bspwm_window_titles daemon

This script gives you the possibility to show all window titles on your current bspwm desktop on your bar. Allows for directly clicking on a window name to focus the window and styling (with polybar format tags).

Works with multi head and has been tested with polybar. It needs to be launched as a daemon inside your bspwmrc.

Reason

I use bspwm's monocle mode a lot and I kept forgetting what windows are on which desktop, cycling between them is a bit annyoing.

This scripts solves this by showing all of the window titles in my bar and allows me switch between them with mouse clicks as well.

How it looks

Shows a vertical list of window titles. [ window name ] denotes currently active window.

It shows icon before each window title as well. Those are are Material Icons and bspwm_window_titles_icon_map.txt keeps a map of Window class [Icon].

There is a fallback icon for when there is no icon for current program. You can supply your own icons in the font of your choosing - the one you use in your polybar.

How it works

Subscribes to bpswm events
Each event (node_focus, node_remove, desktop_focus) re-generates window titles for each currently visible desktop on all monitors
Puts window titles in text files for use in a bar
Left/Right click on window titles will focus previous/next window (polybar)

Supported options

p - turns on polybar mode - Clicking on window name will focus the window with that name
m - monocle mode - Won't print window names when there is only one window on deskto
f - format - You can influence how the window name final output with polybar format tags. More on that below. Defaults to

{NAME} # normal window name
[ {NAME} ] # focused window name

i - icon map path - Custom path to file containing icon map - defaults to ./bspwm_window_titles_icon_map.txt relative to the folder where bspwm_window_titles is located
h - Display help
V - Display script version and exit

Formatting

In case you would like to format the window names with polybar format tags, you need to start up the script in following way

bspwm_window_title -f "%{F#f00}{NAME}%{F-}" -f "{NAME}"

The order matters - first format is focused window name, second is for normal window name. Focused window name font color will be red and normal window font color as is set for label of your custom module. You can use any polybar format tags you want.

Prerequisites

Programs:

bspwm
polybar
wmctrl

Fonts (needed only if using default config):

JetBrains Mono (if using default config)
Material icons

Fonts can be replaced, but you will need to provide your own WINDOWCLASS -> ICON mappings to be able to display icons, more on that below.

Installation

Installation guide assumes you are using polybar, have some sort of launch_polybar.sh script (which takes care of restarting polybar) and a multi-monitor setup - should work with single monitor setup too.

Download or git clone this repo
Copy bspwm/bspwm_window_titles.sh.sh and bspwm/bspwm_window_titles_icon_map.txt to ~/.config/bspwm
chmod +x bspwm_window_titles.sh
Create a symlink ~/bin ln -s ../.config/bspwm/bspwm_window_titles.sh ~/bin/bspwm_window_titles
Add below to your ~/.config/bspwm/bspwmrc:

# restart window titles daemon
while pgrep -u $UID -f bspwm_window_titles >/dev/null; do pkill -f bspwm_window_titles; done
bspwm_window_titles &

Create (or edit) your launch_polybar.sh so it look similar to the below. I am using 3 separate bars, you could be using single one. Note the for loop exporting dynamic values for monitors in order bspwm sees them. This part is pretty important as it ensure that the right window titles will show on the right monitor.

CPID=$(pgrep -x polybar)

if [ -n "${CPID}" ] ; then
  kill -TERM ${CPID}
fi

# add window titles
# using bspc query here to get monitors in the same order bspwm sees them
for m in $( bspc query -M --names ); do
    index=$((index + 1))
    export P_BSPWM_WINDOW_CMD="tail ${HOME}/.cache/bspwm_windows_${index}.txt"

    MONITOR=$m polybar --reload right &
    MONITOR=$m polybar --reload left &
    MONITOR=$m polybar --reload center &
done

Add the below module (and sample bar) to your polybar config and adjust to match your setup. If you want to change the icon font, take a look at 'Customization' section of this readme.

## base setup
[bar/base]
monitor                       = ${env:MONITOR}
locale                        = en_US.UTF-8
dpi                           = 96
height                        = 18
offset-y                      = 8
font-0                        = JetBrains Mono:style=Regular:size=10;2
font-1                        = Material Icons:style=Regular:size=9;2
background                    = #000
foreground                    = #FFF


## center bar
[bar/center]
inherit                       = bar/base
width                         = 60%
offset-x                      = 350

fixed-center                  = true
modules-center                = windowlist

## module
[module/windowlist]
type = custom/script
exec = ${env:P_BSPWM_WINDOW_CMD}
interval = 0.5
format = <label>
format-background = #000
format-foreground = #FFF

Restart bspwm

Customization

Add your own icons

Add a new line in bspwm/bspwm_window_titles_icon_map.txt

WINDOWCLASS ICON

Window class

To get window class name (you need xprop):

xprop | grep WM_CLASS

Click on program you would like to get the class of.

Sample output:

WM_CLASS(STRING) = "code", "Code"

Window class is Code.

Icon

To copy icon font to your clipboard you can use gucharmap as explained in polybar's wiki.

melangue/bspwm-window-titles