Swayr consists of a demon, and a client. The demon swayrd records
window/workspace creations, deletions, and focus changes using sway's JSON IPC
interface. The client swayr offers subcommands, see swayr --help, and
sends them to the demon which executes them.
Right now, there are these subcommands:
* next-window focuses the next window in depth-first iteration order of the
tree.
* prev-window focuses the previous window in depth-first iteration order of
the tree.
* switch-window displays all windows in the order urgent first, then
last-recently-used, focused last and focuses the selected.
* quit-window displays all windows and quits the selected one.
* switch-to-urgent-or-lru-window switches to the next window with urgency
hint (if any) or to the last recently used window.
* switch-workspace displays all workspaces in LRU order and switches to the
selected one.
* switch-workspace-or-window displays all workspaces and their windows and
switches to the selected workspace or window.
* quit-workspace-or-window displays all workspaces and their windows and
allows to quit either the selected workspace (all its windows) or the
selected window.
* execute-swaymsg-command displays most swaymsg which don't require
additional input and executes the selected one. That's handy especially for
less often used commands not bound to a key.
* execute-swayr-command displays all commands above and executes the selected
one. (This is useful for accessing swayr commands which are not bound to a
key.)
* tile-workspace exclude-floating|include-floating tiles all windows on the
current workspace (excluding or including floating ones). That's done by
moving all windows to the scratchpad, setting the workspace to splith
layout, and then moving the windows back. If the auto_tile feature is
used, see the Configuration section below, it'll change from splitting
horizontally to vertically during re-insertion.
* shuffle-tile-workspace exclude-floating|include-floating shuffles & tiles
all windows on the current workspace. The shuffle part means that (a) the
windows are shuffled before re-insertion, and (b) a randomly chosen already
re-inserted window is focused before re-inserting another window. So while
tile-workspace on a typical horizontally oriented screen and 5 windows will
usually result in a layout with one window on the left and all four others
tiled vertially on the right, shuffle-tile-workspace in combination with
auto_tile usually results in a more balanced layout, i.e., 2 windows tiled
vertically on the right and the other 4 tiled vertially on the left. If you
have less than a handful of windows, just repeat shuffle-tile-workspace a
few times until happenstance creates the layout you wanted.
* tab-workspace exclude-floating|include-floating puts all windows of the
current workspace into a tabbed container.
* toggle-tab-shuffle-tile-workspace exclude-floating|include-floating toggles
between a tabbed and tiled layout, i.e., it calls shuffle-tile-workspace if
it is currently tabbed, and calls shuffle-tile-workspace if it is currently
tiled.
Some distros have packaged swayr so that you can install it using your distro's
package manager. Alternatively, it's easy to build and install it yourself
using cargo.
The following GNU/Linux and BSD distros package swayr. Thanks a lot to the respective package maintainers! Refer to the repology site for details.
You'll need to install the current stable rust toolchain using the one-liner shown at the official rust installation page.
Then you can install swayr like so:
sh
cargo install swayr
For getting updates easily, I recommend the cargo install-update plugin.
```sh
cargo install install-update
cargo install-update --all
cargo install-update -- swayr ```
You need to start the swayr demon swayrd in your sway config
(~/.config/sway/config) like so:
exec env RUST_BACKTRACE=1 swayrd > /tmp/swayrd.log 2>&1
The setting of RUST_BACKTRACE=1 and the redirection of the output to some
logfile is optional but helps a lot when something doesn't work. Especially,
if you encounter a crash in certain situations and you want to report a bug, it
would be utmost helpful if you could reproduce the issue with backtrace and
logging and attach that to your bug report.
Next to starting the demon, you want to bind swayr commands to some keys like so:
``` bindsym $mod+Space exec env RUST_BACKTRACE=1 \ swayr switch-window >> /tmp/swayr.log 2>&1
bindsym $mod+Delete exec env RUST_BACKTRACE=1 \ swayr quit-window > /tmp/swayr.log 2>&1
bindsym $mod+Tab exec env RUST_BACKTRACE=1 \ swayr switch-to-urgent-or-lru-window >> /tmp/swayr.log 2>&1
bindsym $mod+Next exec env RUST_BACKTRACE=1 \ swayr next-window >> /tmp/swayr.log 2>&2
bindsym $mod+Prior exec env RUST_BACKTRACE=1 \ swayr prev-window >> /tmp/swayr.log 2>&2
bindsym $mod+Shift+Space exec env RUST_BACKTRACE=1 \ swayr switch-workspace-or-window >> /tmp/swayr.log 2>&1
bindsym $mod+c exec env RUST_BACKTRACE=1 \ swayr execute-swaymsg-command >> /tmp/swayr.log 2>&1
bindsym $mod+Shift+c exec env RUST_BACKTRACE=1 \ swayr execute-swayr-command >> /tmp/swayr.log 2>&1 ```
Of course, configure the keys to your liking. Again, enabling rust backtraces and logging are optional.
Swayr can be configured using the ~/.config/swayr/config.toml config file.
If it doesn't exist, a simple default configuration will be created on the first invocation for use with the wofi menu program.
It should be easy to adapt that default config for usage with other menu programs such as dmenu, bemenu, rofi, a script spawning a terminal with fzf, or whatever. The only requirement is that the launcher needs to be able to read the items to choose from from stdin, and spit out the selected item to stdout.
The default config looks like this:
```toml [menu] executable = 'wofi' args = [ '--show=dmenu', '--allow-markup', '--allow-images', '--insensitive', '--cache-file=/dev/null', '--parse-search', '--prompt={prompt}', ]
[format] windowformat = '{urgencystart}“{title}”{urgencyend} — {appname} on workspace {workspacename} ({id})' workspaceformat = 'Workspace {name} ({id})' htmlescape = true urgencystart = '' urgencyend = '' icondirs = [ '/usr/share/icons/hicolor/scalable/apps', '/usr/share/icons/Adwaita/48x48/apps', '/usr/share/icons/hicolor/48x48/apps', '/usr/share/pixmaps', ] fallback_icon = '/usr/share/pixmaps/archlinux-logo.png'
[layout] autotile = false autotileminwindowwidthperoutputwidth = [ [1024, 500], [1280, 600], [1400, 680], [1440, 700], [1600, 780], [1920, 920], [2560, 1000], [3440, 1000], [4096, 1200], ] ```
In the following, all sections are explained.
In the [menu] section, you can specify the menu program using the
executable name or full path, and the args (flags and options) it should
get passed. If some argument contains the placeholder {prompt}, it is
replaced with a prompt such as "Switch to window" depending on context.
In the [format] section, format strings are specified defining how selection
choises are to be layed out. wofi supports pango
markup which makes it possible
to style the text using HTML and CSS. The following formats are supported
right now.
* window_format defines how windows are displayed. The placeholder {title}
is replaced with the window's title, {app_name} with the application name,
{marks} with a comma-separated list of the window's marks, {app_icon}
with the application's icon (a path to a PNG or SVG file), {workspace_name}
with the name or number of the workspace the window is shown, and {id} is
the window's sway-internal con id. There are also the placeholders
{urcency_start} and {urgency_end} which get replaced by the empty string
if the window has no urgency flag, and with the values of the same-named
formats if the window has the urgency flag set. That makes it possible to
highlight urgent windows as shown in the default config.
* workspace_format defines how workspaces are displayed. There are the
placeholders {name} which gets replaced by the workspace's number or name,
and {id} which gets replaced by the sway-internal con id of the workspace.
* html_escape defines if the strings replacing the placeholders above (except
for {urgency_start} and {urgency_end}) should be HTML-escaped.
* urgency_start is a string which replaces the {urgency_start} placeholder
in window_format.
* urgency_end is a string which replaces the {urgency_end} placeholder in
window_format.
* icon_dirs is a vector of directories in which to look for application icons
in order to compute the {app_icon} replacement.
* fallback_icon is a path to some PNG/SVG icon which will be used as
{app_icon} if no application-specific icon can be determined.
It is crucial that during selection (using wofi or some other menu program)
each window has a different display string. Therefore, it is highly
recommended to include the {id} placeholder at least in window_format.
Otherwise, e.g., two terminals (of the same terminal app) with the same working
directory (and therefore, the same title) wouldn't be distinguishable.
Hint for wofi: wofi supports icons with the syntax
'img:<image-file>:text:<text>', so a suitable window_format with
application icon should start with img:{app_icon}:text:.
Hint for rofi: rofi supports icons with the syntax
"<text>\u0000icon\u00001f<image-file>", so a suitable window_format with
application icon should end with "\u0000icon\u001f<image-file>". Also note
that you must enclose your window_format value with double-quotes and not
with single-quotes. Singe-quote strings are literal strings in
TOML where no escape-sequences are
processed whereas for double-quoted strings (so-called basic strings)
escape-sequences are processed. rofi requires a null character and a
PARAGRAPH SEPARATOR for image sequences.
In the [layout] section, you can enable auto-tiling by setting auto_tile to
true (the default is false). The option
auto_tile_min_window_width_per_output_width defines the minimum width in
pixels which your windows should have per output width. For example, the
example setting above says that on an output which is 1600 pixels wide, each
window should have at least a width of 780 pixels, thus there may be at most
two side-by-side windows (Caution, include your borders and gaps in your
calculation!). There will be no auto-tiling doesn't include your output's
exact width.
If auto_tile is enabled, swayr will automatically split either vertically or
horizontally according to this algorithm:
- For all outputs:
+ For all (nested) containers on that output (except the scratchpad):
- For all child windows of that container:
+ If the container is split horizontally and creating another window
would make the current child window smaller than the minimum width,
execute split vertical (the swaymsg command over IPC) on the child.
+ Else if the container is split vertically and now there is enough space
so that creating another window would still leave the current child
window above or equal to the minimum width, call split horizontal on
the child.
+ Otherwise, do nothing for this container. This means that stacked or
tabbed containers will never be affected by auto-tiling.
There is one caveat: it would be nice to also trigger auto-tiling when windows or containers are resized but unfortunately, resizing doesn't issue any events over IPC. Therefore, auto-tiling is triggered by new-window events, close-events, move-events, floating-events, and also focus-events. The latter are a workaround and wouldn't be required if there were resize-events.
For asking questions, sending feedback, or patches, refer to my public inbox (mailinglist). Please mention the project you are referring to in the subject.
Bugs and requests can be reported here.
Swayr is licensed under the GPLv3 (or later).