DWMend — Tiling Window Manager for Windows 11

A lightweight (and opinionated) tiling window manager for Windows 11, inspired by Hyprland and komorebi. A mend for the DWM.

Features

• Lightweight — single daemon binary.
• No elevation, no installer — run as a user without elevated Administration permissions. dwmend autostart enable writes an HKCU Run entry so the daemon launches on next sign-in. dwmend autostart disable removes it.
• Dynamic tiling — Binary Space Partition (BSP) approach. Two layout modes: dwindle (aspect-ratio splits, default) and spiral (alternating axis splits). Switch globally via [general] layout = "spiral" in config or per-workspace via the toggle_layout action.
• Global workspace pool — 10 named workspaces; Alt+# (where # is the workspace number) brings a workspace to the focused monitor (swapping it from whichever monitor was showing it). Alt+Shift+N moves the focused window and follows focus to the target workspace.
• Status bar — thin GDI bar on each monitor showing workspace pills (active / visible-elsewhere / occupied / empty), the focused window title centred on the bar and a clock / battery / network indicators on the right. Click a pill to switch that monitor's workspace. Colours, height, and per-segment toggles are configurable under [bar].
• Active tile focus border — thick configurable-colour overlay frame around the active tile.
• Stack containers — group multiple windows into one tile. Alt+G is smart: with two tiles side-by-side it merges them into a stack on the first press; with a single tile it converts it to a 1-member stack so subsequent windows pile in. Alt+[ / Alt+] cycle through. Alt+Shift+G pops the focused member back out into its own tile. The bar shows a [2/3] indicator next to the focused title when applicable.
• Floating window keyboard control — Alt+Shift+H/J/K/L translates the focused float by 32 px; Alt+Ctrl+H/J/K/L resizes the matching edge by 32 px.
• Window rules — match by exe / class / title regex; actions are ignore, float, tile, or workspace = N to pin matching apps to a specific workspace at launch (without stealing the user's focus).
• Window peek — Alt+E opens a sticky-mode picker overlaying live DWM thumbnails of every window on the focused workspace. Cycle with your normal Alt+H/L focus keys (the daemon intercepts them while peek is up); Alt+Enter commits, Alt+E again dismisses. Configurable under [peek].
• Notification toasts — transient pop-ups for config reloads, keybinding failures, pause toggles, and layout mode flips. Click-through, never steal focus. Configurable under [notifications]. Scripts can fire their own via dwmend cmd "notify info 'Build complete'".
• TOML config + hot reload — gaps, colours, rules, keybindings, bar theme/segments, notification colours/TTL, peek theme all update on save. Bar height changes still need a daemon restart.
• IPC — named-pipe server at \\.\pipe\DwmendDaemon-v1. Use dwmend cmd "focus left" from PowerShell / AutoHotKey / StreamDeck to drive the daemon, or dwmend query state to introspect.
• Crash recovery — dwmend.exe restore makes any windows DWMend hid visible again if the daemon crashes or is force-killed.

Install

Two distribution options. Both are user-mode — neither needs administrator rights.

MSI installer (recommended for most users):

1. Download dwmend.msi from the latest release.
2. Double-click. Installs to %LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\dwmend\ and adds a Start Menu shortcut. No UAC prompt; uninstalls cleanly via Settings → Apps.
3. Silent install for scripts: msiexec /i dwmend.msi /qn.

Portable executable (no installer):

1. Download dwmend.exe from the latest release.
2. Drop it anywhere on disk and run it.

Both artifacts ship with a matching .sha256 for verification:

(Get-FileHash -Algorithm SHA256 .\dwmend.msi).Hash.ToLower()
# compare against the contents of dwmend.msi.sha256

Build

Requires:

• Rust stable on x86_64-pc-windows-msvc
• Visual Studio Build Tools or VS with the C++ workload + Windows 11 SDK
• A Developer PowerShell (Launch-VsDevShell.ps1 -Arch amd64)

cargo build --release

The release binary at target\release\dwmend.exe (~3 MB).

To build the MSI locally (requires the WiX Toolset 3.14 on PATH and cargo install cargo-wix):

cargo build --workspace --release

# Stage the binder inputs into target\wix\ \u2014 cargo-wix runs light.exe
# from there and doesn't add the wxs source dir as a binder path, so
# License.rtf / dwmend.ico must be alongside the linker's CWD.
New-Item -ItemType Directory -Force -Path target\wix | Out-Null
Copy-Item crates\dwmend\wix\License.rtf target\wix\License.rtf -Force
Copy-Item assets\icon.ico              target\wix\dwmend.ico   -Force

cargo wix -p dwmend --no-build --output target\wix\dwmend.msi

Run

# Start as a background process
Start-Process .\target\release\dwmend.exe -WindowStyle Hidden

# Diagnostic: print what would be managed without touching anything
.\target\release\dwmend.exe dryrun

# Recover after a hard crash
.\target\release\dwmend.exe restore

# Launch on sign-in (per-user; no elevation; uninstall with `autostart disable`)
.\target\release\dwmend.exe autostart enable
.\target\release\dwmend.exe autostart status
.\target\release\dwmend.exe autostart disable

# Drive the running daemon from a IPC
.\target\release\dwmend.exe cmd "focus left"
.\target\release\dwmend.exe cmd "workspace 3"
.\target\release\dwmend.exe cmd "notify info 'Build complete'"
.\target\release\dwmend.exe query state
.\target\release\dwmend.exe query focused

# Help
.\target\release\dwmend.exe help

On first launch a default config is emitted to %APPDATA%\dwmend\config.toml. Logs go to %LOCALAPPDATA%\dwmend\dwmend.log.<date>.

Default hotkeys

Combo	Action
Alt+H/J/K/L	focus left/down/up/right
Alt+Shift+H/J/K/L	move focused tile (or translate float by 32 px)
Alt+Ctrl+H/J/K/L	resize 32 px (tiled split or floating edge)
Alt+1..Alt+0	switch to workspace 1..10
Alt+Shift+1..Alt+Shift+0	move focused window to workspace
Alt+T / Alt+F / Alt+W	toggle float / monocle / close
Alt+G	smart toggle stack (merge with sibling, or 1-member fallback)
Alt+Shift+G	pop focused stack member back out into its own tile
Alt+] / Alt+[	cycle to next / previous stack member
Alt+P	pause/resume DWMend
Alt+Shift+R / Alt+Shift+Q	reload config / quit
Alt+E	open / dismiss the window-peek picker
Alt+Enter	confirm the peek selection (focus highlighted window)
Bar pill click	switch the clicked bar's monitor to that workspace

The toggle_layout action (Dwindle ↔ Spiral on the focused workspace) ships unbound; add "ALT+SHIFT+L" = "toggle_layout" (or any other combo) to your [keybindings] to wire it up.

If any binding fails to register (because another app already claimed it), DWMend logs a warning at startup and that binding is silently no-op.

Existing configs: DWMend only writes the default config on first run. New options (the [bar] section, [notifications], [peek], general.layout, the stack / toggle_layout actions, the workspace = N rule action, the notify / peek_toggle / peek_confirm actions) won't be present in your existing %APPDATA%\dwmend\config.toml — add them manually. The defaults match the previous hard-coded values, so omitting them keeps the old behaviour. Keybinding edits ARE picked up by Alt+Shift+R (the listener thread is torn down and respawned with the new table).

Privacy

Personal-use software. No installer, no signing, no telemetry. The IPC pipe is local-only (no network access). See assets/config.toml for the full set of options.

Workspace layout

Crate	Purpose
crates/dwmend-platform	Thin unsafe Win32 wrappers (windows, monitors, hooks, DWM, DPI, focus border, IPC pipe transport)
crates/dwmend-layout	Pure-Rust BSP layout engine — no Windows deps, 18 unit tests
crates/dwmend	Daemon library + thin binary: state, config, hotkeys, event loop, status bar, tray icon