i3window

Small utility for use with polybar and i3, which outputs the name of the focused window on the given X11 output. The intent is to create a widget for polybar, with the behavior that I prefer.

Usage

go install github.com/jdelkins/i3window
i3window <display-name>

<display-name> should be one of the display names returned with polybar --list-all-monitors. This manual running approach is fine for testing, but the program is meant to be used with polybar, so see below for how to configure and run from there.

How it Works

Whenever the focused window changes in the provided window, either through opening, closing, or focusing a window, the program changing the window title, or by changing workspaces on that monitor, the program will output the focused X11 window name to stdout. When polybar is configured with a module that runs this program as a custom script, it will show this output on the bar.

Polybar Configuration

Example configuration follows. The important items are type = custom/script, exec = ... and tail = true.

[module/i3-window]
type = custom/script
label = %output%
tail = true
exec = ~/go/bin/i3window $MONITOR

Acknowledgements

Uses the indespensible i3ipc package to interface with i3. The polybar interface is handled by polybar itself, which simply reads from stdout.

License

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA.

jdelkins / i3window