Komorebi: Tiling Window Management for Windows

Love the name. For those that are curious:

It's the Japanese word for sunlight, which is filtered through the leaves of the trees. In particular, it means the visible light rays. “Komorebi” is composed of several parts of the word: “Ko” means tree or trees. “More” means: something that comes through, something that shines through or seeps through. “Bi” means: sun or sunlight.

The word “Komorebi” reflects the romantic and emotional love of the Japanese for nature.

The README says that "komorebi is a free and open-source project", but on the contrary, the software licence that this is released under (the 'PolyForm Strict License 1.0.0') makes it proprietary software, not free and open source (FOSS). The source code is available, but the licence doesn't permit modification, which is a key aspect of FOSS. So if the author is reading this, please change either the README or the licence so that they correspond!

This looks very cool. All other tiling window manager implementations I've seen for Windows fall short in some way, but this looks as close to something like sway or i3 as possible. Keeping the design simple by configuration through message passing is cool.

But the license is a dealbreaker for me. On one hand, I like that the license terms are short and easy to understand. In that regard, it blows other proprietary software out of the water. On the other hand, I know I'd be tempted to tinker with the internals at some point, and the license forbids me from doing that. Even if in practice the maintainer accepts illicit patches, I'd rather not spend my time contributing unpaid to something proprietary, so I'd rather use and contribute to some open source alternative.

But the real non-starter is that I only use Windows at work, and the license forbids me from using the software there in the first place.

I've been using this for a few months and really like it.

Pros:

  - Simple configuration and built-in keyboard shortcut daemon.
  - Performs very well; no animations, nothing to get in your way.
  - Workspace switching is excellent, doesn't use Windows' built-in system, and each monitor has its own set of workspaces
  - Draws a border around the active window.  This is huge.  I can't tell which window has focus without this and it's essential with focus change shortcuts.
  - Can move the cursor to the newly focused window, minimizing mouse movement.
  - Makes me happy.  That's rare on Windows.

Cons:

  - Doesn't handle DPI changes or laptop dock/undock well.  I usually have to restart.
  - whkd gets stuck occasionally and requires restart.
  - Polyform Strict license is a little unusual; I hope the author stays committed.

Used to be a bit rougher around the edges but now most of my problems boil down to some niche app not being tiled every once in a while, which can always be fixed by contributing to the repo for application specific tiling rules. The docs are solid and it recently has received a small gui to test configurations and debug applications which dont play nicely.

It takes a bit longer to get configuration up to speed because its not exactly one single program. Hotkeys are facilitated by whkd or an Autohotkey script, but thats because its built to allow other programs like status bars and application specific keyboard daemons can integrate with it. But all that also makes it a good learning experience.

Not sure how to stick in this with the other points, but maintainer is really helpful with any problems.

I recently switched from Linux to Windows 11 and all my problems with bad UI, blurry fonts and terrible quality of update is gone, only what i missed is tiling manager, now I found it, thank you.

I installed and launched it (komorebi-gui.exe? NOPE, komorebi.exe.. maybe that's right) but it seems like there is some learning curve.. no Welcome screen or post-install onboarding.

It randomly selected and tiled 2 / 50 total windows, and created a big black box for Progress Quest which wasn't there before (which I discovered here on HN last week but haven't started a New Game yet).

Is there a minimal Quickstart guide? I really want to like this but so far it's pretty rough.. I don't want to learn another form of the obscure config language (e.g. tmux) for a tiling window manager.

Edit: Thank you repliers :)

A while back I have developed https://github.com/ahmetb/RectangleWin which is the Windows equivalent of Spectacle.app/Rectangle.app on macOS. It lets you pin windows to halves and one-thirds of the edges and corners with hotkeys.

I remember when I was young that there was a "theming" app for win98 and it was cool.

It is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiteStep .

Wonderful.

Also. Komorebi is a Japanese word for the way light dapples through layers of leaves to illuminate a forest floor. I also made a tool called komorebi (an internal tool used for visuallly highlighting features in genomic comparisons) and deeply appreciate the name.

Added to https://taoofmac.com/space/apps/window_managers

Been using this for about a year and it is awesome! allows a lot more control than fancy zones.

Github should probably crack down on these kind of licenses and ask them to pay. This is one of the most restrictive ones I've ever seen, it's essentially all rights reserved, save for them graciously letting you download the application, but only if your non-commercial. You can't modify the code in anyway (even for personal use without distributing, despite what it says in the readme. The license itself says differently), or even share their own code with no changes. It's proprietary software with visible source code.

It doesn't even have an expiry date or some 'if this project dies' clause.

I'm excited to try this out. Fancy zones doesn't always cut it for me.

Another one by myself if you want .NET ecosystem: https://github.com/StackWM

Obligatory FancyZones/PowerToys links if Komorebi doesn't suit your style:

https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys?tab=readme-ov-file

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/fancyzon...

FancyZones is a Microsoft tiling window management utility from their PowerToys collection.

Any plans to make this for linux? I have recently switched away from Windows permanently due to the whole recall thing, but your project looks great.

This is a great windows tiling manager for windows, it is pretty easy to use and they are going to add a stack bar which I am pumped for.

I don't get these Window management s/w, nor the obsession with them. What could you possibly get done in those 4"x4" windows? Get a 2nd, 3rd, or even 4th monitor if you are short of space or just a 34".

Does anyone know what the explorer replacement(?) is that is seen in the videos?

What's up with the nix shell file?