run-or-raise is a utility for launching applications or focusing their windows
if they are already running. run-or-raise tries to find a window that matches
a specified criteria and focus it or, if no matching window is found, execute a
specified program.
This can be useful when combined with a tiling window manager such as
i3 or a general purpose keyboard shortcut manager such as
xbindkeys that allow binding arbitrary
commands to keybindings. In such setup, one might use run-or-raise to, for
example, launch or focus a web browser with a single key.
run-or-raise is designed to work with X11 based Linux systems.
The easiest way to obtain the latest version of run-or-raise is to download a
precompiled, statically-linked, program binary from GitHub releases
page. These binaries should work
on most recent Linux systems without any additional dependencies.
Alternatively, run-or-raise can be easily installed from the source using
cargo:
shell
$ cargo install run-or-raise
Compiling and running run-or-raise requires libxcb
library to be installed.
text
run-or-raise CONDITION PROGRAM [ARGS...]
When invoked, run-or-raise matches existing windows against CONDITION. If a
matching window is found, it is focused. If none of the windows fulfill the
criteria, run-or-raise executes PROGRAM passing any ARGS to it as
arguments.
Conditions select windows based on their properties. In X11, each window can have any number of properties associated with them. Examples of window properties include name (typically what is visible in windows title bar), class (an identifier that can be usually used to select windows of a particular applications) and role (a representation of window's logical role, eg. a web browser). The xprop command can be used to inspect windows and their properties.
The simplest possible window matching condition simply compares one of the properties with a value:
shell
run-or-raise 'name = "Spotify"' spotify
This would find and focus a window with the title “Spotify” or run the command
spotify.
Conditions support two comparison operators: = for exact equality comparison
with a string literal and '~' work comparing with a
regular expression.
Comparisons can be combined using logical operators: && for logical AND,
|| for logical OR, and ! for logical NOT. Operators in matching
expressions are left-associative and ! (not) binds stronger than && (and)
which, in turn, binds stronger than || (or). Possible properties are class,
name, and role. Additionally, parentheses can be used to alter evaluation
order. Strings and regular expressions are written inside double quotes. If
multiple windows match the criteria, the first matching window is selected.
Bellow are some examples of how conditions can be used to select windows in various ways:
``` shell
run-or-raise 'class = "Emacs"' emacs
run-or-raise 'name ~ ".*Firefox$"' firefox
run-or-raise 'role = "browser" && ! class = "Chromium"' firefox
run-or-raise '! name ~ ".\d+." || role = "browser" && ! class = "Emacs"' urxvt ```
run-or-raise can be combined with just about any tool that allows executing
arbitrary commands in response to key events. Bellow are some hints about
configuring run-or-raise to work with various applications:
xbindkeys is an application for executing
commands based on key events. run-or-raise can be combined with it to only
launch applications if they are not already running. For example, to launch or
focus Firefox by pressing Shift+Mod4+b, you could use the following
xbindkeys configuration:
shell
"run-or-raise 'role = \"browser\"' firefox"
Shift+Mod4+b
i3 is a tiling window manager that, among other things,
supports binding arbitrary commands to arbitrary keys. To bind run-or-raise
invocation to a key with i3, one might specify something like the following in
i3's configuration file:
shell
bindsym Mod4+Shift+b exec --no-startup-id \
run-or-raise 'role = "browser"' firefox
KDE allows binding arbitrary commands to key presses
using Custom Shortcuts manager.
Through this graphical configuration utility, run-or-raise can be used to
launch or focus applications.