Before building and using dwl, you’ll need to install the following dependencies:

1. wayland, wayland-protocols
2. wlroots_0_19 (dependency for dwl)
3. foot (terminal emulator)
4. base-devel (so we can compile dwl)
5. git (to clone the 2 repos for dwl, and slstatus)
6. wmenu (a dmenu clone for wayland)
7. wl-clipboard (wayland clipboard tool)
8. grim, slurp for screenshots
9. swaybg (for wallpapers)
10. firefox (web browser)
11. ttf-jetbrains-mono-nerd (font)

sudo pacman -S wayland wayland-protocols wlroots_0_19 foot base-devel git wmenu wl-clipboard grim slurp swaybg firefox ttf-jetbrains-mono-nerd

sudo emerge -av dev-libs/wayland dev-libs/wayland-protocols gui-libs/wlroots x11-terms/foot sys-devel/base-devel dev-vcs/git gui-apps/wmenu gui-apps/wl-clipboard media-gfx/grim gui-apps/slurp gui-apps/swaybg www-client/firefox media-fonts/jetbrains-mono

Add to your configuration.nix:

environment.systemPackages = with pkgs; [
  wayland
  wayland-protocols
  wlroots_0_19
  foot
  git
  wmenu
  wl-clipboard
  grim
  slurp
  swaybg
  firefox
  jetbrains-mono
];

To customize the colors in dwl, you’ll need to edit the config.h file before compiling. This setup uses the TokyoNight color scheme.

The current configuration uses TokyoNight colors with 32-bit RGBA values:

/* TokyoNight colors (0xRRGGBBAA) */
static const uint32_t col_bg    = 0x1a1b26ff; /* background */
static const uint32_t col_fg    = 0xa9b1d6ff; /* foreground */
static const uint32_t col_blk   = 0x32344aff; /* black (normal) */
static const uint32_t col_red   = 0xf7768eff; /* red */
static const uint32_t col_grn   = 0x9ece6aff; /* green */
static const uint32_t col_ylw   = 0xe0af68ff; /* yellow */
static const uint32_t col_blu   = 0x7aa2f7ff; /* blue */
static const uint32_t col_mag   = 0xad8ee6ff; /* magenta */
static const uint32_t col_cyn   = 0x0db9d7ff; /* cyan (highlight) */
static const uint32_t col_brblk = 0x444b6aff; /* bright black */

These colors are used in different parts of the interface:

• SchemeNorm (vacant tags): Uses col_fg on col_bg with col_brblk borders
• SchemeSel (selected tag): Uses col_cyn on col_bg with col_mag borders
• SchemeOcc (occupied tags): Uses col_cyn on col_bg with col_cyn borders
• SchemeUnder (underlines): Uses col_mag on col_bg with col_mag borders

1. Edit config.h in your dwl source directory
2. Modify the color hex values (format: 0xRRGGBBAA where AA is alpha)
3. Update the colors array to use your preferred color combinations
4. Recompile dwl with make clean && make
5. Reinstall with sudo make install

Popular alternative color schemes:

• Gruvbox: #282828, #3c3836, #ebdbb2, #fb4934
• Nord: #2e3440, #3b4252, #eceff4, #88c0d0
• Dracula: #282a36, #44475a, #f8f8f2, #bd93f9

slstatus is a status bar for dwl that displays system information like time, battery, CPU usage, etc. It uses the same TokyoNight colors for consistency.

git clone https://git.suckless.org/slstatus
cd slstatus
sudo make clean install

Edit config.h to customize what information is displayed:

static const struct arg args[] = {
    /* function format          argument */
    { datetime, "%s",           "%F %T" },
    { separator, " | " },
    { battery_perc, "%s%%",     "BAT0" },
};

The provided script starts both slstatus and dwl together, with slstatus feeding information to dwl’s status bar and swaybg setting a wallpaper.

#!/bin/sh
slstatus -s | dwl -s "sh -c 'swaybg -i /home/tony/walls/wall1.png &'"

If you want to add this to your PATH for easy access:

mkdir ~/.local/bin
cp ~/start_dwl.sh ~/.local/bin/start_dwl
vim ~/.bashrc
# Add this line to ~/.bashrc:
export PATH="$HOME/.local/bin:$PATH"
source ~/.bashrc

Now you can start your desktop environment by simply running start_dwl from anywhere.

Here are all the configured keybinds for this dwl setup. MODKEY is typically the Super/Windows key.