i3 User’s Guide
===============
Michael Stapelberg <michael+i3@stapelberg.de>
-August 2009
+March 2010
This document contains all information you need to configuring and using the i3
window manager. If it does not, please contact me on IRC, Jabber or E-Mail and
=== Changing mode of containers
-A container can be in two modes at the moment (more to be implemented later):
-+default+ or +stacking+. In default mode, clients are sized so that every client
-gets an equal amount of space of the container. In stacking mode, only one
-focused client of the container is displayed and you get a list of windows
-at the top of the container.
+A container can be in different modes:
-To switch the mode, press +Mod1+h+ for stacking and +Mod1+e+ for default.
+default::
+Windows are sized so that every window gets an equal amount of space of the
+container.
+stacking::
+Only the focused client of the container is displayed and you get a list of
+windows at the top of the container.
+tabbed::
+The same principle as +stacking+, but the list of windows at the top is only
+a single line which will be vertically split.
+
+To switch the mode, press +Mod1+e+ for default, +Mod1+h+ for stacking and
++Mod1+w+ for tabbed.
+
+image:modes.png[Container modes]
=== Toggling fullscreen mode for a window
Similarly to switching workspaces, the target workspace will be created if
it does not yet exist.
-=== Resizing columns
+=== Resizing columns/rows
-To resize columns just grab the border between the two columns and move it to
-the wanted size.
+To resize columns or rows just grab the border between the two columns/rows
+and move it to the wanted size. Please keep in mind that each cell of the table
+holds a +container+ and thus you cannot horizontally resize single windows.
-A command for doing this via keyboard will be implemented soon.
+See <<resizingconfig>> for how to configure i3 to be able to resize
+columns/rows with your keyboard.
=== Restarting i3 inplace
automatically start applications, you can change the colors of i3 or bind
your keys to do useful stuff.
-terminal::
- Specifies the terminal emulator program you prefer. It will be started
- by default when you press Mod1+Enter, but you can overwrite this. Refer
- to it as +$terminal+ to keep things modular.
+To change the configuration of i3, copy +/etc/i3/config+ to +~/.i3/config+
+and edit it with a text editor.
+
+=== General configuration
+
font::
Specifies the default font you want i3 to use. Use an X core font
descriptor here, like
floating_modifier Mod1
--------------------------------
+=== Layout mode for new containers
+
+This option is only available when using the new lexer/parser (pass +-l+ to i3
+when starting). It determines in which mode new containers will start. See also
+<<stack-limit>>.
+
+*Syntax*:
+---------------------------------------------
+new_container <default|stacking|tabbed>
+new_container stack-limit <cols|rows> <value>
+---------------------------------------------
+
+*Examples*:
+---------------------
+new_container tabbed
+---------------------
+
+=== Border style for new windows
+
+This option is only available when using the new lexer/parser (pass +-l+ to i3
+when starting). It determines which border new windows will have.
+
+*Syntax*:
+---------------------------------------------
+new_window <bp|bn|bb>
+---------------------------------------------
+
+*Examples*:
+---------------------
+new_window bp
+---------------------
=== Variables
=== Automatically putting clients on specific workspaces
+[[assign_workspace]]
+
It is recommended that you match on window classes whereever possible because
some applications first create their window and then care about setting the
correct title. Firefox with Vimperator comes to mind, as the window starts up
=== Automatically putting workspaces on specific screens
+[[workspace_screen]]
+
If you use the assigning of clients to workspaces and start some clients
automatically, it might be handy to put the workspaces on specific screens.
Also, the assignment of workspaces to screens will determine the workspace
*Syntax*:
----------------------------------
-workspace <number> screen <screen>
+workspace <number> output <output>
----------------------------------
-Screen can be either a number (starting at 0 for the first screen) or a
-position. When using numbers, it is not guaranteed that your screens always
-get the same number. Though, unless you upgrade your X server or drivers, the
-order usually stays the same. When using positions, you have to specify the
-exact pixel where the screen *starts*, not a pixel which is contained by the
-screen. Thus, if your first screen has the dimensions 1280x800, you can match
-the second screen right of it by specifying 1280. You cannot use 1281.
+The output is the name of the RandR output you attach your screen to. On a
+laptop, you might have VGA1 and LVDS1 as output names. You can see the
+available outputs by running +xrandr --current+.
*Examples*:
---------------------------
-workspace 1 screen 0
-workspace 5 screen 1
-
-workspace 1 screen 1280
-workspace 2 screen x800
-workspace 3 screen 1280x800
+workspace 1 output LVDS1
+workspace 5 output VGA1
---------------------------
=== Named workspaces
*Syntax*:
---------------------------------------
workspace <number> <name>
-workspace <number> screen <screen> name
+workspace <number> output <output> name
---------------------------------------
-For more details about the screen-part of this command, see above.
+For more details about the output-part of this command, see above.
*Examples*:
--------------------------
the focus at the moment.
client.unfocused::
A client which is not the focused one of its container.
+client.urgent::
+ A client which has its urgency hint activated.
bar.focused::
The current workspace in the bottom bar.
bar.unfocused::
All other workspaces in the bottom bar.
+bar.urgent::
+ A workspace which has at least one client with an activated urgency hint.
Colors are in HTML hex format, see below.
client.focused #2F343A #900000 #FFFFFF
--------------------------------------
+Note that for the window decorations the color around the child window is the
+background color and the border color is only the two thin lines at the top of
+the window.
+
=== Interprocess communication
i3 uses unix sockets to provide an IPC interface. At the moment, this interface
You can then use the i3-msg command to perform any command listed in the next
section.
+=== Disable focus follows mouse
+
+If you have a setup where your mouse usually is in your way (like a touchpad
+on your laptop which you do not want to disable completely), you might want
+to disable focus follows mouse and control focus only by using your keyboard.
+The mouse will still be useful inside the currently active window (for example
+to click on links in your browser window).
+
+*Syntax*:
+----------------------------
+focus_follows_mouse <yes|no>
+----------------------------
+
+*Examples*:
+----------------------
+focus_follows_mouse no
+----------------------
+
== List of commands
=== Manipulating layout
-To change the layout of the current container to stacking or back to default
-layout, use +s+ or +d+. To make the current client (!) fullscreen, use +f+, to
-make it floating (or tiling again) use +t+:
+To change the layout of the current container to stacking, use +s+, for default
+use +d+ and for tabbed, use +T+. To make the current client (!) fullscreen,
+use +f+, to make it floating (or tiling again) use +t+:
*Examples*:
--------------
-bind Mod1+s s
-bind Mod1+l d
+bindsym Mod1+s s
+bindsym Mod1+l d
+bindsym Mod1+w T
# Toggle fullscreen
-bind Mod1+f f
+bindsym Mod1+f f
# Toggle floating/tiling
-bind Mod1+t t
+bindsym Mod1+t t
--------------
=== Focussing/Moving/Snapping clients/containers/screens
bindsym Mod1+p pw
-------------------------
+[[resizingconfig]]
+
+=== Resizing columns/rows
+
+If you want to resize columns/rows using your keyboard, you can use the
++resize+ command, I recommend using it inside a so called +mode+ (you need to
+use the new lexer/parser for that, so pass +-l+ to i3 when starting):
+
+.Example: Configuration file, defining a mode for resizing
+----------------------------------------------------------------------
+mode "resize" {
+ # These bindings trigger as soon as you enter the resize mode
+
+ # They resize the border in the direction you pressed, e.g.
+ # when pressing left, the window is resized so that it has
+ # more space on its left
+
+ bindsym n resize left -10
+ bindsym Shift+n resize left +10
+
+ bindsym r resize bottom +10
+ bindsym Shift+r resize bottom -10
+
+ bindsym t resize top -10
+ bindsym Shift+t resize top +10
+
+ bindsym d resize right +10
+ bindsym Shift+d resize right -10
+
+ bind 36 mode default
+}
+
+# Enter resize mode
+bindsym Mod1+r mode resize
+----------------------------------------------------------------------
+
=== Jumping to specific windows
Especially when in a multi-monitor environment, you want to quickly jump to a specific
bindsym Mod1+a jump "urxvt/VIM"
--------------------------------------
+=== VIM-like marks (mark/goto)
+
+[[vim_like_marks]]
+
+This feature is like the jump feature: It allows you to directly jump to a
+specific window (this means switching to the appropriate workspace and setting
+focus to the windows). However, you can directly mark a specific window with
+an arbitrary label and use it afterwards, that is, you do not need to ensure
+that your windows have unique classes or titles and you do not need to change
+your configuration file.
+
+As the command needs to include the label with which you want to mark the
+window, you cannot simply bind it to a key (or, you could bind it to a key and
+only use the set of labels for which you created bindings). +i3-input+ is a
+tool created for this purpose: It lets you input a command and sends the
+command to i3. It can also prefix this command and display a custom prompt for
+the input dialog.
+
+*Syntax*:
+-----------------
+mark <identifier>
+goto <identifier>
+-----------------
+
+*Examples*:
+---------------------------------------
+# Read 1 character and mark the current window with this character
+bindsym Mod1+m exec i3-input -p 'mark ' -l 1 -P 'Mark: '
+
+# Read 1 character and go to the window with the character
+bindsym Mod1+g exec i3-input -p 'goto ' -l 1 -P 'Goto: '
+---------------------------------------
+
=== Traveling the focus stack
This mechanism can be thought of as the opposite of the +jump+ command. It travels
To change the border of the current client, you can use +bn+ to use the normal
border (including window title), +bp+ to use a 1-pixel border (no window title)
-and +bb+ to make the client borderless.
+and +bb+ to make the client borderless. There also is +bt+ which will toggle
+the different border styles.
*Examples*:
------------------
bindsym Mod1+u bb
------------------
+[[stack-limit]]
+
+=== Changing the stack-limit of a container
+
+If you have a single container with a lot of windows inside (say, more than
+10), the default layout of a stacking container can get a little unhandy.
+Depending on your screen’s size, you might end up only using half of the
+titlebars of each window in the container.
+
+Using the +stack-limit+ command, you can limit the amount of rows or columns
+in a stacking container. i3 will create columns or rows (depending on what
+you limited) automatically as needed.
+
+*Syntax*:
+--------------------------------
+stack-limit <cols|rows> <value>
+--------------------------------
+
+*Examples*:
+-------------------
+# I always want to have two window titles in one line
+stack-limit cols 2
+
+# Not more than 5 rows in this stacking container
+stack-limit rows 5
+-------------------
+
+image:stacklimit.png[Container limited to two columns]
+
=== Reloading/Restarting/Exiting
You can make i3 reload its configuration file with +reload+. You can also
bindsym Mod1+Shift+w reload
bindsym Mod1+Shift+e exit
----------------------------
+
+== Multiple monitors
+
+[[multi_monitor]]
+
+As you can read in the goal list on its website, i3 was specifically developed
+with Xinerama (support for multiple monitors) in mind. This section will
+explain how to handle multiple monitors.
+
+When you have only one monitor, things are simple. You usually start with
+workspace 1 on your monitor and open new ones as you need them.
+
+When you have more than one monitor, each monitor will get an initial
+workspace, say the first gets 1, the second gets 2 and a possible third would
+get 3. When you switch to a workspace on a different screen, i3 will switch
+to that screen and then switch to the workspace. This way, you don’t need
+shortcuts to switch to a specific screen and remember where you put which
+workspace. New workspaces will be opened on the screen you currently are on.
+There is no possiblity to have a screen without workspaces.
+
+The idea to make workspaces global is due to the observation that most users
+have a very limited set of workspaces on their additional monitors, often
+using them for a specific task (browser, shell) or for monitoring several
+things (mail, IRC, syslog, …). Thus, using one workspace on one monitor and
+"the rest" on the other monitors often makes sense. However, as you can
+create unlimited workspaces in i3 and tie them to specific screens, you can
+have the "traditional" approach of having X workspaces per screen by
+changing your configuration (using modes, for example).
+
+=== Configuring your monitors
+
+To help you get going if you never did multiple monitors before, here comes a
+short overview of the xrandr options which are probably of interest for you.
+It is always useful to get an overview of the current screen configuration, so
+just run "xrandr" and you will get an output like the following:
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+$ xrandr
+Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 1280 x 800, maximum 8192 x 8192
+VGA1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
+LVDS1 connected 1280x800+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 261mm x 163mm
+ 1280x800 60.0*+ 50.0
+ 1024x768 85.0 75.0 70.1 60.0
+ 832x624 74.6
+ 800x600 85.1 72.2 75.0 60.3 56.2
+ 640x480 85.0 72.8 75.0 59.9
+ 720x400 85.0
+ 640x400 85.1
+ 640x350 85.1
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+Several things are important here: You can see that +LVDS1+ is connected (of
+course, it is the internal flat panel) but +VGA1+ is not. If you have connected
+a monitor to one of the ports but xrandr still says "disconnected", you should
+check your cable, monitor or graphics driver.
+
+Furthermore, the maximum resolution you can see at the end of the first line
+is the maximum combined resolution of your monitors. By default, it is usually
+too low and has to be increased by editing +/etc/X11/xorg.conf+.
+
+So, say you connected VGA1 and want to use it as an additional screen:
+-------------------------------------------
+xrandr --output VGA1 --auto --left-of LVDS1
+-------------------------------------------
+This command lets xrandr try to find out the native resolution of the device
+connected to +VGA1+ and configures it to the left of your internal flat panel.
+When running "xrandr" again, the output looks like this:
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+$ xrandr
+Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 2560 x 1024, maximum 8192 x 8192
+VGA1 connected 1280x1024+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 338mm x 270mm
+ 1280x1024 60.0*+ 75.0
+ 1280x960 60.0
+ 1152x864 75.0
+ 1024x768 75.1 70.1 60.0
+ 832x624 74.6
+ 800x600 72.2 75.0 60.3 56.2
+ 640x480 72.8 75.0 66.7 60.0
+ 720x400 70.1
+LVDS1 connected 1280x800+1280+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 261mm x 163mm
+ 1280x800 60.0*+ 50.0
+ 1024x768 85.0 75.0 70.1 60.0
+ 832x624 74.6
+ 800x600 85.1 72.2 75.0 60.3 56.2
+ 640x480 85.0 72.8 75.0 59.9
+ 720x400 85.0
+ 640x400 85.1
+ 640x350 85.1
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+Please note that i3 uses exactly the same API as xrandr does, so it will see
+only what you can see in xrandr.
+
+See also <<presentations>> for more examples of multi-monitor setups.
+
+=== Interesting configuration for multi-monitor environments
+
+There are several things to configure in i3 which may be interesting if you
+have more than one monitor:
+
+1. You can specify which workspace should be put on which screen. This will
+ allow you to have a different set of workspaces when starting than just
+ 1 for the first monitor, 2 for the second and so on. See
+ <<workspace_screen>>.
+2. If you want some applications to generally open on the bigger screen
+ (MPlayer, Firefox, …), you can assign them to a specific workspace, see
+ <<assign_workspace>>.
+3. If you have many workspaces on many monitors, it might get hard to keep
+ track of which window you put where. Thus, you can use vim-like marks to
+ quickly switch between windows. See <<vim_like_marks>>.
+
+== i3 and the rest of your software world
+
+=== Displaying a status line
+
+A very common thing amongst users of exotic window managers is a status line at
+some corner of the screen. It is an often superior replacement of the widget
+approach you have in the task bar of a traditional desktop environment.
+
+If you don’t already have your favorite way of generating such a status line
+(self-written scripts, conky, …), then i3status is the recommended tool for
+this task. It was written in C with the goal to have as little syscalls as
+possible to reduce the time your CPU is waken up from sleep states.
+
+Regardless of which application you use to generate the status line, you
+want to make sure that the application does one of the following things:
+
+1. Register as a dock window using EWMH hints. This will make i3 position the
+ window above the workspace bar but below every other client. This is the
+ recommended way, but for example in case of dzen2 you need to check out
+ the source of dzen2 from subversion, because the -dock option is not present
+ in the released versions.
+2. Overlay the internal workspace bar. This method will not waste any space
+ in the workspace bar. However, it is a rather hackish way. Just configure
+ the output window to be over your workspace bar (say -x 200 and -y 780 if
+ your screen is 800 px height).
+
+The planned solution for this problem is to make the workspace bar optional
+and switch to dzen2 (for example) completely (it will contain the workspaces
+then).
+
+=== Giving presentations (multi-monitor)
+
+When giving a presentation, you typically want the audience to see what you see
+on your screen and then go through a series of slides (if the presentation is
+simple). For more complex presentations, you might want to have some notes
+which only you can see on your screen, while the audience can only see the
+slides.
+
+[[presentations]]
+==== Case 1: everybody gets the same output
+This is the rather easy case. You connect your computer to the video projector,
+turn on both (computer and video projector) and configure your X server to
+clone the internal flat panel of your computer to the video output:
+-----------------------------------------------------
+xrandr --output VGA1 --mode 1024x768 --same-as LVDS1
+-----------------------------------------------------
+i3 will then use the lowest common subset of screen resolutions, the rest of
+your screen will be left untouched (so it will show the X background). So, in
+our example, this would be 1024x768 (my notebook has 1280x800).
+
+==== Case 2: you can see more than your audience
+This case is a bit harder. First of all, you should configure the VGA output
+somewhere near your internal flat panel, say right of it:
+-----------------------------------------------------
+xrandr --output VGA1 --mode 1024x768 --right-of LVDS1
+-----------------------------------------------------
+Now, i3 will put a new workspace (depending on your settings) on the new screen
+and you are in multi-monitor mode (see <<multi_monitor>>).
+
+Because i3 is not a compositing window manager, there is no possibility to
+display a window on two screens at the same time. Instead, you presentation
+software needs to do this job (that is, open a window on each screen with the
+same contents).
projects / i3 / i3 / blobdiff