i3-auto-switch

TLDR: Auto switch between multiple neovim/vim instance or terminal instance in i3.

Sometimes, you forget in which workspace or which tab you your vim/neovim/emacs/vs/sublime/terminal is? This module will focus your vim/neovim for you, and allows you to switch between all your currently opened editor instances with one keyboard shortcut.

How to use

Type your mod+o, it will switch between all your opened vim instance in all workspaces. Of course, a vim best practice is to only have one instance, but we all know that it's not always the case...

Install

Copy bash the below commands into your shell, that's it!

cat <<\EOF | sudo tee /usr/bin/i3-auto-switch
windows_title="$1"
export DISPLAY=":0"
CURRENT=$(xdotool getactivewindow)
# find the next vim windows id, the one next to the id stored in /tmp/previous_vim
xdotool search --all --name "[^]]$windows_title" getwindowname %@
NEXT=$(xdotool search --all --name "[^]]$windows_title" \
  | sort -n \
  | grep -A 1 "$CURRENT" \
  | grep -v "$CURRENT")

# if NEXT is empty, use the first matching windows id
NEXT=$((echo $NEXT ; (xdotool search --all --name "[^]]$windows_title" | sort -n)) | grep -v '^$' | head -n1)

# focus the found windows id
echo i3-msg [id="$NEXT"] focus
i3-msg [id="$NEXT"] focus
EOF

sudo chmod +x /usr/bin/i3-auto-switch

Add the keyboard shortcut to your ~/.config/i3/config

bindsym $mod+o exec "bash -c '/usr/bin/i3-auto-switch vim'"

What if I don't use vim/neovim?

This actually works for any application: emacs, firefox, terminal... Just update the application title pattern in the below i3 configuration. This one is how I switch between all my terminal instance.

bindsym $mod+i exec bash -c '/usr/bin/i3-auto-switch "Term ::"'

Techical details

i3-auto-switch uses xdotool to find the ID of the currently focused vim.
i3-auto-switch uses xdotool to find the ID of all currently opened vim.
i3-auto-switch uses a combinaison grep/sort/head to define what is the next vim to be focused.