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Xfce4 Composite Editor is a tool that lets you easily tweak various Xfce window manager compositor settings that are not available in the Window Manager Tweaks settings panel.

Xfce4 Composite Editor

The tool has been created by Keith Hedger, the Xfce Theme Manager developer, and it allows changing the following composite settings:
  • shadow opacity;
  • Shadow delta X, Y, width and height;
  • move window opacity;
  • inactive window opacity;
  • frame opacity;
  • resize window opacity;
  • popup opacity.

Some settings are live, meaning that they are applied instantly, while others require a window manager restart which can easily be done from Xfce WM Composite Editor dialog.

The tool also allows you to enable/disable composite, dock shadow, frame shadow or popup shadow.

Xfce4 Composite Editor

These settings are available in the XConf Settings Editor but, according to the Xfce4 Composite Editor developer, "the xconf settings editor is one of the most awkward GUI's I have ever used as you have to select the xfwm4 channel, expand the tree, scroll to the option you want, select it, click edit, change the setting and click save, then the tree gets collapsed and you have to start again". Using this tool should make it a lot easier to change all these Xfce Compositor settings.


Install Xfce4 Composite Editor


Xubuntu users can install Xfce4 Composite Editor from the same PPA as Xfce Theme Manager. To add the PPA and install it in Xubuntu, use the following commands:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:rebuntu16/other-stuff
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install xfce4-composite-editor
Once installed, you can access Xfce4 Composite Editor from the Xfce Settings Manager.

Arch Linux users can install Xfce4 Composite Editor via AUR.

For other Linux distributions, download Xfce4 Composite Editor from GTK-Apps.