i3 FAQ - Individual question feed

How to disable screensaver/monitor standby when fullscreen?

Sat, 12 Jul 2014 15:13:25 +0000

The real question is: How to detect if a window has gone fullscreen (and out)? I can turn off screensaver by doing `xset s off`, but will like to detect if a window has gone fullscreen. That way I can maintain the screensaver timeout for normal work and only turn it off when watching video.

Comment by smallming for
The real question is: How to detect if a window has gone fullscreen (and out)?

I can turn off screensaver by doing `xset s off`, but will like to detect if a window has gone fullscreen. That way I can maintain the screensaver timeout for normal work and only turn it off when watching video.

Sat, 19 Jul 2014 07:32:09 +0000

@Adaephon It is mainly videos, which can come in the form of different video players as well as browsers.

Comment by Adaephon for
The real question is: How to detect if a window has gone fullscreen (and out)?

I can turn off screensaver by doing `xset s off`, but will like to detect if a window has gone fullscreen. That way I can maintain the screensaver timeout for normal work and only turn it off when watching video.

Mon, 14 Jul 2014 09:00:10 +0000

Do you want this for any program in fullscreen mode or is your main concern in this watching movies without interruption? If its mainly movies, many movie players have options to turn of screen savers while playing. Which player are you using?

Answer by TonyC for
The real question is: How to detect if a window has gone fullscreen (and out)?

I can turn off screensaver by doing `xset s off`, but will like to detect if a window has gone fullscreen. That way I can maintain the screensaver timeout for normal work and only turn it off when watching video.

Wed, 16 Jul 2014 05:18:38 +0000

[This script](https://github.com/acrisci/i3ipc-python/blob/master/examples/disable-standby-fs.py) from the [i3ipc-python](https://github.com/acrisci/i3ipc-python) project will do this automatically for you. Call this from your config with an `exec_always` directive. This may require the development version of i3 because of a bug where we don't get the fullscreen event when a fullscreen window closes. Let me know if it works for you.

Comment by smallming for
This script from the i3ipc-python project will do this automatically for you.

Call this from your config with an `exec_always` directive. This may require the development version of i3 because of a bug where we don't get the fullscreen event when a fullscreen window closes.

Let me know if it works for you.

Sat, 19 Jul 2014 07:37:21 +0000

Nice library there! Just a suggestion: it will be nice if there is a deb for i3ipc-python like i3ipc-glib, or making it available on pip, to automatically fulfill the dependencies.

Comment by TonyC for
This script from the i3ipc-python project will do this automatically for you.

Call this from your config with an `exec_always` directive. This may require the development version of i3 because of a bug where we don't get the fullscreen event when a fullscreen window closes.

Let me know if it works for you.

Sat, 19 Jul 2014 20:12:21 +0000

Thanks. The python overrides are not required to run this script. I think I will probably end up bringing the python portion into i3ipc-glib itself and just using i3ipc-python as a meta package and examples repository.

Answer by smallming for
The real question is: How to detect if a window has gone fullscreen (and out)?

I can turn off screensaver by doing `xset s off`, but will like to detect if a window has gone fullscreen. That way I can maintain the screensaver timeout for normal work and only turn it off when watching video.

Sat, 19 Jul 2014 07:44:56 +0000

As suggested, I wrote a script to parse the output of `i3-msg -t get_tree` and included it below for reference. import json import subprocess i3_cmd = 'i3-msg -t get_tree' def get_layout(): get_tree = subprocess.Popen(i3_cmd.split(), stdout=subprocess.PIPE) stdout = get_tree.communicate()[0] try: tree = json.loads(stdout) except ValueError: tree = {} return tree def any_fullscreen_window(node): if node['window']: return node['fullscreen_mode'] == 1 return any(any_fullscreen_window(n) for n in node.get('nodes', '')) def xset_screensaver(arg): subprocess.call('xset s %s' % arg) if __name__ == '__main__': if any_fullscreen_window(get_layout()): xset_screensaver('off') else: xset_screensaver('on')

Answer by tigrezno for
The real question is: How to detect if a window has gone fullscreen (and out)?

I can turn off screensaver by doing `xset s off`, but will like to detect if a window has gone fullscreen. That way I can maintain the screensaver timeout for normal work and only turn it off when watching video.

Mon, 14 Jul 2014 19:09:08 +0000

You can make a script and parse the output of i3-msg -t get\_tree. There you should look for "fullscreen_mode".