wsmgr-for-i3

wsmgr-for-i3 (workspace manager for i3) is a Go GTK3 program to manage i3 workspaces. It allows you to re-order and re-name workspaces easily.

You can see the workspace manager in action in this 4-minute introduction video:

Maintenance level: best-effort. I wrote this program to scratch a personal itch. Improvements are welcome, but should first be discussed.

Installation

Make sure you have Go 1.16 or newer installed.

Then, run:

go install github.com/stapelberg/wsmgr-for-i3/cmd/...@latest

i3 configuration

I like to start wsmgr like so:

bindsym $mod+Tab exec --no-startup-id GTK_IM_MODULE=ibus SWT_GTK3=1 GDK_SCALE=2 GDK_DPI_SCALE=0.5 GDK_SYNCHRONIZE=1 PATH=$HOME/go/bin:$PATH wsmgr

(Please adjust the environment variables as you need. I have collected them over the years.)

Also, to respect a workspace’s configured working directory, you need to prefix the key bindings you want to change with wsmgr-cwd, like so:

bindsym $mod+Return exec exec ~/go/bin/wsmgr-cwd i3-sensible-terminal

Navigating between workspaces

Double-click the workspace number to navigate to that workspace.

Re-ordering workspaces

Drag & Drop a workspace to its desired position to re-order all workspaces.

Loading workspaces

Declare a workspace by creating a directory in ~/.config/wsmgr-for-i3:

mkdir -p ~/.config/wsmgr-for-i3/kint

wsmgr now offers to load this workspace:

The following sections explain the configurable behavior for loading a workspace.

Workspace name

The i3 workspace name will be set from the directory name:

Working directory

If present, a cwd symlink:

will be used by wsmgr-cwd to start programs in the workspace’s cwd.
will be used for executable files.

Example: start programs in the most recent git repository:

ln -s ~/kint/chibios-teensy41 ~/.config/wsmgr-for-i3/kint/cwd

Chrome window from bookmark folder

If present, a chrome-rewindow file contains the name of a chrome bookmark folder to restore (implemented in wsmgr-chrome-rewindow)

Example: open all tabs from the “kint” bookmark folder:

echo kint > ~/.config/wsmgr-for-i3/kint/chrome-rewindow

Executables (programs and scripts)

Shell scripts: any executable file (symlinks are dereferenced) will be executed. They will all be executed in parallel, and there is no defined order.

Example: start Emacs when loading the workspace:

ln -s ~/configfiles/emacsclient ~/.config/wsmgr-for-i3/kint/