Show HN: Wl-pick – a live window picker for Sway

Category: cli-tool

Tags: wayland, sway, window-manager, rust, screencast

Score: 6.3/10 (Innovation: 6, Technical: 7, Documentation: 6, Utility: 6)

wl-pick is a live window picker for the Sway Wayland compositor that displays a grid of live previews of all open windows and displays, allowing selection via keyboard. It leverages the ext-image-copy-capture-v1 protocol to efficiently render thumbnails without CPU copying, and outputs the selected window ID for scripting or screencast portal integration. It's interesting for its clever use of zero-copy compositor subsurfaces to achieve live previews with minimal overhead.

Target audience: Sway/Wayland users, Linux desktop power users, developers working on Wayland compositors

Repository: https://mil.ad/blog/2026/wl-pick.html · C · MIT · 737 stars

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