Move workspace to primary screen

answered 2015-04-08 13:46:52 +0000

Adaephon
2299 ●3 ●16 ●42

updated 2015-04-08 19:56:59 +0000

The output of xrandr -q shows which, if any, screen is the primary screen. So a small script can be used to retrieve the name of the primary screen and send a workspace to it using i3-msg:

#!/bin/sh
PRIMARY_SCREEN=$( xrandr -q | awk '/ connected primary/ {print $1}' )
if [ -n "$PRIMARY_SCREEN" ] ; then
    i3-msg "move workspace to output $PRIMARY_SCREEN"
else
    # there is no primary screen
    i3-nagbar -m 'No primary screen defined' -t warning
fi

This script can then be bound to a shortcut of your liking:

bindsym $mod+m exec --no-startup-id /path/to/send2primary.sh

You can also use i3's IPC interface to retrieve a list of outputs and move workspaces. For example using ziberna's i3 Python library:

import i3
import sys

activeOutputs = filter(
    lambda x: x[u'active'],
    i3.get_outputs())
try:
    primaryOutput = filter(
        lambda x: x[u'primary'],
        activeOutputs)[0]
except IndexError:
    primaryOutput = None
currentWorkspace = filter(
    lambda x: x[u'focused'],
    i3.get_workspaces())[0]
currentOutput = filter(
    lambda x: x[u'current_workspace'] == currentWorkspace[u'name'], 
    activeOutputs)[0]
otherOutputs = filter(
    lambda x: x[u'name'] != currentOutput[u'name'], 
    activeOutputs)

# if there is a primary screen move to it, 
# else move to the first other output (if there is one)
if primaryOutput:
    i3.move('workspace to output', primaryOutput[u'name']
elif len(otherOutputs) > 0:
    i3.move('workspace to output', otherOutputs[0][u'name']