Product: i3 is a tiling window manager written from scratch.
Intended users: The project primarily targets advanced users and developers.
Window layouts: i3 arranges windows in a tree and supports split, stacking, and tabbed layouts.
Workspaces: Users can group windows into workspaces and associate workspaces with multiple screens.
Configuration: Users can customize key bindings, application startup, workspace assignments, and colors through a configuration file.
Multi-monitor: The project goals include multi-monitor support, including attaching or detaching monitors during operation and rotated monitors.
IPC: i3 provides an inter-process communication interface that accepts commands and supports event subscriptions.
Integrations: The documentation describes i3bar, i3status, and external workspace bar programs such as dzen2.
License: The project describes its software as free and open source under the BSD license.
Release security: The downloads page says releases are cryptographically signed and asks users to verify them before use.
Current release: The downloads page lists version 4.25.1 as the current stable release, dated 2026-02-06.
Installation: The project recommends using packages provided by the user's distribution and also provides Debian and Ubuntu repositories.
Documentation and help: The user guide directs users to GitHub Discussions, IRC, or the mailing list for questions.
Notable limit: The project describes i3 as an X11 window manager and lists GNU/Linux and BSD as its target operating systems.
Price from: Free

Where it ranks on Freedom251

Best Window Management Software in 2026#7 of 64

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Sources

i3wm.org· checked 30 Sept 2026
i3wm.org/docs/userguide.html· checked 30 Sept 2026
i3wm.org/docs/· checked 30 Sept 2026
i3wm.org/downloads/· checked 30 Sept 2026