dwm on os x [work in progress!]

DWM-ON-OS-X.md

Installing and configuring dwm on OS X

1. Install XQuartz (http://xquartz.macosforge.org) which is the development version of the X11.app that ships with OS X, which means it is way more up to date. I have had some weird issues with X11.app v. 2.3-something. XQuartz 2.5.0 fixed that.

2. Install dwm from Homebrew, brew install dwm. This makes a bunch of necessary tweaks to the DWM configuration.

3. Add the following script to $PATH, name it dwm-launch and chmod 755:

   cd ~
   while true
   do
     xsetroot -name "`date +"%Y-%m-%d %H:%M"`"
     sleep 5
   done &
   exec /usr/local/bin/dwm
   

4. Add the following to ~/.xinitrc:

   PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/bin
   xsetroot -solid '#4a525a'
   exec >>~/.xsession-errors 2>&1
   ~/bin/dwm-launch
   

5. Add the following to ~/.Xmodmap:

    remove Mod2 = Meta_L
    add Mod1 = Meta_L
   

6. X11 uxterm is launched as a non-login shell, which is undesirable. To launch uxterm as a login shell, add the following to ~/.Xdefaults:

   XTerm*foreground: white
   XTerm*background: black
   

7. Start X11.app. dwm should start. You need to change a few settings to make copy/paste between X11 and Aqua work. Go to X11 -> Preferences... and enable Emulate three button mouse under Input. Next, enable everything under Pasteboard.

   In X11 you copy text by selecting it with the mouse, and you paste by pressing Alt and clicking the mouse.

Issues

• After some time you might not be able to open new terminals. This has something to do with permissions, and can be fixed with xhost +. Do you know a permanent solution? (Possibly fixed with one of the settings under X11 -> Preferences… -> Security)

Extraneous $ in 4.

- $PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/bin
+ PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/bin

I also had to do the following to get dwm's meta key to work under Snow Leopard:

Create ~/.Xmodmap with the following contents:

clear Mod1
clear Mod2
keycode 63 = Mode_switch
keycode 66 = Meta_L
add Mod1 = Meta_L
add Mod2 = Mode_switch

I also haven't had any success using dmenu - it builds and installs but when started it shows nothing. Any thoughts on getting this to work?

airways, I changed it a bit, but basically you need an ~/.Xmodmap, yeah. Gist updated.

Gah! I knew I forgot to put something in there. Thx for the catch. IJR

…

On Mar 31, 2011, at 7:02 AM, vangberg ***@***.*** wrote: airways, I changed it a bit, but basically you need an `~/.Xmodmap`, yeah. Gist updated. ## Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub: https://gist.github.com/311377

I had to set "UXTerm_" instead of "XTerm_" in my .Xresources:

UXTerm*foreground: white 
UXTerm*background: black

Can't launch dwm, X11 constantly fails to launch, when I run dwm-launch from terminal it says:

"dwm: another window manager is already running"

I've got osx 10.6.7 with XQuartz, standard X11 same thing is happening

Managed to launch it but i get this kind of message after running it several minutes:

"X connection to /tmp/launch-QbCIDa/org.macosforge.xquartz:0 broken (explicit kill or server shutdown).
xterm: fatal IO error 35 (Resource temporarily unavailable) or KillClient on X server "/tmp/launch-QbCIDa/org.macosforge.xquartz:0"
xterm: fatal IO error 35 (Resource temporarily unavailable) or KillClient on X server "/tmp/launch-QbCIDa/org.macosforge.xquartz:0"
xterm: fatal IO error 35 (Resource temporarily unavailable) or KillClient on X server "/tmp/launch-QbCIDa/org.macosforge.xquartz:0"
wqas-Mac-mini:~ wqa$
wqas-Mac-mini:~ wqa$ X connection to /tmp/launch-QbCIDa/org.macosforge.xquartz:0 broken (explicit kill or server shutdown).
"

With a UK MBP keyboard, MacPorts X11 and dwm there's the problem that you can't access the # (hash / pound / numbersign) symbol by default. After much grief trying to map my meta key in different ways within dwm I figured out how to xmodmap the 3 key to behave as expected.

Using "xmodmap -pke" you can see the exact definitions of the keys. In my case the mapping on the 3 key was:

Change this to the following in your ~/.Xmodmap and your # symbol will be on Shift-3. Yes - the third column represents the Mod1 modifier, so it becomes inaccessible. If you need that symbol you can swap it with something else.

hi, I also get:
"dwm: another window manager is already running"

@myztical
how did you made it work?

(Trying to subscribe on these comments) I have the same: "dwm: another window manager is already running"

@stanislaw @adrian-gierakowski I had the same error message, but logging out and logging in again solved it.

Make sure you don't save the windows when you log out, or else it won't truly restart everything.

So matter what I do, I don't get a login shell within X11. It always sees bash 4.0

Using ~/.xinitrc.d (not the .xinitrc file) and $USERWM variable seems to be the proper way now. And it solves the "another wm running" problem for me on Mountain Lion. See my (simplified) fork.

hey this might be such old topic to discuss but reply back if you have a sec!

1. Quartz is installed
2. dwm is installed
   but running dwm is still a problem. I get:

Meysams-iMac:~ meysam$ /usr/local/bin/dwm
warning: no locale support
dwm: another window manager is already running

I'm even not sure if I have my all conf files correctly edited. I used the same post that you used earlier. seems I'm lost a bit!

Recently I added terminal app named terminator to homebrew, which is far better than X11 default terminals. hope others to use it.

I was a bit frustrated not being able to use the mouse buttons 2 and 3 properly with the dwm modifier key mapped to the command key on my system in order to move and resize floating windows, since the Xquartz Emulate three button mouse preference also using the command key interfered with that.

Reading through Xquartz (1) I found that I can remap the modifier keys for the mouse button emulation using:
% defaults write org.macosforge.xquartz.X11 fake_button3 fn

With this the fn key is used to emulate mouse button 3 and the command key is free for proper use with dwm 👍

I shouldn't really talk (haven't got it working yet but...) I had copied my xinitrc from my Archlinux partition, but of course it doesn't work. xinitrc needs to look in ## /opt/X11/lib/X11/xinit/xinitrc.d/ for xinitrc.
I don't know if that will help anybody..

"brew install dwm" is not working on OSX 10.10.3:

$ brew install dwm
Error: No available formula for dwm
Searching formulae...
Searching taps...
homebrew/x11/dwm

Replace brew install dwm with brew install homebrew/x11/dwm if you get the error reported by Xneos128

Hi, I've tried installing both dwm and i3 and both are starting fine but I get terrible render performance in the terminal in both wm's. (prints ~5 lines/s). Have tried different terminal emulators same issue. When I run Xquartz normally (without dwm or i3) it works fine in xterm.

I'm running macOS 10.12.3 on a MacbookPro retina 15".
Ran brew install dwm and brew install i3 respectively
only thing I've done after that is to put USERWM=/usr/local/bin/dwm in 00-dwm.sh

Anyone know what the problem might be?

Getting the following error while executing dwm-launch script on macOS Mojave
xsetroot: command not found

@rohitbishnoi chmod +x the dwm-launch