kwin-clicktile

Mouse-driven grid tiling for KWin on Wayland.

kwin-clicktile is a C++ KWin effect. While you are dragging a window by its titlebar, right-click starts a tile selection overlay. Move across the monitor grid, then release left click or right-click again to place the window into the selected tile range.

Takes inspiration from the Windows program WindowGrid.

Build And Toggle

You will need the following packages to run the build process on install.

# Debian / Ubuntu / KDE Neon (Plasma 6)
sudo apt install cmake g++ extra-cmake-modules kwin-dev qt6-base-dev-tools libepoxy-dev

# Fedora (Plasma 6)
sudo dnf install cmake gcc-c++ extra-cmake-modules kwin-devel libepoxy-dev qt6-qtbase-private-devel

# Arch Linux (Plasma 6)
sudo pacman -S cmake extra-cmake-modules kwin qt6-base

Use the root script for both install and uninstall:

./install_uninstall.sh

The script checks the current machine state. If kwin-clicktile is not installed, it builds, installs, and asks KWin to load it. If it is already installed, it unloads KWin and removes the installed plugin files.

Explicit modes are also available:

./install_uninstall.sh --install
./install_uninstall.sh --uninstall
./install_uninstall.sh --status

Configure

Open:

System Settings > Window Management > Desktop Effects > kwin-clicktile

Settings:

• Per-monitor columns and rows
• Overlay grid, selection fill, and selection border colors

Emergency unload:

qdbus6 org.kde.KWin /Effects org.kde.kwin.Effects.unloadEffect kwin_clicktile

Source Layout

• src/effect.*: effect lifecycle and KWin integration
• src/input*: global pointer observation and native drag tracking
• src/tiles.cpp: tile selection, output geometry, and final placement
• src/overlay.cpp: passive paint-screen grid overlay
• src/settings.*: KWin config keys, defaults, and monitor settings
• kcm/: System Settings module