The workspace bar could look like this (uses waybar)
In context:
Sway/i3 workspaces with style:
This application will dynamically rename your workspaces to indicate which programs are running in each one.
A picture is better than a thousand words!
The workspace bar could look like this (uses waybar)
In context:
cargo install workstyle
Simply run the executable:
workstyle
workspace --help
will give you some more context.
Add this line to your sway config:
exec_always --no-startup-id workstyle &> /tmp/workstyle.log
You may also want to control the log level with the environment variable: RUST_LOG to error, info or debug.
Note that since your workspaces will be renamed all the time, you should configure your keybindings to use numbered workspaces instead of assuming that the name is the number:
Prefer
bindsym $mod+1 workspace number 1
over
bindsym $mod+1 workspace 1
The main configuration consists of deciding which icons to use for which applications.
The config file is located at ${XDG_CONFIG_HOME}/workstyle/config.toml. It will be generated if missing. Read the generated file. The syntax is in TOML and should be pretty self-explanatory.
When an app isn't recogised in the config, workstyle will log the application name as an error.
Simply add that string (case insensitive) to your config file, with an icon of your choice.
If no matching icon can be found in the config, a blank space will be used.
To override this, set the default icon in the config as per below:
[other]
fallback_icon = "your icon"
Note that the crate find_unicode can help find a unicode character directly from the command line. It now supports all of nerdfonts unicode space.