RIVER(1) General Commands Manual RIVER(1)

river - non-monolithic Wayland compositor

river [options]

River is a non-monolithic Wayland compositor, it does not combine the compositor and window manager into one program. Instead, users can choose any window manager implementing the river-window-management-v1 protocol.

This means that river is not useful without a compatible window manager. A list of compatible window managers can be found on the river wiki: https://codeberg.org/river/wiki/src/branch/main/pages/wm-list.md

-h

Print a help message and exit.

-version

Print the version number and exit.

-c shell_command

Override the default search paths for an init executable: instead shell_command will be run with /bin/sh -c. See the CONFIGURATION section for more details.

-log-level [error|warning|info|debug]

Set the log level of river. At the error log level, only errors are logged. At the debug log level, everything is logged including verbose debug messages.

-no-xwayland

Disable Xwayland at runtime even if river has been built with support.

The following keybindings are always active:

Ctrl+Alt+F1 - Ctrl+Alt+F12

Switch to VT 1-12

Window managers may add additional keybindings but cannot override these builtin keybindings.

On startup river will run an executable file at $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/river/init if such an executable exists. If $XDG_CONFIG_HOME is not set, ~/.config/river/init will be used instead.

The executable init file will be run as a process group leader after river's Wayland server is initialized but before entering the main loop. On exit, river will send SIGTERM to this process group.

Usually this executable is a shell script which starts the user's window manager and any other long-running programs. For example, kanshi(1) could be started to manage output configuration.

Maintained by Isaac Freund <mail@isaacfreund.com> who is assisted by open source contributors. For more information about river's development, see https://isaacfreund.com/software/river.

2026-08-16