Active Wayland via River Started 2026

Stacking, Virtual desktops ยท Window Manager

CoW

cow is a stacking window manager. Unlike other compositors based on wlroots, cow is a window manager using river as the compositor. This allows for more focus on writing the window manager part without having to worry too much about wayland protocol handling, etc., effectively lumping that in with being a wayland display server.

Developed by
Source code
Cow Screenshot
Status
Active
Type
Window Manager
Paradigm
Stacking, Virtual desktops
Server
Wayland via River
Written in
C
GPU
Indirect

Overview

About CoW

cow is a stacking window manager. Unlike other compositors based on wlroots, cow is a window manager using river as the compositor.

This allows for more focus on writing the window manager part without having to worry too much about wayland protocol handling, etc., effectively lumping that in with being a wayland display server.

01

Notable features

Recreates FVWM-style policy on Wayland while River handles display and compositing

Gallery

Screenshots

Cow Screenshot