Configure opacity - Manjaro

Overview

This article shows how to configure background opacity for the kitty terminal emulator using picom and i3.

By defaut, i3 doesn't support composting. Programs like picom add support for it.

In addition, terminal emulators like kitty are hardware accelerated which means there's opportunities to offload from the CPU and save power.

Install & configure picom

  1. Install picom

    sudo pacman -S picom

  2. Move default configuration file to ~/.config/picom/picom.conf

  3. Define opacity rule:

    opacity-rule = ["90:class_g = 'kitty'"];

  4. Save changes

Install & configure kitty

  1. Install picom

    sudo pacman -S kitty

  2. Move default configuration file to ~/.config/kitty/kitty.conf

  3. Set background opacity:

    background_opacity 0.90

  4. Save changes

Configure i3

  1. Open your i3 configuration and add the following line to it:

    exec_always picom

  2. Restart i3.

References