I’m using a PaperWM which is a scrolling window manager extension for Gnome, and I love it! But it’s an extensive extension which means it is sometimes brittle. I’ve thought it would be nice to find a window manager that is natively designed with a workflow that I like. There don’t seem to be any actively-maintained scrolling window managers out there. But scrolling is kind of a special type of tiling - I was hoping that someone with tiling experience could give me some tips on how to configure Hyprland, Sway, or something else to customize it for my particular working style.

I’ve realized that generally what I want is to be able to look at 2 windows at a time. But often I want to keep one of those windows in view, while swapping out the second window. For example,

• When programming I want to keep my editor in view while switching between a terminal or a browser as my second window.
• When researching I have a browser window in view, and for my second window I’ll switch between my notes app, my todo list, my password manager, a map, etc.

And there are some features I’d like,

• When programming I’d like to be able to make my editor full screen sometimes, and be able to quickly switch back to editor-and-terminal side-by-side.
• When there are more than 2 windows on my workspace I’d like the ones I’m not looking at to go away without having to think about moving them to a specific other workspace.
• When I open a new window I’d like to automatically see that window next to the previous window I was looking at, ideally moving other windows out of the way instead of making my previous window smaller.

I know most of this could be done with two monitors. But I have one ultrawide instead. Besides, I’d like to be able to use a 3/4-1/4 or 2/3-1/3 split in some cases.

So what do you think? Do you have a workflow that you love that you’d like to share?