PaperWM
Ranked 10 of 11 tiling window managers by recommenders
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.
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.
9 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 7
- criticize it
- 2
- approval share
- 78%
Recommended in 4 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 7 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 3.5 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 4 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Scrolling column-style tiling
“They pair really nicely with a column-oriented WM like Niri or PaperWM!”
Comment from 8 Aug 2026 in “Monitors for Work” “Scrolling WMs like Niri/Paperwm are where it's at now.”
Comment from 14 Nov 2025 in “Moving Back to a Tiling WM – XMonad” Good on macOS via Hammerspoon
“I personally use PaperWM.spoon as my window manager.”
Comment from 9 Apr 2026 in “Native Instant Space Switching on macOS” “this is a good compromise thanks to Hammerspoon”
Comment from 13 Mar 2026 in “Hammerspoon” Works with vanilla GNOME
“PaperWM is a mostly non-intrusive Gnome extension”
Comment from 25 Apr 2026 in “Niri 26.04 was just released (scrollable-tiling Wayland compositor)” “I like (Vanilla) Gnome + PaperWM.”
Comment from 24 Apr 2026 in “Ubuntu 26.04 LTS Released”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Cumbersome beyond three windows
“I feel like it's a bit cumbersome when I have more than 3 windows in a single workspace.”
Comment from 25 Apr 2026 in “Niri 26.04 was just released (scrollable-tiling Wayland compositor)”
Other tiling window managers people recommend
The four most recommended other tiling window managers, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Niri | 125 | 17 | 88% | 13 | 6 mo16 owners | Approved |
| Sway | 81 | 23 | 78% | 12 | 4 yrs17 owners | Approved |
| AeroSpace | 77 | 12 | 87% | 12 | 4 mo10 owners | Approved |
| i3 window manager | 70 | 9 | 89% | 12 | — | Approved |
| PaperWMThis page | 7 | 2 | 78% | 4 | — | — |
What people said
8 of the 9 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“They pair really nicely with a column-oriented WM like Niri or PaperWM!”
“PaperWM is a mostly non-intrusive Gnome extension”
“I feel like it's a bit cumbersome when I have more than 3 windows in a single workspace.”
“I like (Vanilla) Gnome + PaperWM.”
“I personally use PaperWM.spoon as my window manager.”
“It's really jittery for me and freezes fairly often on my work macbook.”
“this is a good compromise thanks to Hammerspoon”
“Scrolling WMs like Niri/Paperwm are where it's at now.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.