window-manager xmonad i3 – Populate a Pre-Configured Workspace in i3wm

i3window-managerxmonad

Is it possible with I3Wm to populate an entire workspace with determined size, position and commands for each window?

I know I can do i3-msg "exec xterm -e 'ls; bash'" to create a new window, but I can't specify his position and size.

Maybe there is also an alternative by declaring via JSON the layout or something like that?

Best Answer

Since version 4.8, something like that is part of i3 and there's a detailed guide on the website, but here's a short version:

Once you've set up a workspace like you want it to be, save its layout with

i3-save-tree --workspace <whichever workspace you want> > ~/.i3/layout-ws-<xyz>.json

into the file ~/.i3/layout-ws-xyz.json. You'll then need to edit that file to enable criteria that match windows in the layout.

After that, you can restore that layout with

i3-msg "workspace <your workspace>; append_layout ~/.i3/layout-ws--<xyz>.json"

This will open placeholder windows on that workspace and when a window matching the criteria enabled in the layout file appears, it will be placed in the corresponding placeholder window.

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Open a specific application in a new workspace with i3wm

You can use a small BASH script to do that:

This opens a new workspace (taken from here) and runs a command:

#!/bin/bash
i3-msg workspace $(($(i3-msg -t get_workspaces | tr , '\n' | grep '"num":' | cut -d : -f 2 | sort -rn | head -1) + 1))
sublime-text

Create this script under /usr/bin, name it eg. sublime-new, give it exec permissions and you can now launch it from a terminal emulator. Strange, but when executing the script from dmenu, it first opens the program and then changes the workspace.

Best Answer

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Open a specific application in a *new* workspace with i3wm

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