What is Mango?
Mango is a dynamic Wayland compositor based on dwl, designed to be lightweight, fast, and feature-complete. It builds in seconds while providing advanced window management capabilities, smooth animations, and modern visual effects.Lightweight
Builds completely in seconds, as fast as dwl itself
Feature-Rich
Advanced animations, effects, and window management without compromise
Stable
Production-ready with months of testing and development
Practical
Features designed for real daily workflows
Philosophy
Mango follows three core principles:Stability First: After extensive testing, Mango prioritizes stability with minimal breaking changes.
Practicality Over Features: Only features that genuinely improve daily workflows are added.
Community-Driven: Niche features are considered based on community demand and upvotes.
Key Features
Window Management
- Tags, not workspaces - Separate window layouts for each tag
- Flexible layouts with easy switching:
tile,scroller,master-stack,monoclecenter_tile,grid,deck,vertical_tilevertical_grid,vertical_scroller,tgmix
- Rich window states: swallow, minimize, maximize, unglobal, global, fakefullscreen, overlay
- Sway-like scratchpad with named scratchpad support
- Hycov-like overview for quick window navigation
Animations & Effects
Smooth Animations
Customizable animations for window open/close/move, tag switching, and layer transitions
Visual Effects
Blur, shadows, corner radius, and opacity powered by scenefx
Input & Integration
- Excellent XWayland support for compatibility with X11 applications
- Advanced input method support (text-input-v2/v3)
- IPC support - Control compositor from external programs
- Hot-reload configuration - Update shortcuts without restarting
Performance
Comparison to Similar Compositors
| Feature | Mango | dwl | Hyprland | Sway |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Build Time | Seconds | Seconds | Minutes | Minutes |
| Animations | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ | ✗ |
| Visual Effects | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ | Limited |
| Tags vs Workspaces | Tags | Tags | Workspaces | Workspaces |
| Configuration | External file | Recompile | Config file | Config file |
| Hot-reload | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ | Partial |
| Memory Usage | Very Low | Very Low | Medium | Low |
| Based On | dwl/wlroots | wlroots | wlroots | wlroots |
Why Choose Mango?
Coming from dwl
Get all the features you wanted (animations, effects, better config) while keeping the lightweight footprint
Coming from Hyprland
Similar feature set with faster builds, lower resource usage, and tag-based workflow
Architecture
Mango is built on proven technologies:- wlroots 0.19+ - Robust Wayland compositor library
- scenefx 0.4+ - Efficient visual effects without performance penalty
- dwl heritage - Proven window management logic
- Custom IPC - Scriptable and extensible
Version
Mango is currently at version 0.12.5 with active development and community support.Join the Community
Get help, share configurations, and discuss features on our Discord server
What’s Next?
Quick Start
Get Mango up and running in minutes
Configuration
Learn how to customize Mango to your needs