i3wsr - i3 workspace renamer

i3wsr is a small program that uses I3's IPC Interface to change the name of a workspace based on its contents.

Table of content

• Installation
  • Arch linux
• Usage
• i3 configuration
• Configuration / options
  • Aliases
  • WM Property
    • Class
    • Instance
    • Name
  • Icons
  • Separator
  • Default icon
  • No icon names
  • No names
  • Remove duplicates
• Sway
• Testing
• Attribution

Details

The chosen name for a workspace is a composite of the WM_CLASS X11 window property for each window in a workspace. In action it would look something like this:

Requirements

i3wsr requires XCB, if you get compilation errors mentioning xcb, you might need to install libxcb. On Ubuntu for example you'd install:

sudo apt-get install libxcb1-dev

Refer to #18 for more.

Installation

Rust, and Cargo is required, and i3wsr can be installed using cargo like so:

cargo install i3wsr

Or alternatively, you can build a release binary,

cargo build --release

Then place the built binary, located at target/release/i3wsr, somewhere on your $path.

Arch linux

If you're running Arch you can install either stable, or latest from AUR thanks to reddit user u/OniTux.

Usage

Just launch the program and it'll listen for events if you are running I3. Another option is to put something like this in your i3 config

# cargo
exec_always --no-startup-id $HOME/.cargo/bin/i3wsr
# AUR
exec_always --no-startup-id /usr/bin/i3wsr

i3 configuration

This program depends on numbered workspaces, since we're constantly changing the workspace name. So your I3 configuration need to reflect this:

bindsym $mod+1 workspace number 1
assign [class="(?i)firefox"] number 1

If you're like me and don't necessarily bind your workspaces to only numbers, or you want to keep a part of the name constant you can do like this:

bindsym $mod+q workspace number 1:[Q]
assign [class="(?i)firefox"] number 1:[Q]

This way the workspace would look something like this when it gets changed:

1:[Q] Emacs|Firefox

You can take this a bit further by using a bar that trims the workspace number and be left with only

[Q] Emacs|Firefox

Configuration / options

Configuration for i3wsr can be done using cmd flags, or a config file. A config file allows for more nuanced settings, and is required to configure icons and aliases. By default i3wsr looks for the config file at $XDG_HOME/.config/i3swr/config.toml or $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/i3swr/config.toml. To specify another path, pass it to the --config option on invocation:

i3wsr --config ~/my_config.toml

Example config can be found in assets/example_config.toml.

Aliases

Sometimes a WM property can be overly verbose, so its possible to match a class name with an alias:

[aliases]

# Exact match
"^Google-chrome-unstable$" = "Chrome-dev"

# Substring match
firefox = "Firefox"

# Escape if you want to match literal periods
"Org\\.gnome\\.Nautilus" = "Nautilus"

Alias keys uses regex for matching, so it's possible to get creative:

# This will match gimp regardless of version number reported in class
"Gimp-\\d\\.\\d\\d" = "Gimp"

Remember to quote anything but [a-zA-Z], and to escape your slashes. Due to rust string escapes if you want a literal backslash use two slashes \\d.

WM Property

i3wsr supports 3 window properties currently:

[general]

wm_property = "instance"

Possible options are class, instance, and name, and will default to class if not present.

You can alternatively supply cmd argument:

i3wsr --wm-property instance

Class

This is the default, and the most succinct.

Instance

Use WM_INSTANCE instead of WM_CLASS when assigning workspace names, instance is usually more specific. i3wsr will try to match icon with instance, and if that fail, will fall back to class.

A use case for this option could be launching chromium --app="https://web.whatsapp.com", and then assign a different icon to whatsapp in your config file:

[icons]
"WhatsApp" = "🗩"

Aliases will also match on instance:

[aliases]
"web\\.whatsapp\\.com" = "WhatsApp"

Name

Uses WM_NAME instead of WM_CLASS, this option is very verbose and relies on regex matching of aliases to be of any use.

A use-case is running some terminal application, and as default i3wsr will only display class regardless of whats running in the terminal.

So you could do something like this:

[general]
wm_property = "name"

[aliases]
".*mutt$" = "Mutt"

You could display whatever the terminal is running, but this comes with one caveat: i3 has no way of knowing what happens in a terminal and starting say mutt will not trigger any IPC events. The alias will take effect whenever i3 receives a window or workspace event.

It should be possible to write a launcher script, that wraps whatever command your running with a custom i3 ipc trigger event. If anyone figures out a nice way of doing it let me know.

Icons

You can configure icons for your WM property, a very basic preset for font-awesome is configured, to enable it use the option --icons awesome (requires font-awesome to be installed).

A more in depth icon configuration can be setup by using a configuration file. In there you can define icons for whatever title you'd like.

[icons]
Firefox = "🌍"

# Use quote when matching anything other than [a-zA-Z]
"Org.gnome.Nautilus" = "📘"

i3wsr tries to match an icon with an alias first, then falls back to window class, so a config like this is valid:

[aliases]
"Gimp-\\d\\.\\d\\d" = "Gimp"

[icons]
Gimp = "📄"

A font that provides icons is of course recommended, like font-awesome. Make sure your bar has that font configured.

Separator

Normally i3wsr uses the pipe character | between class names in a workspace, but a custom separator can be configured in the config file:

[general]
separator = "  "

Default icon

To use a default icon when no other is defined use:

[general]
default_icon = "💀"

No icon names

To display names only if icon is not available, you can use the --no-icon-names flag, or enable it in your config file like so:

[options]
no_icon_names = true

No names

If you don't want i3wsr to display names at all, you can use the --no-names flag, or enable it in your config file like so:

[options]
no_names = true

Remove duplicates

If you want duplicates removed from workspaces use either the flag --remove-duplicates, or configure it in the options section of the config file:

[options]
remove_duplicates = true

Sway

Check Pedro Scaff's port swaywsr.

Testing

To run tests locally Vagrant is required. Run script/run_tests.sh to run tests on ubuntu xenial.

Attribution

This program would not be possible without i3ipc-rs, a rust library for controlling i3-wm through its IPC interface and rust-xcb, a set of rust bindings and wrappers for XCB.