5 Hidden Features of i3WM

Today I talk about a few features of i3 window manager that you might not have heard of before.
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smart_gaps on
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#i3wm #linux #thelinuxcast

[@CyberBoy8799]

If you hold the Mod key while resizing windows with the mouse it's much easier to do it instead trying to find that tiny border between the windows.

[@snowhusk]

I believe that's the correct intended method of doing it with mouse anyway. that way it's also like "hey, it's still kinda kb-heavy interface, you nerds" too :) I believe both KDE and GNOME have that by default too, which is neat

[@Ladas552]

@@snowhusk openbox can resize on alt+right_click from the box, if I remember correctly

[@mangelozzi]

Not sure what you mean, its identical behaviour to me. In the default config file it says: `floating_modifier $mod`, with a comment `# Use Mouse+$mod to drag floating windows to their wanted position`, which is about moving the window position not resizing it.

[@AnalyticMinded]

A few months ago I discovered that you can actually change the geometry of a window, which makes sense for some applications. For example, cava (the audio visualizer) can be made to float, its geometry can be made a rectangle (of whatever size), and then placed at the upper right-hand corner of the screen. Another tip is that if you want some programs to open on a specific workspace, you can do that either through the "assign" command, or the "for_window" command with the "move" flag. Which one works best depends on the way your program draws its window. For example, "assign" doesn't work with LibreOffice apps, but the "for_window" does. Lastly, and this is not for everyone, if you get rid of gaps (as I have), you can still keep track of where you are by having only the focused window draw a border around itself. Anyway, great video, Matt!

[@holzvvrm7718]

Yeah, I never understood the obsession with gaps. I want as much screen real estate as I can possibly get, so gaps is an option I never even considered

[@KingBowserLP]

The moving workspaces to other monitors thing is really useful! The way i did it was move my mouse to the other monitor and call a non-foreground workspace to have it displayed there. it was fiddly, and if i accidentally called the one active on my other monitor, or had the mouse in it, or accidentally called the inactive workspace of my second monitor it would switch around, and it was a whole hassle. thank you for showing us this! i love i3, and i'll definitely set it up on my brand new fedora install. Loved using it on Manjaro (and would have loved to keep using Manjaro) but that went bust because of hardware issues.

[@jesse7631]

Those tips are superb, especially the one for the multi-monitor move of workspaces. Thanks!

[@mangelozzi]

All these hidden featuers are in the i3 documentation, user guide, which is the first thing you should read when starting to use i3

[@crab_aesthetics]

What elevates i3 for me above the other tilers is the ability to use tabs, and then to split tabs. Incredibly useful to be able to have a tiled window off to the right and then a tabbed split on the left, and then to be able to occasionally tile the left split. Other tiling window managers lack this ability (or you have to essentially code it yourself, when it just werks out of the box on i3).

[@lucastavares3518]

Herbstluftwm does each frame with its separate layout

[@johnnyvvlog]

That last one is going to be such a time saver for me. Thnx for the video!

[@ghsinfosec]

Love that gruvbox colorscheme you got going on there Matt! I've been thinking about hopping away from dwm and I may have to check out i3 again based on these tips 🤔

[@thenextpoetician6328]

Nothing is hidden in i3 except a app in Scratchpad. :) Only two full reads of the user guide, though plenty of searches. Great manual. Move workspace is the only one I didn't use, and now, I might. It's very cool. Have you thought about doing a video trying everything for i3 from the AUR? Every now and then I go looking to see what if anything catches my eye. Apparently I'm due another ... This is an example of how I structure my config, focusing on workspaces: set $ws5 "5" assign [class="kdenlive"] $ws5 for_window [class="kdenlive"]focus for_window [title="Clip titre"] floating enable, resize set 1220 785, move position 350 150 bindsym $mod+k exec kdenlive

[@snowhusk]

scratchpad is such a neat little feature, I'm surprised many distros don't have it on by default

[@camerontgore]

Love the color theme for this video! That is an awesome orange color

[@quentincaldway]

Awesome stuff! I've added the gaps to my config now lol, I've seen this but never really used it lol yes i'm an old adopter of this! Awesome video!

[@unklebonehead]

YESSSSSS! I been waiting for this video!

[@adam0ling482]

Great videos! Thanks!

[@normantam3660]

loved your video on i3 I have a trick for you if you put your mouse on the bottom to the bar and scroll the mouse wheel you can change the workstations. Keep up the good work.

[@phonewithoutquestion80]

Getting rid of the modal resize and having to use Alt + Super + H/J/K/L to do it is a good 30% usability boost.

[@TheLinuxCast]

Oh, yeah, I got rid of all the modes. I don't use them at all

[@SireFOSS]

loving that smart_gaps on feature !

[@IvanKostrubin]

Thanks i already have all of them and more in my config, but anyway thank you for sharing it with others. It is a good thing.

[@a9nh]

Honestly this theme is awesome!

[@anonymousjones4016]

Hi and thanks for all your videos. They've truly helped me get my bearings around this Debian Linux derivatives. Jay, I installed Debian 11 BullsEye as a pre-requisite to hardened my OS. Now, if I had a choice of which OS to harden, I would like my rig's main OS to be Arch Linux and leverage KickSecure security hardening scripts to then load a HyperVisor to host WHONIX Gateway to route my Kali, Black Arch and Parrot linux VMs through. :) Can you, create a how to for this? I got Black Arch installed, but got stumped in trying to "morph it to Parabola" or "Hyperbola", so I gave in and re-imaged my rig with Debian 11 BullsEye, just to also get stumped installing the deb packages that convert the pre-installed Debian 11 BullsEye or, as in my preference - Arch Linux. Can you, please, do a how to convert an Arch Linux OS host to KickSecure using the deb packages? Please & thanks in advance! - Anonymous Jones

[@StillConfusing]

for the workspaces you can also do like "to workspace " i've put that on the hjkl keys so I can move workspaces like windows

[@androth1502]

back when i was messing around with i3, i was able to set up a key+mouse combo where you can click the mouse anywhere in the window to resize it.

[@musthavechannel5262]

I think "floating_modifier $mod" did that for me

[@redrebel__]

i will say that's one thing about i3 that after taking a real look "currently on this wm" the smart gaps is a awesome thing.

[@Aekal4]

Great stuff! What do you use to make tiling dynamic on i3?

[@TheLinuxCast]

It's called autotiling

[@HeCodes2Much]

Holy cow I didn't know you can use include in i3 config and make it multi files :) I did that with my polybar but had no idea i3 could do that to

[@mohamedalichabani6775]

You can also increment and decrement inner/outer gaps on a specific workspace

[@JustinTunley]

Using multiple windows sounds seductive, but use with caution, as there is a downside. It is very, very easy to accidentally close the wrong window, losing your data.

[@colbybraden]

Very cool dude. Kinda odd for someone to go from dwm to i3. It's usually the other way around. Are you using gruvbox color scheme?

[@TheLinuxCast]

Yes.

[@eikeimnetz]

im gonna switch from bspwm to i3gaps thanks to your video

[@snowhusk]

somehow, the first three are like the easiest first things you get when tinkering with any major line i3 spin (Manjaro, Arco, Endeavour) to the point that it kinda weird you didn't know about floating modifier for resizing with mod+mouse, but not gonna lie - those last two are really cool things, gotta try them out with your scratchpad script goodies some day

[@cahva2]

Yeah resizing using mod+right mouse is sweet and you don't need to that accurate as it snaps to the nearest side. I guess you can do that without mod when putting the cursor between gaps but that is cumbersome :)

[@kbaeve]

I keep coming back to i3 too. Awesome and dwm is ok but idk, started with i3 and the others just don't feel quite right

[@russellrussell5495]

Get rid of 'resize' and add: bindsym $mod+o gaps inner current plus 2; gaps outer current plus 2 bindsym $mod+p gaps inner current minus 2; gaps outer current minus 2

[@snowhusk]

another thing I like in i3wm is "sticky" windows and "workspace back and forth".

[@aim__freakz8499]

yo these are amazing! except for the resize part imo.

[@puppy_BYTE]

where can I download a copy of your config file?

[@cosmiccuttlefish5765]

6:50 I don’t know if you have used it but leftwm defaults to that behavior with multiple monitors.

[@d3qthang3l]

How did you get these icons in pfetch?

[@IuliusPsicofactum]

I felt the title of this video as a challenge hahaa. Let's see.

[@henninb]

I like your bar.

[@MrCradleman]

You could make your config even more cleaner if you "set" your rules as variables instead of repeating them on every line

[@keltyll]

The issue I faced often, with i3wm & i3gaps is that it doesn't manage windows too well sometimes. Go figure :o What I'm trying to say is that if you are a musician, working with a DAW and especially VSTs tabs is a pain in the neck. while handling these plugins using Awesome / BSPWM or DWM is just fantastic ! No caveats what so ever.

[@unklebonehead]

I just change them to floating and no problem for me. But I dont use that many VST's at a time.Maybe 3 -4 at the most.

[@nemogamma578]

Matt thanks, very useful. What about keychords in i3wm ?

[@TheLinuxCast]

I use sxhkd for those.

[@diver2048]

Orange is my favourite colour. And a gruvbox theme too. Matt, can I find your i3-config dotfiles somewhere?)

[@TheLinuxCast]

Yep. They're on my gitlab. Link in the video description

[@casenc]

To fix the terminals being messed up after resizing: run tmux!

[@gangatharanr1995]

Hi, how did you manage to use "include" on the i3 config file?

[@TheLinuxCast]

That's a build in for i3 since a few versions ago. Just search include in the i3 docs and you should find out how to do it

[@BD-hx9lf]

Which picom fork are you using for bluring?

[@TheLinuxCast]

The main branch.

[@BD-hx9lf]

@@TheLinuxCast i have a issue i cannot apply bluring in i3-gaps with pijulius-picom How to fix this? I saw your video and others but nothing worked

[@AhmedFaisal13]

I'm looking for a window manager that supports Compiz. I need that for the zoom feature which is the only way that make me "see" what on the screen..

[@TheLinuxCast]

Openbox, maybe? If not, you may be able to add in something like i3 into Mate, which does support Compiz.

[@buntun3670]

smart gaps 😄

[@user-hx8mx6dg8q]

epiccc

[@tonyd3743]

In regards to reducing number of lines even further, you can also use regex to select windows with the same criteria, so you can do for_window [class=“pulse|ttrm|mus|fs”] floating enable…. Also PS, you have some trailing newlines at the end of your file ;)

[@TheLinuxCast]

That's awesome! Got that changed. Four more lines gone, (Plus the extras)

[@rashie]

👍👍

[@amllagouch9516]

Did TerminalForLife delete his youtube channel?

[@TheLinuxCast]

Yes he did. He had problems with the way KZbin does business

[@17TheVIP]

I need your bar

[@TheLinuxCast]

My dots are on gitlab. Link in the video description

[@itsfish8672]

GVM.

[@aim__freakz8499]

- hide_edge_borders smart and - smart_gaps on are for real so dope! didn't know i needed to know about these! especially because i'm sitting quite far away from my 24" monitor and i liked to have my gaps between 6-16px, so quite big