i3 FAQ - Individual question feed

Start program in specific workspace using terminal/bash-script

Fri, 19 Sep 2014 10:44:27 +0000

Hi, I have made a script (used for debugging a multi-user web portal) to run multiple instances of Firefox (each with its own profile). Is it possible to specify the workspace when starting a program from the terminal/script, so I am able to e.g. start the first 10 instances in workspace 1, the next 10 instances in workspace 2 etc.? bash-script: for i in {1..40; do sleep 0.1; firefox -p $i -new-instance "website.com/login" & done Kind regards, Morten

Answer by cee for
Hi, I have made a script (used for debugging a multi-user web portal) to run multiple instances of Firefox (each with its own profile). Is it possible to specify the workspace when starting a program from the terminal/script, so I am able to e.g. start the first 10 instances in workspace 1, the next 10 instances in workspace 2 etc.?

bash-script: for i in {1..40; do sleep 0.1; firefox -p $i -new-instance "website.com/login" & done

Kind regards, Morten

Fri, 19 Sep 2014 14:30:11 +0000

You could use something like this: i3-msg workspace 5 && sleep 0.1 && chromium - first switch to workspace 1 (or whatever yours is called) - then wait a little (not 100% sure if it's necessary) - then start your browser This is probably not the best possible way, but should get you started.

Comment by MortenJ for

You could use something like this:

i3-msg workspace 5 && sleep 0.1 && chromium

first switch to workspace 1 (or whatever yours is called)
then wait a little (not 100% sure if it's necessary)
then start your browser

This is probably not the best possible way, but should get you started.

Sun, 21 Sep 2014 12:08:33 +0000

Thanks, that works great. Final script: for (( i=1; i <= 20; i++ )) do WRKSPACE=$((($i-1)/5 + 2)) i3-msg workspace $WRKSPACE sleep 1 firefox -p $i -new-instance "website.com" & done