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layout: default
title: Docs
group: Docs
---
<div id="content" class="usergen">
<h1>User-contributed article: Swapping workspaces</h1>

<p>
If you have workspace 1 on one monitor and workspace 2 on another monitor and
want to quickly swap the workspaces among the monitors, you can use i3's IPC
mechanisms to do it. Here's how:
</p>

<p>
i3 already includes a way to move an individual workspace from one monitor to
another. But what we want to achieve is the <strong>simultaneous</strong>
movement of workspaces between the monitors. To do this, we can write a script
that detects the currently active workspace on each monitor and then moves that
workspace to the other monitor.
</p>

<p>
The script uses i3's <a href="http://i3wm.org/docs/ipc.html">IPC</a> via the
<a href="https://github.com/ziberna/i3-py">i3-py Python bindings</a>.
</p>

<pre><tt>#!/usr/bin/python2.7

import i3
# retrieve only active outputs
outputs = filter(lambda output: output[&#39;active&#39;], i3.get_outputs())

# set current workspace to output 0
i3.workspace(outputs[0][&#39;current_workspace&#39;])

# ..and move it to the other output.
# outputs wrap, so the right of the right is left ;)
i3.command('move', 'workspace to output right')

# rinse and repeat
i3.workspace(outputs[1][&#39;current_workspace&#39;])
i3.command('move', 'workspace to output right')</tt></pre>

<p>
A very simple way to use this script is as follows: Put the script in a file,
named for example switch.py, and put switch.py and i3.py (downloaded from the
<a href="https://github.com/ziberna/i3-py">Python bindings site</a>) in the
same folder. I typically put it in $HOME/.i3/, the same directory which
contains i3's config file. Next, put a keybinding like
</p>
<pre><tt>bindsym $mod+Shift+s exec /home/username/.i3/switch.py</tt></pre>
<p>
in i3's config file and restart i3 in place. The next time you press
mod+Shift+s, your workspaces will be swapped among your monitors.
</p>

<p>Author: Sagar Behere</p>