/forge

Forge - Tiling and Window Manager for Gnome-Shell

Primary LanguageJavaScriptGNU General Public License v3.0GPL-3.0

Forge is not maintained anymore

Forge is a GNOME Shell extension that provides tiling/window management AND is looking for a new owner or maintainer:

Features

  • Tree-based tiling with vertical and horizontal split containers similar to i3-wm
  • Vim-like keybindings for navigation/swapping windows/moving windows in the containers
  • Drag and drop tiling
  • Support for floating windows, smart gaps and focus hint
  • Customizable shortcuts in extension preferences
  • Some support for multi-display
  • Tiling support per workspace
  • Update hint color scheme from Preferences
  • Stacked tiling layout
  • Works on GNOME 3.36+ (feature-freeze) and 40. X11 and Wayland
  • Swap current window with the last active window
  • Auto Split or Quarter Tiling
  • Show/hide tab decoration via keybinding #180
  • Window resize using keyboard shortcuts

Known Issues / Limitations

  • Does not support dynamic workspaces
  • Does not support vertical monitor setup

Installation

image

Forge Keybinding Defaults

See the acceptable key combinations on the wiki

Action Shortcut
Increase active window size left <Ctrl> + <Super> + y
Decrease active window size left <Ctrl> + <Shift> + <Super> + o
Increase active window size bottom <Ctrl> + <Super> + u
Decrease active window size bottom <Ctrl> + <Shift> + <Super> + i
Increase active window size top <Ctrl> + <Super> + i
Decrease active window size top <Ctrl> + <Shift> + <Super> + u
Increase active window size right <Ctrl> + <Super> + o
Decrease active window size right <Ctrl> + <Shift> + <Super> + y
Open preferences <Super> + period
Toggle tiling mode <Super> + w
Focus left <Super> + h
Focus right <Super> + l
Focus up <Super> + k
Focus down <Super> + j
Swap current window with last active <Super> + Return
Swap active window left <Ctrl> + <Super> + h
Swap active window right <Ctrl> + <Super> + l
Swap active window up <Ctrl> + <Super> + k
Swap active window down <Ctrl> + <Super> + j
Move active window left <Shift> + <Super> + h
Move active window right <Shift> + <Super> + l
Move active window up <Shift> + <Super> + k
Move active window down <Shift> + <Super> + j
Split container horizontally <Super> + z
Split container vertically <Super> + v
Toggle split container <Super> + g
Gap increase <Ctrl> + <Super> + Plus
Gap decrease <Ctrl> + <Super> + Minus
Toggle focus hint <Super> + x
Toggle active workspace tiling <Shift> + <Super> + w
Toggle stacked layout <Shift> + <Super> + s
Toggle tabbed layout <Shift> + <Super> + t
Show/hide tab decoration <Ctrl> + <Alt> + y
Activate tile drag-drop Start dragging - Mod key configuration in prefs
Snap active window left two thirds <Ctrl> + <Alt> + e
Snap active window right two thirds <Ctrl> + <Alt> + t
Snap active window left third <Ctrl> + <Alt> + d
Snap active window right third <Ctrl> + <Alt> + g
Persist toggle floating for active window <Super> + c
Persist toggle floating for active window and its window class <Super><Shift> + c

For any shortcut conflicts, the user has to manually configure those for now from the GNOME Control Center > Keyboard > Customize Shortcuts. #37

Forge Override Paths

  • Window Overrides: $HOME/.config/forge/config/windows.json
  • Stylesheet Overrides: $HOME/.config/forge/stylesheet/forge/stylesheet.css

GNOME Defaults

GNOME Shell has built in support for workspace management and seems to work well - so Forge will not touch those.

User is encouraged to bind the following:

  • Switching/moving windows to different workspaces
  • Switching to numbered, previous or next workspace

Development

  • The main branch contains gnome-4x code.
  • The legacy and gnome-3-36 are the same and is now the source for gnome-3x.

Local Development Setup

  • Install NodeJS 16+
  • Install gettext
  • Run npm install
  • Commands:
# Compile and override the gnome-shell update repo
make dev

# Or run below, and restart the shell manually
make build && make debug && make install

# X11 - build from source and restarts gnome-shell
make test-x

# Wayland - build from source and starts a wayland instance (no restart)
make test-wayland

# Formatting, when you do npm install, 
# husky gets installed should force prettier formatting during commit

npm run format

Contributing

  • Please be nice, friendly and welcoming on discussions/tickets.
  • See existing issues or file a new ticket with title bug: short description if it doesn't exist.

Credits

Thank you to:

  • Forge extension contributors
  • Michael Stapelberg/contributors for i3
  • System76/contributors for pop-shell
  • ReworkCSS/contributors for css-parse/css-stringify