3 Michael Stapelberg <michael+i3@stapelberg.de>
6 This document contains all information you need to configuring and using the i3
7 window manager. If it does not, please contact me on IRC, Jabber or E-Mail and
10 For a complete listing of the default keybindings, please see the manpage.
14 === Creating terminals and moving around
16 A very basic operation is to create a new terminal. By default, the keybinding
17 for that is Mod1+Enter, that is Alt+Enter in the default configuration. By
18 pressing Mod1+Enter, a new terminal will be created and it will fill the whole
19 space which is available on your screen.
21 image:single_terminal.png[Single terminal]
23 It is important to keep in mind that i3 uses a table to manage your windows. At
24 the moment, you have exactly one column and one row which leaves you with one
25 cell. In this cell, there is a container in which your newly opened terminal is.
27 If you now open another terminal, you still have only one cell. However, the
28 container has both of your terminals.
30 image:two_terminals.png[Two terminals]
32 To move the focus between the two terminals, you use the direction keys which
33 you may know from the editor +vi+. However, in i3, your homerow is used for
34 these keys (in +vi+, the keys are shifted to the left by one for compatibility
35 with most keyboard layouts). Therefore, +Mod1+J+ is left, +Mod1+K+ is down, +Mod1+L+
36 is up and `Mod1+;` is right. So, to switch between the terminals, use +Mod1+K+ or
39 To create a new row/column, you can simply move a terminal (or any other window)
40 to the direction you want to expand your table. So, let’s expand the table to
41 the right by pressing `Mod1+Shift+;`.
43 image:two_columns.png[Two columns]
45 === Changing mode of containers
47 A container can be in two modes at the moment (more to be implemented later):
48 +default+ or +stacking+. In default mode, clients are sized so that every client
49 gets an equal amount of space of the container. In stacking mode, only one
50 focused client of the container is displayed and you get a list of windows
51 at the top of the container.
53 To switch the mode, press +Mod1+h+ for stacking and +Mod1+e+ for default.
55 === Toggling fullscreen mode for a window
57 To display a window fullscreen or to go out of fullscreen mode again, press
60 === Opening other applications
62 Aside from opening applicatios from a terminal, you can also use the handy
63 +dmenu+ which is opened by pressing +Mod1+v+ by default. Just type the name
64 (or a part of it) of the application which you want to open. It has to be in
65 your +$PATH+ for that to work.
67 Furthermore, if you have applications you open very frequently, you can also
68 create a keybinding for it. See the section "Configuring i3" for details.
72 If an application does not provide a mechanism to close (most applications
73 provide a menu, the escape key or a shortcut like +Control+W+ to close), you
74 can press +Mod1+Shift+q+ to kill a window. For applications which support
75 the WM_DELETE protocol, this will correctly close the application (saving
76 any modifications or doing other cleanup). If the application doesn’t support
77 it, your X server will kill the window and the behaviour depends on the
82 Workspaces are an easy way to group a set of windows. By default, you are on
83 the first workspace, as the bar on the bottom left indicates. To switch to
84 another workspace, press +Mod1+num+ where +num+ is the number of the workspace
85 you want to use. If the workspace does not exist yet, it will be created.
87 A common paradigm is to put the web browser on one workspace, communication
88 applications (+mutt+, +irssi+, ...) on another one and the ones with which you
89 work on the third one. Of course, there is no need to follow this approach.
91 If you have multiple screens, a workspace will be created on each screen. If
92 you open a new workspace, it will be bound to the screen you created it on.
93 When you switch to a workspace on another screen, i3 will set focus to this
96 === Moving windows to workspaces
98 To move a window to another workspace, simply press +Mod1+Shift+num+ where
99 +num+ is (like when switching workspaces) the number of the target workspace.
100 Similarly to switching workspaces, the target workspace will be created if
101 it does not yet exist.
105 To resize columns just grab the border between the two columns and move it to
108 A command for doing this via keyboard will be implemented soon.
110 === Restarting i3 inplace
112 To restart i3 inplace (and thus get it into a clean state if it has a bug, to
113 reload your configuration or even to upgrade to a newer version of i3) you
114 can use +Mod1+Shift+r+. Be aware, though, that this kills your current layout
115 and all the windows you have opened will be put in a default container in only
116 one cell. This will be implemented in a later version.
120 To cleanly exit i3 without killing your X server, you can use +Mod1+Shift+e+.
124 Snapping is a mechanism to increase/decrease the colspan/rowspan of a container.
125 Colspan/rowspan is the amount of columns/rows a specific cell of the table
126 consumes. This is easier explained by giving an example, so take the following
129 image:snapping.png[Snapping example]
131 To use the full size of your screen, you can now snap container 3 downwards
132 by pressing +Mod1+Control+k+.
136 Floating is the opposite of tiling mode. The position and size of a window
137 are then not managed by i3, but by you. Using this mode violates the tiling
138 paradigm but can be useful for some corner cases like "Save as" dialog
139 windows or toolbar windows (GIMP or similar).
141 You can enable floating for a window by pressing +Mod1+Shift+Space+. By
142 dragging the window’s titlebar with your mouse, you can move the window
143 around. By grabbing the borders and moving them you can resize the window.
145 Bindings for doing this with your keyboard will follow.
147 Floating clients are always on top of tiling clients.
151 This is where the real fun begins ;-). Most things are very dependant on your
152 ideal working environment, so we can’t make reasonable defaults for them.
154 While not using a programming language for the configuration, i3 stays
155 quite flexible regarding to the things you usually want your window manager
158 For example, you can configure bindings to jump to specific windows,
159 you can set specific applications to start on a specific workspace, you can
160 automatically start applications, you can change the colors of i3 or bind
161 your keys to do useful stuff.
164 Specifies the terminal emulator program you prefer. It will be started
165 by default when you press Mod1+Enter, but you can overwrite this. Refer
166 to it as +$terminal+ to keep things modular.
168 Specifies the default font you want i3 to use. Use an X core font
169 descriptor here, like
170 +-misc-fixed-medium-r-normal--13-120-75-75-C-70-iso10646-1+. You can
171 use +xfontsel(1)+ to pick one.
173 === Keyboard bindings
175 You can use each command (see below) using keyboard bindings. At the moment,
176 keyboard bindings require you to specify the keycode (38) of the key, not its key
177 symbol ("a"). This has some advantages (keybindings make sense regardless of
178 the layout you type) and some disadvantages (hard to remember, you have to look
182 --------------------------------
183 bind [Modifiers+]keycode command
184 --------------------------------
187 --------------------------------
192 bind Mod1+Shift+27 restart
193 --------------------------------
197 Mod1-Mod5, Shift, Control::
198 Standard modifiers, see +xmodmap(1)+
201 Unlike other window managers, i3 can use Mode_switch as a modifier. This allows
202 you to remap capslock (for example) to Mode_switch and use it for both: typing
203 umlauts or special characters 'and' having some comfortably reachable key
204 bindings. For example, when typing, capslock+1 or capslock+2 for switching
205 workspaces is totally convenient. Try it :-).
209 As you learned in the previous section about keyboard bindings, you will have
210 to configure lots of bindings containing modifier keys. If you want to save
211 yourself some typing and have the possibility to change the modifier you want
212 to use later, variables can be handy.
220 ------------------------
222 bind $m+Shift+27 restart
223 ------------------------
225 Variables are directly replaced in the file when parsing, there is no fancy
226 handling and there are absolutely no plans to change this. If you need a more
227 dynamic configuration, you should create a little script, like when configuring
230 === Automatically putting clients on specific workspaces
232 It is recommended that you match on window classes whereever possible because
233 some applications first create their window and then care about setting the
234 correct title. Firefox with Vimperator comes to mind, as the window starts up
235 being named Firefox and only when Vimperator is loaded, the title changes. As
236 i3 will get the title as soon as the application maps the window (mapping means
237 actually displaying it on the screen), you’d need to have to match on Firefox
241 ----------------------------------------------------
242 assign ["]window class[/window title]["] [→] workspace
243 ----------------------------------------------------
246 ----------------------
250 assign "urxvt/VIM" → 3
251 ----------------------
253 === Automatically starting applications on startup
255 By using the +exec+ keyword outside a keybinding, you can configure which
256 commands will be performed by i3 on the first start (not when reloading inplace
257 however). The commands will be run in order.
265 --------------------------------
266 exec sudo i3status | dzen2 -dock
267 --------------------------------
269 === Jumping to specific windows
271 Especially when in a multi-monitor environment, you want to quickly jump to a specific
272 window, for example while currently working on workspace 3 you may want to jump to
273 your mailclient to mail your boss that you’ve achieved some important goal. Instead
274 of figuring out how to navigate to your mailclient, it would be more convenient to
278 ----------------------------------------------------
279 jump ["]window class[/window title]["]
280 jump workspace [ column row ]
281 ----------------------------------------------------
283 You can either use the same matching algorithm as in the +assign+ command (see above)
284 or you can specify the position of the client if you always use the same layout.
287 --------------------------------------
288 # Get me to the next open VIM instance
289 bind Mod1+38 jump "urxvt/VIM"
290 --------------------------------------
292 === Traveling the focus stack
294 This mechanism can be thought of as the opposite of the +jump+ command. It travels
295 the focus stack and jumps to the window you focused before.
302 Where +number+ by default is 1 meaning that the next client in the focus stack will
307 You can change all colors which i3 uses to draw the window decorations and the
311 --------------------------------------------
312 colorclass border background text
313 --------------------------------------------
315 Where colorclass can be one of:
318 A client which currently has the focus.
319 client.focused_inactive::
320 A client which is the focused one of its container, but it does not have
321 the focus at the moment.
323 A client which is not the focused one of its container.
325 The current workspace in the bottom bar.
327 All other workspaces in the bottom bar.
329 Colors are in HTML hex format, see below.
332 --------------------------------------
333 # class border backgr. text
334 client.focused #2F343A #900000 #FFFFFF
335 --------------------------------------