NAME¶

compton - a compositor for X11

SYNOPSIS¶

compton [OPTIONS]

WARNING¶

This man page may be less up-to-date than the usage text in compton (compton -h).

DESCRIPTION¶

compton is a compositor based on Dana Jansens' version of xcompmgr (which itself was written by Keith Packard). It includes some improvements over the original xcompmgr, like window frame opacity and inactive window transparency.

OPTIONS¶

-h, --help

-d DISPLAY

-r, --shadow-radius=RADIUS

-o, --shadow-opacity=OPACITY

-l, --shadow-offset-x=OFFSET

-t, --shadow-offset-y=OFFSET

-I, --fade-in-step=OPACITY_STEP

-O, --fade-out-step=OPACITY_STEP

-D, --fade-delta=MILLISECONDS

-m, --menu-opacity=OPACITY

-c, --shadow

-C, --no-dock-shadow

-z, --clear-shadow

-f, --fading

-F

-i, --inactive-opacity=OPACITY

-e, --frame-opacity=OPACITY

-G, --no-dnd-shadow

-b, --daemon

-S

--show-all-xerrors

--config PATH

--write-pid-path PATH

--shadow-red VALUE

--shadow-green VALUE

--shadow-blue VALUE

--inactive-opacity-override

--active-opacity OPACITY

--inactive-dim VALUE

--mark-wmwin-focused

--mark-ovredir-focused

--no-fading-openclose

--no-fading-destroyed-argb

--shadow-ignore-shaped

--detect-rounded-corners

--detect-client-opacity

--refresh-rate REFRESH_RATE

--vsync VSYNC_METHOD

--vsync-aggressive

--alpha-step VALUE

--dbe

--paint-on-overlay

--sw-opti

--use-ewmh-active-win

--respect-prop-shadow

--unredir-if-possible

--unredir-if-possible-delay MILLISECONDS

--unredir-if-possible-exclude CONDITION

--shadow-exclude CONDITION

--fade-exclude CONDITION

--focus-exclude CONDITION

--inactive-dim-fixed

--detect-transient

--detect-client-leader

--blur-background

--blur-background-frame

--blur-background-fixed

--blur-kern MATRIX

WIDTH,HEIGHT,ELE1,ELE2,ELE3,ELE4,ELE5...

--blur-kern '7,7,0.000003,0.000102,0.000849,0.001723,0.000849,0.000102,0.000003,0.000102,0.003494,0.029143,0.059106,0.029143,0.003494,0.000102,0.000849,0.029143,0.243117,0.493069,0.243117,0.029143,0.000849,0.001723,0.059106,0.493069,0.493069,0.059106,0.001723,0.000849,0.029143,0.243117,0.493069,0.243117,0.029143,0.000849,0.000102,0.003494,0.029143,0.059106,0.029143,0.003494,0.000102,0.000003,0.000102,0.000849,0.001723,0.000849,0.000102,0.000003'

--blur-background-exclude CONDITION

--resize-damage INTEGER

--invert-color-include CONDITION

--opacity-rule OPACITY:'CONDITION'

--shadow-exclude-reg GEOMETRY

--xinerama-shadow-crop

--backend BACKEND

--glx-no-stencil

--glx-copy-from-front

--glx-use-copysubbuffermesa

--glx-no-rebind-pixmap

--glx-swap-method undefined/exchange/copy/3/4/5/6/buffer-age

--glx-use-gpushader4

--xrender-sync

--xrender-sync-fence

--glx-fshader-win SHADER

--force-win-blend

--dbus

--benchmark CYCLES

--benchmark-wid WINDOW_ID

FORMAT OF CONDITIONS¶

Some options accept a condition string to match certain windows. A condition string is formed by one or more conditions, joined by logical operators.

A condition with "exists" operator looks like this:

<NEGATION> <TARGET> <CLIENT/FRAME> [<INDEX>] : <FORMAT> <TYPE>

With equals operator it looks like:

<NEGATION> <TARGET> <CLIENT/FRAME> [<INDEX>] : <FORMAT> <TYPE> <NEGATION> <OP QUALIFIER> <MATCH TYPE> = <PATTERN>

With greater-than/less-than operators it looks like:

<NEGATION> <TARGET> <CLIENT/FRAME> [<INDEX>] : <FORMAT> <TYPE> <NEGATION> <OPERATOR> <PATTERN>

NEGATION (optional) is one or more exclamation marks;

TARGET is either a predefined target name, or the name of a window property to match. Supported predefined targets are id, x, y, x2 (x + widthb), y2, width, height, widthb (width + 2 * border_width), heightb, override_redirect, argb (whether the window has an ARGB visual), focused, wmwin (whether the window looks like a WM window, i.e. has no child window with WM_STATE and is not override-redirected), bounding_shaped, rounded_corners (requires --detect-rounded-corners), client (ID of client window), window_type (window type in string), leader (ID of window leader), name, class_g (= WM_CLASS[1]), class_i (= WM_CLASS[0]), and role.

CLIENT/FRAME is a single @ if the window attribute should be be looked up on client window, nothing if on frame window;

INDEX (optional) is the index number of the property to look up. For example, [2] means look at the third value in the property. Do not specify it for predefined targets.

FORMAT (optional) specifies the format of the property, 8, 16, or 32. On absence we use format X reports. Do not specify it for predefined or string targets.

TYPE is a single character representing the type of the property to match for: c for CARDINAL, a for ATOM, w for WINDOW, d for DRAWABLE, s for STRING (and any other string types, such as UTF8_STRING). Do not specify it for predefined targets.

OP QUALIFIER (optional), applicable only for equals operator, could be ? (ignore-case).

MATCH TYPE (optional), applicable only for equals operator, could be nothing (exact match), * (match anywhere), ^ (match from start), % (wildcard), or ~ (PCRE regular expression).

OPERATOR is one of = (equals), <, >, <=, =>, or nothing (exists). Exists operator checks whether a property exists on a window (but for predefined targets, exists means != 0 then).

PATTERN is either an integer or a string enclosed by single or double quotes. Python-3-style escape sequences and raw string are supported in the string format.

Supported logical operators are && (and) and || (or). && has higher precedence than ||, left-to-right associativity. Use parentheses to change precedence.

Examples:

# If the window is focused
focused
focused = 1
# If the window is not override-redirected
!override_redirect
override_redirect = false
override_redirect != true
override_redirect != 1
# If the window is a menu
window_type *= "menu"
_NET_WM_WINDOW_TYPE@:a *= "MENU"
# If the window name contains "Firefox", ignore case
name *?= "Firefox"
_NET_WM_NAME@:s *?= "Firefox"
# If the window name ends with "Firefox"
name %= "*Firefox"
name ~= "Firefox$"
# If the window has a property _COMPTON_SHADOW with value 0, type CARDINAL,
# format 32, value 0, on its frame window
_COMPTON_SHADOW:32c = 0
# If the third value of _NET_FRAME_EXTENTS is less than 20, or there's no
# _NET_FRAME_EXTENTS property on client window
_NET_FRAME_EXTENTS@[2]:32c < 20 || !_NET_FRAME_EXTENTS@:32c
# The pattern here will be parsed as "dd4"
name = "\x64\x64\o64"
# The pattern here will be parsed as "\x64\x64\x64"
name = r"\x64\x64\o64"

LEGACY FORMAT OF CONDITIONS¶

This is the old condition format we once used. Support of this format might be removed in the future.

condition = TARGET:TYPE[FLAGS]:PATTERN

TARGET is one of "n" (window name), "i" (window class instance), "g" (window general class), and "r" (window role).

TYPE is one of "e" (exact match), "a" (match anywhere), "s" (match from start), "w" (wildcard), and "p" (PCRE regular expressions, if compiled with the support).

FLAGS could be a series of flags. Currently the only defined flag is "i" (ignore case).

PATTERN is the actual pattern string.

CONFIGURATION FILES¶

compton could read from a configuration file if libconfig support is compiled in. If --config is not used, compton will seek for a configuration file in $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/compton.conf (~/.config/compton.conf, usually), then ~/.compton.conf, then compton.conf under $XDG_CONFIG_DIRS (often /etc/xdg/compton.conf).

compton uses general libconfig configuration file format. A sample configuration file is available as compton.sample.conf in the source tree. Most commandline switches each could be replaced with an option in configuration file, thus documented above. Window-type-specific settings are exposed only in configuration file and has the following format:

wintypes:
{


  WINDOW_TYPE = { fade = BOOL; shadow = BOOL; opacity = FLOAT; focus = BOOL; };
};

WINDOW_TYPE is one of the 15 window types defined in EWMH standard: "unknown", "desktop", "dock", "toolbar", "menu", "utility", "splash", "dialog", "normal", "dropdown_menu", "popup_menu", "tooltip", "notify", "combo", and "dnd". "fade" and "shadow" controls window-type-specific shadow and fade settings. "opacity" controls default opacity of the window type. "focus" controls whether the window of this type is to be always considered focused. (By default, all window types except "normal" and "dialog" has this on.)

SIGNALS¶

D-BUS API¶

It’s possible to control compton via D-Bus messages, by running compton with --dbus and send messages to com.github.chjj.compton.<DISPLAY>. <DISPLAY> is the display used by compton, with all non-alphanumeric characters transformed to underscores. For DISPLAY=:0.0 you should use com.github.chjj.compton._0_0, for example.

The D-Bus methods and signals are not yet stable, thus undocumented right now.

EXAMPLES¶

$ compton --config /dev/null

$ compton -cCGf

$ compton -bcCGf -i 0.8 -e 0.8 --no-fading-openclose --sw-opti

$ compton -c --shadow-red 1 --shadow-green 1 --shadow-blue 1

$ compton -c --shadow-exclude 'class_g = "wbar"'

$ compton --backend glx --vsync opengl-swc

BUGS¶

Please report any you find to https://github.com/chjj/compton .

AUTHORS¶

xcompmgr, originally written by Keith Packard, with contributions from Matthew Allum, Eric Anholt, Dan Doel, Thomas Luebking, Matthew Hawn, Ely Levy, Phil Blundell, and Carl Worth. Compton by Christopher Jeffrey, based on Dana Jansens' original work, with contributions from Richard Grenville.

RESOURCES¶

Homepage: https://github.com/chjj/compton

SEE ALSO¶

xcompmgr(1), compton-trans(1)