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Configuration This page will guide the newcomers on how to configure basic elements of status-line, window manager, terminal etc.

By default, minimal-wm-config may not fit your needs and thus needs to be configured. The configuration files are located at $HOME/.config after install. Below we will discuss how to configure the basic elements.

Table of Contents

• How to customize
• Changing the wallpaper
• Setting cursor acceleration
• Changing overall font and font-size
• Editing wallpaper to match theme
• Configuring Firefox to match theme
• Changing gaps between windows and status-line

How to customize

Before we begin customize to fit our needs, we need to understand how configuration of programs work in Linux.

Linux uses "configuration files" to configure software. The software itself looks at the config files and changes the settings accordingly. There's a common location where softwares in Linux usually look at to find them. In Linux the directory is at $HOME/.config. Here the $HOME is a environment variable that points to /home/<user> or the directory that is usually selected as default directory for terminals on startup. $HOME is sometimes also referred to as ~(tilde character).

Before we edit any config files. We must make sure we have a text editor. You can choose your favourite text editor for this. Most popular text-editor of today are: Neovim, Emacs, Nano, VScode and Sublime Text. But you can choose whatever text editor your prefer.

Changing the wallpaper

The wallpaper configuration falls on window-managers. So we have to tell/configure window manager to use our wallpaper. minimal-wm-config currently configured for SwayWM. So we will look at how to change wallpaper in Sway.

First, we have to open the ~/.config/sway/io file with a text editor. In the file, you will find a line like this:

output * bg #RRGGBB solid_color

Here, #RRGGBB can be any hex value indicating a color. To tell Sway to use a wallpaper, the line will look like this:

output * bg <path/to/wallpaper> fill

Here, fill is used to tell how the wallpaper will be drawn. Instead of fill you can use fit, center or tile. To find more configuration options for displays, see manual of sway-output by running man 5 sway-output in your terminal.

Setting cursor acceleration

Changing or disabling cursor acceleration is a part of the window-manager. And therefore, we need to open ~/.config/sway/io file with a text editor. Then you can add the following:

input type:<"pointer" or "touchpad">
{
    accel_profile <"adaptive" or "flat">
    pointer_accel <-1 to 1>
}

Here flat accel_profile indicates that there will be no acceleration for the cursor. The value of pointer_accel can be from -1 to 1. Any value outside of this range will raise error messages.

Here is an example:

input type:pointer
{
    accel_profile flat
    pointer_accel -0.6
}

Changing overall font and font-size

To change the font and font-size of the system, we will have to edit configurations of window-manager, status-line, app-launcher and terminal. The specific files that needs to be edited are listed here:

• ~/.config/sway/variables (for window-manager)
• ~/.config/waybar/style.css (for status-line)
• ~/.config/tofi/config (for application launcher)
• ~/.config/alacritty/alacritty.toml (for terminal)

In these file look for lines with font. And change the provided family(Iosevka) to your chosen font family. And look for lines related to font size and change the value of size accordingly.

As the font specification is independent of other programs. You can have different font for different elements of your system. (i.e. different fonts for status-line and terminal etc.)

Editing wallpaper to match theme

gowall is a popular program to match wallpaper with system theme. Install gowall from gowall's docs, linked here.

We can now select our favourite theme from this command: gowall list. After you've chosen your favourite theme, run the following command to apply it to a wallpaper:

$ gowall convert <path/to/image> -t <theme-name>

The wallpaper will be located at ~/Pictures/gowall/.

Configuring Firefox to match theme

To add a custom theme to match Firefox with system's theme, we use an add-on called Firefox Color. After you've installed the add-on, we can add a custom theme.

Open the extension and move to the "Custom colors" Tab. From there, we will apply colors for specific themes. The colors of the elements are given below:

Charcoal Monochrome Dark

Toolbar Color = #1b140a
Background Color = #120e08
Search Bar Color = #2a2012
Tab Highlight Color = #8c734e
Popup Text = #d1b994
Toolbar Icons and Text = #d1b994
Background Tab Text Color = #b3976d
Search Text = #d1b994
Popup Background = #120e08

Charcoal Monochrome Light

Toolbar Color = #bcab85
Background Color = #c9ba96
Search Bar Color = #9f8f69
Tab Highlight Color = #2e2412
Popup Text = #150f05
Toolbar Icons and Text = #150f05
Background Tab Text Color = #4a3c25
Search Text = #150f05
Popup Background = #bcab85

After you've set all the options, you can then save the theme from the top-right "save" button. The saved themes will be located at "Saved themes" tab.

Changing gaps between windows and status-line

The gaps of windows and status-line are controlled by sway(window-manager) and waybar (status-line). We have to edit ~/.config/sway/borders_and_gaps and ~/.config/waybar/config.jsonc. The lines you have to edit are below:

For sway:

gaps inner x

Here you can set x to any positive number you like. There is also gaps outer x which will set x unit of gap around the windows but not in between them. You can add it below gaps inner.

For more configuration options, check man 5 sway.

For waybar:

    "margin-top": x,
    "margin-left": x,
    ...

You can set x to any positive number you like and each margin side can be of different values.