of that sound like hassle, that’s fair. Part of the appeal in using a tiling window manager, giving you fine-grained control and the means to customise and curate a desktop experience and style that suits your needs.