Running Jay

From a Virtual Terminal

Switch to a virtual terminal (e.g. ctrl-alt-F2), log in, and run:

~$ jay run

From a Display Manager

To make Jay appear as a session option in your display manager (GDM, SDDM, etc.), install the session file.

If you have the repository checked out:

~$ sudo cp etc/jay.desktop /usr/share/wayland-sessions/jay.desktop

Otherwise, create it manually:

~$ sudo tee /usr/share/wayland-sessions/jay.desktop > /dev/null << 'EOF'
[Desktop Entry]
Name=Jay
Comment=A Wayland Compositor
Exec=jay run
Type=Application
DesktopNames=jay
EOF

Then log out and select Jay from the session list.

Note

If you installed Jay via cargo install, the jay binary lives in ~/.cargo/bin/. Your display manager may not include this directory in its PATH. Either add ~/.cargo/bin to the system PATH, or copy/symlink the binary to /usr/local/bin:

~$ sudo ln -s ~/.cargo/bin/jay /usr/local/bin/jay

The Control Center

Once Jay is running, press alt-c to open the control center – a built-in GUI that lets you inspect and modify most compositor settings without editing config files or running CLI commands. From the control center you can:

• Rearrange monitors with a visual drag-and-drop editor.
• Configure input devices – acceleration, tap behavior, keymaps, and more.
• Switch GPUs and graphics APIs.
• Adjust theme colors, fonts, borders, and gaps with live color pickers.
• Manage idle timeouts and screen locking.
• Search and filter windows and clients.
• Toggle Xwayland and color management.

You can also open it from the command line with jay control-center. See the Control Center chapter for a full tour of every pane.

Default Keybindings

Jay ships with a built-in default configuration. The most important default keybindings are listed below.

Note

Alacritty and bemenu must be installed for the default terminal and launcher bindings to work.

Super_L (left Windows key)

Open Alacritty terminal

alt-p

Open bemenu application launcher

alt-q

Quit Jay

alt-h / j / k / l

Move focus (left/down/up/right)

alt-shift-h / j / k / l

Move focused window

alt-d

Split horizontally

alt-v

Split vertically

alt-u

Toggle fullscreen

alt-shift-f

Toggle floating

alt-c

Open the control center

alt-shift-c

Close focused window

alt-t

Toggle split direction

alt-m

Toggle mono (stacking) layout

alt-f

Focus parent container

alt-shift-r

Reload configuration

The defaults also include ctrl-alt-F1 through F12 for switching virtual terminals, alt-F1 through F12 for switching workspaces, and alt-shift-F1 through F12 for moving windows to workspaces.

Once you create a configuration file, the built-in defaults are entirely replaced – even an empty config file means no shortcuts. Run jay config init to generate a config pre-populated with all the defaults. See the Configuration Overview chapter for details.