https://faq.i3wm.org/questions/Frequently asked questions and answers about the i3 window managerenCopyright i3, 2012Thu, 15 Oct 2015 12:57:08 +0000https://faq.i3wm.org/question/203/how-to-set-the-urgency-hint-in-a-shell/Michael gives a great talk about i3 on Google Tech Talks and tells about the urgency hint in a shell. However, no information is given how to actually do that - whenever a process is complete, I want to set the urgency hint in that shell, just as shown in the talk. The time link to the presentation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnYN2CTb1hM&t=25m48sWed, 04 Jul 2012 12:14:08 +0000https://faq.i3wm.org/question/203/how-to-set-the-urgency-hint-in-a-shell/https://faq.i3wm.org/question/203/how-to-set-the-urgency-hint-in-a-shell/?answer=205#post-id-205Here's a complete guide: # Setting urgency hints in i3 You need the following settings in your i3 config to have the workspace indicator go red and draw a red border around your windows which have the urgency hint set: client.urgent #2f343a #900000 #ffffff #900000 bar { colors { urgent_workspace #2f343a #900000 #ffffff } } # Setting urgency hints in your terminal emulator According to kempurpy, only urxvt and terminator support this. As I only use urxvt, I needed to set the following in my Xdefaults: urxvt*urgentOnBell: true # Setting urgency hints in your shell urxvt will now set the urgency hint whenever a bell is encountered; to do that with bash, I simply use the following alias: alias enable_alert='PS1="$PS1\a"' I now can make any shell an alerting shell by simply typing "enable_alert". # Putting it all together - reload i3 or restart it to have the new configuration active - Make sure your .Xdefaults are in place, you can use xrdb to load the new file: xrdb ~/.Xdefaults - Set PS1 to output the bell Hint: If you are using debian, and using urxvt*urgentOnBell in your config as well as x-terminal-emulator (which is called by i3-sensible-terminal) - that won't work. In that case, use x-terminal-emulator*urgentOnBell or *.URxvt.urgentOnBell.Wed, 04 Jul 2012 13:02:21 +0000https://faq.i3wm.org/question/203/how-to-set-the-urgency-hint-in-a-shell/?answer=205#post-id-205https://faq.i3wm.org/question/203/how-to-set-the-urgency-hint-in-a-shell/?comment=2622#comment-2622If you add the bell to PS1 it looks like it will raise urgent whenever the terminal is resized (which is annoying with a tiling window manager). I've found that appending it to PROMPT_COMMAND (when using bash) works better.Fri, 27 Sep 2013 22:59:13 +0000https://faq.i3wm.org/question/203/how-to-set-the-urgency-hint-in-a-shell/?comment=2622#comment-2622https://faq.i3wm.org/question/203/how-to-set-the-urgency-hint-in-a-shell/?answer=3633#post-id-36331. Set `URxvt.urgentOnBell` in your .Xresources file 2. Start a long-running command 3. Type `ctrl+t` 4. Do something else for awhile... 5. Urgent!Wed, 09 Apr 2014 10:56:00 +0000https://faq.i3wm.org/question/203/how-to-set-the-urgency-hint-in-a-shell/?answer=3633#post-id-3633https://faq.i3wm.org/question/203/how-to-set-the-urgency-hint-in-a-shell/?comment=6951#comment-6951This also works for xterm, given that you added `XTerm*bellIsUrgent: true` to your `.Xresources`.Thu, 15 Oct 2015 12:57:08 +0000https://faq.i3wm.org/question/203/how-to-set-the-urgency-hint-in-a-shell/?comment=6951#comment-6951https://faq.i3wm.org/question/203/how-to-set-the-urgency-hint-in-a-shell/?comment=5086#comment-5086This only applies to urxvtWed, 03 Dec 2014 00:36:34 +0000https://faq.i3wm.org/question/203/how-to-set-the-urgency-hint-in-a-shell/?comment=5086#comment-5086https://faq.i3wm.org/question/203/how-to-set-the-urgency-hint-in-a-shell/?answer=204#post-id-204The simplest way is to have the terminal emulator set urgent on bell (how to do so depends on the TE) and then to include a bell character (\a) in your prompt. As the urgency hint is ignored for focused windows, this won't bother you with short processes.Wed, 04 Jul 2012 12:22:21 +0000https://faq.i3wm.org/question/203/how-to-set-the-urgency-hint-in-a-shell/?answer=204#post-id-204https://faq.i3wm.org/question/203/how-to-set-the-urgency-hint-in-a-shell/?answer=5183#post-id-5183This is working in my Ubuntu with XMonad, in gnome-terminal, bash: 1. install `xdotool` 2. build [seturgent](https://github.com/hiltjo/seturgent) 3. create `~/bin/pid-urgent`, make sure `~/bin` is in your `$PATH`, and make the script executable: #!/bin/bash # --any and --name present only as a work-around, see: https://github.com/jordansissel/xdotool/issues/14 ids=$(xdotool search --any --pid "$1" --name "dummy") for id in $ids; do seturgent "$id" done 4. Set the the shell variable `PROMPT_COMMAND='pid-urgent $PPID'` at login. (I would like to be able to set it only for the next prompt, but that will be for another time.) Support for several bash children to the same terminal is bad. In my setup, there is only one `gnome-terminal` running, even if I start several terminal windows. Popping up the urgent window goes to the first terminal I opened. Mon, 15 Dec 2014 15:23:51 +0000https://faq.i3wm.org/question/203/how-to-set-the-urgency-hint-in-a-shell/?answer=5183#post-id-5183https://faq.i3wm.org/question/203/how-to-set-the-urgency-hint-in-a-shell/?comment=5186#comment-5186Step 4 will probably only work if the shell is a `bash`. For `zsh` you'll have to edit the `precmd` hook function, either directly or by using `add-zsh-hook`.Mon, 15 Dec 2014 20:35:23 +0000https://faq.i3wm.org/question/203/how-to-set-the-urgency-hint-in-a-shell/?comment=5186#comment-5186