Enhanced Motif Window Manager

EMWM is a fork of the Motif Window Manager with fixes and enhancements. The idea behind this is to provide compatibility with current xorg extensions and applications, without changing the way the window manager looks and behaves. This includes support for multi-monitor setups through Xinerama/Xrandr, UFT-8 support with Xft fonts, and overall better compatibility with software that requires Extended Window Manager Hints.

Additionally a couple of goodies are available in the separate utilities package: XmToolbox, a toolchest like application launcher, which reads it's multi-level menu structure from a simple plain-text file ~/.toolboxrc, and XmSm, a simple session manager that provides session configuration, locking and shutdown/suspend options.

Downloads

Stable Release 1.3 (Mar 11 2025)

emwm-src-1.3.tar.xz EMWM Source Code
emwm-utils-src-1.3.tar.xz Utilities Source Code

You can contribute by making a one-time donation via Stripe, or supporting further development via Liberapay.

See the included README file for build instructions. Everything is usually tested on FreeBSD and some GNU/Linux. If you have a question that isn't answered in the FAQ or manpages, feel free to contact me (Alex) via e-mail: mail@fastestcode.org. There is also a public mailing list at emwm-discuss@lists.sourceforge.net

Notable changes in the latest release:

• The Super key is now recognized as a modifier in emwmrc.
• quit_wm and restart are no longer grayed out in menus non-root window contexts.
• Fixed issues (popup menu and window placement) with multi-row xinerama setups.
• Additional configuration options in xmtoolbox/session.
• XmToolbox now adjusts Session menu contents according to XmSm configuration.

Complete revision history: emwm-changes.txt • utils-changes.txt

Additional Resources

FAQ/Guide on setting up EMWM and Motif based applications in general.

Xresources configuration sample (as seen in some of the screenshots below) is also available here. Additionally, GTK 2/3 (~/.gtkrc-2.0 and ~/.config/gtk-3.0/gtk.css) config files that go along with it (well... as much as possible anyway).

Generic 48x48 application icons. Intended for applications, which don't specify their own icon, or as replacement (see emwm(1) iconImage resource).

Screenshots

Click for a larger picture.

Trivia

Git repositories and distfiles archived/mirrored on SourceForge and Github.

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See also XFile • XImaging • Misc. X Stuff • Homepage About