# PaperWM

7 Hacker News commenters recommended PaperWM and 2 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 4 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Scrolling tiling window manager for GNOME and, through Hammerspoon, macOS, praised as mostly non-intrusive. Caveat: gets cumbersome with more than three windows per workspace.

## Why people recommend it

- Scrolling column-style tiling (2 comments): "They pair really nicely with a column-oriented WM like Niri or PaperWM!" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49225260)) "Scrolling WMs like Niri/Paperwm are where it's at now." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45929333))
- Good on macOS via Hammerspoon (2 comments): "I personally use PaperWM.spoon as my window manager." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47709136)) "this is a good compromise thanks to Hammerspoon" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47370146))
- Works with vanilla GNOME (2 comments): "PaperWM is a mostly non-intrusive Gnome extension" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47903868)) "I like (Vanilla) Gnome + PaperWM." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47887597))

## What people warn about

- Cumbersome beyond three windows (1 comments): "I feel like it's a bit cumbersome when I have more than 3 windows in a single workspace." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47903349))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Sway](https://hackerapproved.com/p/sway.md): 81 recommend
- [i3 window manager](https://hackerapproved.com/p/i3.md): 70 recommend
- [XMonad](https://hackerapproved.com/p/xmonad.md): 28 recommend
- [i3wm](https://hackerapproved.com/p/i3wm.md): 12 recommend
- [Ratpoison](https://hackerapproved.com/p/ratpoison.md): 8 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "PaperWM", https://hackerapproved.com/p/paperwm/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).