i3 FAQ - Individual question feed

i3 FAQ - Individual question feedhttps://faq.i3wm.org/questions/Frequently asked questions and answers about the i3 window managerenCopyright i3, 2012Sun, 29 Nov 2015 18:14:09 +0000How to display content of ~/Desktop on desktophttps://faq.i3wm.org/question/7240/how-to-display-content-of-desktop-on-desktop/ Hello everyone, there's one feature I really miss in i3: The big desktop-environments give you the possibility to let the filemanager display the content of your XDG_DESKTOP_DIR on the desktop. Of course while using a tiling window manager you can't see your desktop most of the time anyway, but it would be great for me to see the outstanding work right after login. Anyways: I tried to use various filemanagers for this purpose, but i3 treats the "desktop-window" as a normal floating window and that's of course not what I want. Is there anybody who can tell me how to do this in i3 or whether this is even possible? Thanks for your solutions and ideas! Greetings Fabian edit: My distribution is Arch Linux if it matters.Mon, 09 Nov 2015 18:34:12 +0000https://faq.i3wm.org/question/7240/how-to-display-content-of-desktop-on-desktop/Comment by fabian for Hello everyone, there's one feature I really miss in i3: The big desktop-environments give you the possibility to let the filemanager display the content of your XDGDESKTOPDIR on the desktop. Of course while using a tiling window manager you can't see your desktop most of the time anyway, but it would be great for me to see the outstanding work right after login. Anyways: I tried to use various filemanagers for this purpose, but i3 treats the "desktop-window" as a normal floating window and that's of course not what I want. Is there anybody who can tell me how to do this in i3 or whether this is even possible? Thanks for your solutions and ideas! Greetings Fabian edit: My distribution is Arch Linux if it matters. https://faq.i3wm.org/question/7240/how-to-display-content-of-desktop-on-desktop/?comment=7252#comment-7252Of course, but this won't solve the actual problem, because these "desktop-windows" are supposed to lay underneath everything else.Tue, 10 Nov 2015 07:23:50 +0000https://faq.i3wm.org/question/7240/how-to-display-content-of-desktop-on-desktop/?comment=7252#comment-7252Comment by Airblader for Hello everyone, there's one feature I really miss in i3: The big desktop-environments give you the possibility to let the filemanager display the content of your XDGDESKTOPDIR on the desktop. Of course while using a tiling window manager you can't see your desktop most of the time anyway, but it would be great for me to see the outstanding work right after login. Anyways: I tried to use various filemanagers for this purpose, but i3 treats the "desktop-window" as a normal floating window and that's of course not what I want. Is there anybody who can tell me how to do this in i3 or whether this is even possible? Thanks for your solutions and ideas! Greetings Fabian edit: My distribution is Arch Linux if it matters. https://faq.i3wm.org/question/7240/how-to-display-content-of-desktop-on-desktop/?comment=7243#comment-7243You can use assignments to make sure desktop windows are tiled and not floated.Mon, 09 Nov 2015 21:25:20 +0000https://faq.i3wm.org/question/7240/how-to-display-content-of-desktop-on-desktop/?comment=7243#comment-7243Answer by Rotech for Hello everyone, there's one feature I really miss in i3: The big desktop-environments give you the possibility to let the filemanager display the content of your XDGDESKTOPDIR on the desktop. Of course while using a tiling window manager you can't see your desktop most of the time anyway, but it would be great for me to see the outstanding work right after login. Anyways: I tried to use various filemanagers for this purpose, but i3 treats the "desktop-window" as a normal floating window and that's of course not what I want. Is there anybody who can tell me how to do this in i3 or whether this is even possible? Thanks for your solutions and ideas! Greetings Fabian edit: My distribution is Arch Linux if it matters. https://faq.i3wm.org/question/7240/how-to-display-content-of-desktop-on-desktop/?answer=7339#post-id-7339iDesk seems to be a good solution used by other minimal WMs to get desktop icons.Mon, 16 Nov 2015 07:48:28 +0000https://faq.i3wm.org/question/7240/how-to-display-content-of-desktop-on-desktop/?answer=7339#post-id-7339Comment by fabian for iDesk seems to be a good solution used by other minimal WMs to get desktop icons. https://faq.i3wm.org/question/7240/how-to-display-content-of-desktop-on-desktop/?comment=7343#comment-7343iDesk seems to be supposed to be used with a static set of icons only. Since I want a dynamic set there was still some work needed, but I found a quite simple solution for this and I'll post an update on my answer above soon. Thank you very much for your answer. This was a very great advice.Mon, 16 Nov 2015 22:04:42 +0000https://faq.i3wm.org/question/7240/how-to-display-content-of-desktop-on-desktop/?comment=7343#comment-7343Answer by i3convert for Hello everyone, there's one feature I really miss in i3: The big desktop-environments give you the possibility to let the filemanager display the content of your XDGDESKTOPDIR on the desktop. Of course while using a tiling window manager you can't see your desktop most of the time anyway, but it would be great for me to see the outstanding work right after login. Anyways: I tried to use various filemanagers for this purpose, but i3 treats the "desktop-window" as a normal floating window and that's of course not what I want. Is there anybody who can tell me how to do this in i3 or whether this is even possible? Thanks for your solutions and ideas! Greetings Fabian edit: My distribution is Arch Linux if it matters. https://faq.i3wm.org/question/7240/how-to-display-content-of-desktop-on-desktop/?answer=7241#post-id-7241This is not directly possible as far as I know. You could still do one of the following: 1. Use the i3 window manager within KDE or some other desktop environment. You can look up information online on how to do this. I suspect then the desktop environment would still display its desktop and that desktop would still be accessible. 2. Write a script that listens to i3 events and if your current workspace gets empty, it brings a permanently open file manager window from the scratchpad. You can remove borders from that file manager to make it more desktop like. When another window is open, the script would move the file manager window back to the scratchpad. These are just two ideas. They both require some work, perhaps a lot. If you play with any of these options, consider writing a blog post somewhere or pasting the solution here, so perhaps someone else can learn from you experience.Mon, 09 Nov 2015 19:25:24 +0000https://faq.i3wm.org/question/7240/how-to-display-content-of-desktop-on-desktop/?answer=7241#post-id-7241Comment by fabian for This is not directly possible as far as I know. You could still do one of the following: <ol> <li>Use the i3 window manager within KDE or some other desktop environment. You can look up information online on how to do this. I suspect then the desktop environment would still display its desktop and that desktop would still be accessible.</li> <li>Write a script that listens to i3 events and if your current workspace gets empty, it brings a permanently open file manager window from the scratchpad. You can remove borders from that file manager to make it more desktop like. When another window is open, the script would move the file manager window back to the scratchpad. </li> </ol> These are just two ideas. They both require some work, perhaps a lot. If you play with any of these options, consider writing a blog post somewhere or pasting the solution here, so perhaps someone else can learn from you experience. https://faq.i3wm.org/question/7240/how-to-display-content-of-desktop-on-desktop/?comment=7253#comment-7253Thank you for your response! Using i3 within another desktop environment isn't a solution for me, because one of the main reasons I switched to i3 was to keep my system as small as possible. Anyways, your second idea is worth a try and I'll work on this in the near future.Tue, 10 Nov 2015 07:28:27 +0000https://faq.i3wm.org/question/7240/how-to-display-content-of-desktop-on-desktop/?comment=7253#comment-7253Answer by fabian for Hello everyone, there's one feature I really miss in i3: The big desktop-environments give you the possibility to let the filemanager display the content of your XDGDESKTOPDIR on the desktop. Of course while using a tiling window manager you can't see your desktop most of the time anyway, but it would be great for me to see the outstanding work right after login. Anyways: I tried to use various filemanagers for this purpose, but i3 treats the "desktop-window" as a normal floating window and that's of course not what I want. Is there anybody who can tell me how to do this in i3 or whether this is even possible? Thanks for your solutions and ideas! Greetings Fabian edit: My distribution is Arch Linux if it matters. https://faq.i3wm.org/question/7240/how-to-display-content-of-desktop-on-desktop/?answer=7302#post-id-7302Unfortunately I couldn't get it to work properly. I stopped working on this, because the solution became more and more ugly and I don't think I would use this in my system on a daily basis. The compromise for me is to have my filemanager automatically open on login on the scratchpad. Not exactly the same, but it's more or less okay for me. Anyways, this is how far I got: **What works:** - the desktop-window has a natural look and fits in - hiding the desktop-window automatically on startup of any application - letting the desktop-window reappear after closing the last application on a workspace *by keystroke* **What does not work** - switching to an empty workspace won't pull the desktop-window with you - closing an application by anything else, but the keystroke won't let the desktop window reappear. - and probably there are many other cases the desktop-window won't re- or disappear properly. - setting the background image (yes, for some reason I wasn't able to do this) **What you need** - Nautilus (after some changes in the scripts other filemanagers will work as well. I tested nemo and nautilus) - xprop - wmctrl - and of course i3wm **How you do it** - Get these scripts and put them into a proper directory - killAndWait AWeh on sprunge.us - desktopCheck aRiE on sprunge.us - Add following lines to your i3 config - for_window[class=.*] exec --no-startup-id desktopCheck - for_window[class=Nautilus] border none floating disable - Replace **kill** with **exec --no-startup-id killAndWait** in the line which defines your kill-keystroke. - start nautilus by executing **nautilus -n --force-desktop** So this is it. Nothing really innovative and I actually don't think this helps anyone, but I might be wrong. Have a nice weekend ByeFri, 13 Nov 2015 16:16:23 +0000https://faq.i3wm.org/question/7240/how-to-display-content-of-desktop-on-desktop/?answer=7302#post-id-7302Comment by fabian for Unfortunately I couldn't get it to work properly. I stopped working on this, because the solution became more and more ugly and I don't think I would use this in my system on a daily basis. The compromise for me is to have my filemanager automatically open on login on the scratchpad. Not exactly the same, but it's more or less okay for me. Anyways, this is how far I got: What works: <ul> <li>the desktop-window has a natural look and fits in</li> <li>hiding the desktop-window automatically on startup of any application</li> <li>letting the desktop-window reappear after closing the last application on a workspace by keystroke</li> </ul> What does not work <ul> <li>switching to an empty workspace won't pull the desktop-window with you</li> <li>closing an application by anything else, but the keystroke won't let the desktop window reappear.</li> <li>and probably there are many other cases the desktop-window won't re- or disappear properly.</li> <li>setting the background image (yes, for some reason I wasn't able to do this)</li> </ul> What you need <ul> <li>Nautilus (after some changes in the scripts other filemanagers will work as well. I tested nemo and nautilus)</li> <li>xprop</li> <li>wmctrl</li> <li>and of course i3wm</li> </ul> How you do it <ul> <li>Get these scripts and put them into a proper directory <ul> <li>killAndWait AWeh on sprunge.us</li> <li>desktopCheck aRiE on sprunge.us</li> </ul></li> <li>Add following lines to your i3 config <ul> <li>for_window[class=.*] exec --no-startup-id desktopCheck</li> <li>for_window[class=Nautilus] border none floating disable</li> </ul></li> <li>Replace kill with exec --no-startup-id killAndWait in the line which defines your kill-keystroke.</li> <li>start nautilus by executing nautilus -n --force-desktop</li> </ul> So this is it. Nothing really innovative and I actually don't think this helps anyone, but I might be wrong. Have a nice weekend Bye https://faq.i3wm.org/question/7240/how-to-display-content-of-desktop-on-desktop/?comment=7303#comment-7303I have not enough karma to post links, so I had to do it this way. Simply type sprunge.us followed by a slash and the given code into your browser to get to the scripts.Fri, 13 Nov 2015 16:21:01 +0000https://faq.i3wm.org/question/7240/how-to-display-content-of-desktop-on-desktop/?comment=7303#comment-7303Answer by fabian for Hello everyone, there's one feature I really miss in i3: The big desktop-environments give you the possibility to let the filemanager display the content of your XDGDESKTOPDIR on the desktop. Of course while using a tiling window manager you can't see your desktop most of the time anyway, but it would be great for me to see the outstanding work right after login. Anyways: I tried to use various filemanagers for this purpose, but i3 treats the "desktop-window" as a normal floating window and that's of course not what I want. Is there anybody who can tell me how to do this in i3 or whether this is even possible? Thanks for your solutions and ideas! Greetings Fabian edit: My distribution is Arch Linux if it matters. https://faq.i3wm.org/question/7240/how-to-display-content-of-desktop-on-desktop/?answer=7501#post-id-7501So here is my solution to display the content of a directory (for me it is ~/Schreibtisch) on your desktop. This solution differentiates only between to types of files: Directories and other. But it's imaginable to add other file types. **You probably won't be able to use my script below whithout doing any changes to it. Especially referring to the ~/Schreibtisch directory used in there and the absolute paths in the lnk files. Maybe I'll upload a more general version of it some day, but I'm quite busy at the moment. Use the script at your own risk.** **Please also note that this is more like an alpha version, because it is not tested very well and there are some minor problems when it comes to multi-monitoring (referring to weird repositioning of the icons).** *This is what you need:* - inotify-tools - iDesk - the script [iDeskIcons](http://sprunge.us/hGcC) - [default directory lnk](http://sprunge.us/JSej) - [default file lnk](http://sprunge.us/KUSj) *And how you set it up:* - put the default directory and file lnk in ~/.idesktop directory and name them *dir.default* respectively *file.default*. - Change the default actions in these lnk files to what you want. Default is launching ranger within terminator for directories and launching xdg-open for files. - put default icons of your choice in ~/.idesktop/icons and name them *dir.png* respectively *file.png* - put the Script *iDeskIcons* into a proper directory - add iDeskIcons to your autostart applications. For example by appending *"exec --no-startup-id iDeskIcons"* to your i3 config And there you go! **Again:** This is not a foolproof step-by-step guide. Doublecheck the script if it is applicable to your situation first. And Again thanks to Rotech for the advice.Sun, 29 Nov 2015 18:14:09 +0000https://faq.i3wm.org/question/7240/how-to-display-content-of-desktop-on-desktop/?answer=7501#post-id-7501