quickswitch for i3

Overview

This utility for i3_, inspired by Pentadactyl_'s :buffers command, allows you to quickly switch to and locate windows on all your workspaces, using an interactive dmenu prompt. It has since gained a lot of other functionality to make working with i3 even more efficient.

Usage

Finding windows

The core functionality of quickswitch is still finding windows and
jumping to them, and this is what it does when you call it without any
options.

Here's how it looks in action:

.. image:: http://i.imgur.com/QeQrM.png

However, sometimes you may want to grab a window and move it to your
current workspace. This can be done with the ``-m/--move`` flag.

Conversely, you might want to send the current window or container on
a ``-j/--journey`` to another workspace. If your current workspace
becomes empty without that container, you'll be glad you added the
``-F/--followifempty`` switch, which will change your current workspace
to the one where your container went. If you use ``-f/--follow``, you'll
be following along whether your workspace becomes empty or not.

A similiar feature is the ``-s/--scratchpad`` flag, which searches your
scratchpad, and does a ``scratchpad show`` on the window you choose.

You can also search and jump (or move) via regular expression using the
``-r/--regex`` flag, without using dmenu. This could be useful for
scripting, or if you are a regex wizard who feels limited by dmenu. This
works in conjunction with the ``-m`` and ``-j`` commands.

To make your regex case insensitive, use ``-i/--insensitive``.

If any windows have the urgency hint set, you can jump to the first one
with the ``-u/--urgent`` flag. You can also use something like this in
i3's own config: ``$mod+a [urgent="latest"] focus``.

If the window list contains useless, such as desktop panels in a
mixed environment (i3+mate, i3+KDE…), you can ignore them with
``-C/--ignore-classes`` followed by a comma separated list of window
classes to ignore. To find out which window class a window has, you can
use ``xprop``.

Finally, to have your input to dmenu be interpreted as a shell command
if it doesn't match any of the windows or workspaces, use the
``-l/--launch`` argument.

Workspaces
~~~~~~~~~~

quickswitch also provides a few functions to manage workspaces. First
of all, it allows you to search workspaces in the same fashion as
windows with the ``-w/--workspaces`` flag. This is *extremely* useful
for working with many named workspaces without having them bound to any
particular key.

Another useful feature is to quickly get an empty workspace. This is
what the ``-e/--empty`` flag does: it will jump you to the first empty,
numbered workspace. If used with ``-j/--journey``, it will send the
currently selected container/window to a new empty workspace.

Those who have configured i3 to display workspaces on specific monitors
can use ``-E/--nextempty`` to go to the first empty workspace with a
number higher than the workspace they are currently on.

If you use this excessively, then your numbered workspaces might
fragment a lot. You can fix this easily with ``-g/--degap``, which
"defragments" your workspaces, without affecting their order (eg, [1,
4, 7] becomes [1, 2, 3] by renaming 4 to 2 and 7 to 3). This argument
cannot be combined with other arguments.

While on numbered workspaces, it can be pretty handy to jump to the next
or previous numbered workspace ("cycle" them). ``-p/--previous`` and
``-n/--next`` do just that. You can combine them with the ``-m/--move``
flag to move the currently focused container to the respective workspace
instead. Note that -n and -p will only jump to existing workspaces,
and if you go beyond the beginning or end of the numbered workspace
list, it will wrap around. Also be aware that similar functionality is
provided by i3 natively. See ``workspace {next,previous}_on_output`` and
``workspace {next,previous}``.

dmenu
~~~~~

You can influence how dmenu is called with the ``-d/--dmenu`` flag,
which expects a complete dmenu command. The default is ``dmenu -b -i
-l 20`` (which makes dmenu appear on the bottom of your screen (-b)
in a vertical manner with at most 20 lines (-l 20), and matches case
insensitively (-i). See the man page for dmenu for a list of options.

**Note:** The versions of quickswitch before 2.0 used explicit flags
for changing dmenu's behavior. This was rather inflexible, because it
needed an explicit flag for every dmenu option, and it hardcoded the
dmenu command. For most people, the default should be fine, but if you
want to change anything, this allows you to go wild.

Dependencies
------------
quickswitch-i3 requires dmenu (which you likely already have installed),
and i3-py, which you can install with ``pip install i3-py`` if you're
using python 2.7, or ``pip3 install i3-py`` if you're using pyton 3.

quickswitch-i3 was tested in Python 2.7.3 and 3.2.3. It will not work in
version prior to 2.7 due to the usage of ``argparse``.

Installation
------------
If you are an Arch user, you can install it from the AUR. The package is
called ``quickswitch-i3``. The PKGBUILD is also included here.

Otherwise you can simply clone the repository and use the quickswitch.py
file from there. The ``i3-py`` package is a required dependency, as
noted above

**NOTE**: The PIP package is no longer maintained. If you wish to
maintain it, contact @OliverUv. The PyPI installation notes below are
also outdated and may not work. Sorry.

quickswitch-i3 has a PyPI entry, so you can install it with ``pip
install quickswitch-i3``. Alternatively, you can always manually run the
setup file with ``python setup.py install``.

Contributions
-------------
...are obviously welcome. Pretty much every feature in quickswitch
originated because someone (not just me) thought "hey, this would be
useful". Just shoot a Pull Request.

License
-------
**Disclaimer: quickswitch-i3 is a third party script and in no way
affiliated with the i3 project.**

This program is free software under the terms of the Do What The Fuck
You Want To Public License. It comes without any warranty, to the extent
permitted by applicable law. For a copy of the license, see COPYING or
head to http://sam.zoy.org/wtfpl/COPYING.

.. _Pentadactyl: http://5digits.org/pentadactyl/
.. _i3: http://i3wm.org

.. vim: set tw=81: