<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><rss xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" version="2.0"><channel><title><![CDATA[Why isn't there a compositor agnostic Wayland API for window focusing?]]></title><description><![CDATA[<p dir="auto">I'm working on a window switching tool for Wayland that's kinda like Alt-Tab. However, it seems like there's no compositor agnostic way to do things like:</p>
<ul>
<li>List all currently open windows</li>
<li>Ask which window is currently focused</li>
<li>Focus a specific window</li>
</ul>
<p dir="auto">Therefore, if I want my tool to support multiple compositors, I have to re-implement this logic for each compositor.</p>
<p dir="auto">Is the motivation security through program isolation? That doesn't quite make sense to me since programs still can do the above things, they just have to do it compositor specifically: <code>hyprctl clients</code> on Hyprland, <code>niri msg windows</code> for Niri, etc. Also, you could just have a Wayland API that requires elevated privileges for doing these things, which the user would have to opt-in to for a specific program.</p>
<p dir="auto">I feel like this design of Wayland causes a lot of fragmentation. There are a lot of tools that are for example Hyprland-only.</p>
<p dir="auto">Could you please enlighten me on why Wayland has this design?</p>
]]></description><link>https://forum.ieu.app/topic/7e0a998f-9f30-44c1-8370-f8a923072820/why-isn-t-there-a-compositor-agnostic-wayland-api-for-window-focusing</link><generator>RSS for Node</generator><lastBuildDate>Sat, 05 Sep 2026 18:16:30 GMT</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://forum.ieu.app/topic/7e0a998f-9f30-44c1-8370-f8a923072820.rss" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"/><pubDate>Wed, 02 Sep 2026 18:44:52 GMT</pubDate><ttl>60</ttl></channel></rss>