What is that thing called --no-startup-id?

answered 2012-09-30 19:06:23 +0000

This post is a wiki. Anyone with karma >100 is welcome to improve it.

The release notes say:

i3 now supports startup notifications, meaning that during an application
starts up, the mouse cursor will change to 'watch' on the root window. Also,
the application window will appear on the workspace on which it was launched
(not on the currently focused workspace). Some applications don’t support
startup notifications. If the cursor change bothers you, turn it off by using
the --no-startup-id flag (see the userguide).

Also, the userguide says:

The --no-startup-id parameter disables startup-notification support for this 
particular exec command. With startup-notification, i3 can make sure that a window
appears on the workspace on which you used the exec command. Also, it will change
the X11 cursor to watch (a clock) while the application is launching. So, if an
application is not startup-notification aware (most GTK and Qt using applications
seem to be, though), you will end up with a watch cursor for 60 seconds.

So, in short: use it if your app does not support startup notifications or if you are not starting a graphical application at all (e.g. all shell script) if the watch cursor bothers you.