yshui/picom

Health v2 · maintenance only

Flags: no_license

Adoption not part of the score

4779 stars · 632 forks observed · 2026-08-28

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-29, confidence not recorded

picom is a lightweight X11 compositor forked from Compton that adds window effects like shadows, transparency, blur, and animations. It is written in C and runs as a standalone daemon on Xorg-based Linux/BSD desktops.

Use cases

• add drop shadows and transparency to windows on X11
• enable blur behind terminal and app windows
• animate window open/close and opacity changes on my desktop
• reduce screen tearing with vsync on Xorg
• replace xcompmgr/compton with a maintained compositor
• make inactive windows dimmed on a tiling window manager

When to choose

• you run an X11/Xorg session and want visual effects like shadows, blur, fading, or animations
• you use a minimal window manager (i3, bspwm, dwm) that lacks built-in compositing
• you need a lightweight, configurable compositor with per-window rules and OpenGL backend

When to avoid

• you are on Wayland, where picom does not apply
• you need a full desktop environment rather than a compositor
• you want a zero-configuration experience; picom requires config files and tuning

Facets

application · maturity active

graphics animation gui desktop-applications operating-systems graphics bsd c compositor x11 xorg xcb compton-fork window-shadows blur transparency linux

Member repositories

For agents

markdown · JSON · MCP: product_card(name="yshui/picom")