Tutorial: Urxvt: transparency

Urxvt offers two types of transparency for its background:

- A "fake" transparency, that copies the wallpaper to the background of the terminal. (more exactly, the contents of Xorg's root window)
- A "real" transparency, using the composite manager currently running (xcompmgr, dcompmgr, compiz...)

If no composite manager is running, there is no transparency at all if you choose the real (composite) transparency.

Edit your ~/.Xdefaults file and add:

- For real transparency (composite):

urxvt*depth: 32
urxvt*background: rgba:0000/0000/0200/c800

- For fake transparency:

urxvt*transparent: true
urxvt*shading: 30

Note: if you enable the two, the fake transparency takes the precedence over the real transparency (composite).