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<body>
<div id="header">
<h1>i3 User’s Guide</h1>
<span id="author">Michael Stapelberg</span><br />
<span id="email"><tt>&lt;<a href="mailto:michael+i3@stapelberg.de">michael+i3@stapelberg.de</a>&gt;</tt></span><br />
<span id="revdate">March 2010</span>
<div id="toc">
  <div id="toctitle">Table of Contents</div>
  <noscript><p><b>JavaScript must be enabled in your browser to display the table of contents.</b></p></noscript>
</div>
</div>
<div id="content">
<div id="preamble">
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="paragraph"><p>This document contains all the information you need to configure and use the i3
window manager. If it does not, please contact me on IRC, Jabber or E-Mail and
I’ll help you out.</p></div>
</div>
</div>
<h2 id="_default_keybindings">1. Default keybindings</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="paragraph"><p>For the "too long; didn’t read" people, here is an overview of the default
keybindings (click to see the full size image):</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p><strong>Keys to use with Mod1 (alt):</strong></p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p><span class="image">
<a class="image" href="keyboard-layer1.png">
<img src="keyboard-layer1.png" alt="Keys to use with Mod1 (alt)" width="600" />
</a>
</span></p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p><strong>Keys to use with Shift+Mod1:</strong></p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p><span class="image">
<a class="image" href="keyboard-layer2.png">
<img src="keyboard-layer2.png" alt="Keys to use with Shift+Mod1" width="600" />
</a>
</span></p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>As i3 uses keycodes in the default configuration, it does not matter which
keyboard layout you actually use. The key positions are what matters (of course
you can also use keysymbols, see <a href="#keybindings">[keybindings]</a>).</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>The red keys are the modifiers you need to press (by default), the blue keys
are your homerow.</p></div>
</div>
<h2 id="_using_i3">2. Using i3</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<h3 id="_opening_terminals_and_moving_around">2.1. Opening terminals and moving around</h3><div style="clear:left"></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>One very basic operation is opening a new terminal. By default, the keybinding
for this is Mod1+Enter, that is Alt+Enter in the default configuration. By
pressing Mod1+Enter, a new terminal will be opened.  It will fill the whole
space available on your screen.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p><span class="image">
<img src="single_terminal.png" alt="Single terminal" />
</span></p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>It is important to keep in mind that i3 uses a table to manage your windows. At
the moment, you have exactly one column and one row which leaves you with one
cell. In this cell there is a container, which is where your new terminal is
opened.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>If you now open another terminal, you still have only one cell. However, the
container in that cell holds both of your terminals. So, a container is just a
group of clients with a specific layout. Containers can be resized by adjusting
the size of the cell that holds them.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p><span class="image">
<img src="two_terminals.png" alt="Two terminals" />
</span></p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>To move the focus between the two terminals, you use the direction keys which
you may know from the editor <tt>vi</tt>. However, in i3, your homerow is used for
these keys (in <tt>vi</tt>, the keys are shifted to the left by one for compatibility
with most keyboard layouts). Therefore, <tt>Mod1+J</tt> is left, <tt>Mod1+K</tt> is down,
<tt>Mod1+L</tt> is up and <tt>Mod1+;</tt> is right. So, to switch between the terminals,
use <tt>Mod1+K</tt> or <tt>Mod1+L</tt>.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>To create a new row/column (and a new cell), you can simply move a terminal (or
any other window) in the direction you want to expand your table. So, let’s
expand the table to the right by pressing <tt>Mod1+Shift+;</tt>.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p><span class="image">
<img src="two_columns.png" alt="Two columns" />
</span></p></div>
<h3 id="_changing_container_modes">2.2. Changing container modes</h3><div style="clear:left"></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>A container can have the following modes:</p></div>
<div class="dlist"><dl>
<dt class="hdlist1">
default
</dt>
<dd>
<p>
Windows are sized so that every window gets an equal amount of space in the
container.
</p>
</dd>
<dt class="hdlist1">
stacking
</dt>
<dd>
<p>
Only the focused window in the container is displayed. You get a list of
windows at the top of the container.
</p>
</dd>
<dt class="hdlist1">
tabbed
</dt>
<dd>
<p>
The same principle as <tt>stacking</tt>, but the list of windows at the top is only
a single line which is vertically split.
</p>
</dd>
</dl></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>To switch modes, press <tt>Mod1+e</tt> for default, <tt>Mod1+h</tt> for stacking and
<tt>Mod1+w</tt> for tabbed.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p><span class="image">
<img src="modes.png" alt="Container modes" />
</span></p></div>
<h3 id="_toggling_fullscreen_mode_for_a_window">2.3. Toggling fullscreen mode for a window</h3><div style="clear:left"></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>To display a window fullscreen or to go out of fullscreen mode again, press
<tt>Mod1+f</tt>.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>There is also a global fullscreen mode in i3 in which the client will use all
available outputs. To use it, or to get out of it again, press <tt>Mod1+Shift+f</tt>.</p></div>
<h3 id="_opening_other_applications">2.4. Opening other applications</h3><div style="clear:left"></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>Aside from opening applications from a terminal, you can also use the handy
<tt>dmenu</tt> which is opened by pressing <tt>Mod1+v</tt> by default. Just type the name
(or a part of it) of the application which you want to open. The application
typed has to be in your <tt>$PATH</tt> for this to work.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>Additionally, if you have applications you open very frequently, you can
create a keybinding for starting the application directly. See the section
"Configuring i3" for details.</p></div>
<h3 id="_closing_windows">2.5. Closing windows</h3><div style="clear:left"></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>If an application does not provide a mechanism for closing (most applications
provide a menu, the escape key or a shortcut like <tt>Control+W</tt> to close), you
can press <tt>Mod1+Shift+q</tt> to kill a window. For applications which support
the WM_DELETE protocol, this will correctly close the application (saving
any modifications or doing other cleanup). If the application doesn’t support
the WM_DELETE protocol your X server will kill the window and the behaviour
depends on the application.</p></div>
<h3 id="_using_workspaces">2.6. Using workspaces</h3><div style="clear:left"></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>Workspaces are an easy way to group a set of windows. By default, you are on
the first workspace, as the bar on the bottom left indicates. To switch to
another workspace, press <tt>Mod1+num</tt> where <tt>num</tt> is the number of the workspace
you want to use. If the workspace does not exist yet, it will be created.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>A common paradigm is to put the web browser on one workspace, communication
applications (<tt>mutt</tt>, <tt>irssi</tt>, &#8230;) on another one, and the ones with which you
work, on the third one. Of course, there is no need to follow this approach.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>If you have multiple screens, a workspace will be created on each screen at
startup. If you open a new workspace, it will be bound to the screen you
created it on.  When you switch to a workspace on another screen, i3 will set
focus to that screen.</p></div>
<h3 id="_moving_windows_to_workspaces">2.7. Moving windows to workspaces</h3><div style="clear:left"></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>To move a window to another workspace, simply press <tt>Mod1+Shift+num</tt> where
<tt>num</tt> is (like when switching workspaces) the number of the target workspace.
Similarly to switching workspaces, the target workspace will be created if
it does not yet exist.</p></div>
<h3 id="_resizing_columns_rows">2.8. Resizing columns/rows</h3><div style="clear:left"></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>To resize columns or rows, just grab the border between the two columns/rows
and move it to the wanted size. Please keep in mind that each cell of the table
holds a <tt>container</tt> and thus you cannot horizontally resize single windows.  If
you need applications with different horizontal sizes, place them in seperate
cells one above the other.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>See <a href="#resizingconfig">[resizingconfig]</a> for how to configure i3 to be able to resize
columns/rows with your keyboard.</p></div>
<h3 id="_restarting_i3_inplace">2.9. Restarting i3 inplace</h3><div style="clear:left"></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>To restart i3 inplace (and thus get into a clean state if there is a bug, or
to upgrade to a newer version of i3) you can use <tt>Mod1+Shift+r</tt>. Be aware,
though, that this kills your current layout and all the windows you have opened
will be put in a default container in only one cell. Saving layouts will be
implemented in a later version.</p></div>
<h3 id="_exiting_i3">2.10. Exiting i3</h3><div style="clear:left"></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>To cleanly exit i3 without killing your X server, you can use <tt>Mod1+Shift+e</tt>.</p></div>
<h3 id="_snapping">2.11. Snapping</h3><div style="clear:left"></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>Snapping is a mechanism to increase/decrease the colspan/rowspan of a container.
Colspan/rowspan is the number of columns/rows a specific cell of the table
consumes. This is easier explained by giving an example, so take the following
layout:</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p><span class="image">
<img src="snapping.png" alt="Snapping example" />
</span></p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>To use the full size of your screen, you can now snap container 3 downwards
by pressing <tt>Mod1+Control+k</tt> (or snap container 2 rightwards).</p></div>
<h3 id="_floating">2.12. Floating</h3><div style="clear:left"></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>Floating mode is the opposite of tiling mode. The position and size of a window
are not managed by i3, but by you. Using this mode violates the tiling
paradigm but can be useful for some corner cases like "Save as" dialog
windows, or toolbar windows (GIMP or similar).</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>You can enable floating mode for a window by pressing <tt>Mod1+Shift+Space</tt>. By
dragging the window’s titlebar with your mouse you can move the window
around. By grabbing the borders and moving them you can resize the window. You
can also do that by using the <a href="#floating_modifier">[floating_modifier]</a>.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>For resizing floating windows with your keyboard, see <a href="#resizingconfig">[resizingconfig]</a>.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>Floating windows are always on top of tiling windows.</p></div>
</div>
<h2 id="_configuring_i3">3. Configuring i3</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="paragraph"><p>This is where the real fun begins ;-). Most things are very dependant on your
ideal working environment so we can’t make reasonable defaults for them.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>While not using a programming language for the configuration, i3 stays
quite flexible in regards to the things you usually want your window manager
to do.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>For example, you can configure bindings to jump to specific windows,
you can set specific applications to start on specific workspaces, you can
automatically start applications, you can change the colors of i3, and you
can bind your keys to do useful things.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>To change the configuration of i3, copy <tt>/etc/i3/config</tt> to <tt>~/.i3/config</tt>
(or <tt>~/.config/i3/config</tt> if you like the XDG directory scheme) and edit it
with a text editor.</p></div>
<h3 id="_comments">3.1. Comments</h3><div style="clear:left"></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>It is possible and recommended to use comments in your configuration file to
properly document your setup for later reference. Comments are started with
a # and can only be used at the beginning of a line:</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p><strong>Examples</strong>:</p></div>
<div class="listingblock">
<div class="content">
<pre><tt># This is a comment</tt></pre>
</div></div>
<h3 id="_fonts">3.2. Fonts</h3><div style="clear:left"></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>i3 uses X core fonts (not Xft) for rendering window titles and the internal
workspace bar. You can use <tt>xfontsel(1)</tt> to generate such a font description.
To see special characters (Unicode), you need to use a font which supports
the ISO-10646 encoding.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p><strong>Syntax</strong>:</p></div>
<div class="listingblock">
<div class="content">
<pre><tt>font &lt;X core font description&gt;</tt></pre>
</div></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p><strong>Examples</strong>:</p></div>
<div class="listingblock">
<div class="content">
<pre><tt>font -misc-fixed-medium-r-normal--13-120-75-75-C-70-iso10646-1</tt></pre>
</div></div>
<h3 id="keybindings">3.3. Keyboard bindings</h3><div style="clear:left"></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>A keyboard binding makes i3 execute a command (see below) upon pressing a
specific key. i3 allows you to bind either on keycodes or on keysyms (you can
also mix your bindings, though i3 will not protect you from overlapping ones).</p></div>
<div class="ulist"><ul>
<li>
<p>
A keysym (key symbol) is a description for a specific symbol, like "a"
  or "b", but also more strange ones like "underscore" instead of "_". These
  are the ones you use in Xmodmap to remap your keys. To get the current
  mapping of your keys, use <tt>xmodmap -pke</tt>.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
Keycodes do not need to have a symbol assigned (handy for some hotkeys
  on some notebooks) and they will not change their meaning as you switch to a
  different keyboard layout (when using <tt>xmodmap</tt>).
</p>
</li>
</ul></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>My recommendation is: If you often switch keyboard layouts but you want to keep
your bindings in the same physical location on the keyboard, use keycodes.
If you don’t switch layouts, and want a clean and simple config file, use
keysyms.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p><strong>Syntax</strong>:</p></div>
<div class="listingblock">
<div class="content">
<pre><tt>bindsym [Modifiers+]keysym command
bind [Modifiers+]keycode command</tt></pre>
</div></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p><strong>Examples</strong>:</p></div>
<div class="listingblock">
<div class="content">
<pre><tt># Fullscreen
bindsym Mod1+f f

# Restart
bindsym Mod1+Shift+r restart

# Notebook-specific hotkeys
bind 214 exec /home/michael/toggle_beamer.sh</tt></pre>
</div></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>Available Modifiers:</p></div>
<div class="dlist"><dl>
<dt class="hdlist1">
Mod1-Mod5, Shift, Control
</dt>
<dd>
<p>
Standard modifiers, see <tt>xmodmap(1)</tt>
</p>
</dd>
<dt class="hdlist1">
Mode_switch
</dt>
<dd>
<p>
Unlike other window managers, i3 can use Mode_switch as a modifier. This allows
you to remap capslock (for example) to Mode_switch and use it for both: typing
umlauts or special characters <em>and</em> having some comfortably reachable key
bindings. For example, when typing, capslock+1 or capslock+2 for switching
workspaces is totally convenient. Try it :-).
</p>
</dd>
</dl></div>
<h3 id="floating_modifier">3.4. The floating modifier</h3><div style="clear:left"></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>To move floating windows with your mouse, you can either grab their titlebar
or configure the so called floating modifier which you can then press and
click anywhere in the window itself to move it. The most common setup is to
use the same key you use for managing windows (Mod1 for example). Then
you can press Mod1, click into a window using your left mouse button, and drag
it to the position you want.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>When holding the floating modifier, you can resize a floating window by
pressing the right mouse button on it and moving around while holding it. If
you hold the shift button as well, the resize will be proportional.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p><strong>Syntax</strong>:</p></div>
<div class="listingblock">
<div class="content">
<pre><tt>floating_modifier &lt;Modifiers&gt;</tt></pre>
</div></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p><strong>Examples</strong>:</p></div>
<div class="listingblock">
<div class="content">
<pre><tt>floating_modifier Mod1</tt></pre>
</div></div>
<h3 id="_layout_mode_for_new_containers">3.5. Layout mode for new containers</h3><div style="clear:left"></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>This option determines in which mode new containers will start. See also
<a href="#stack-limit">[stack-limit]</a>.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p><strong>Syntax</strong>:</p></div>
<div class="listingblock">
<div class="content">
<pre><tt>new_container &lt;default|stacking|tabbed&gt;
new_container stack-limit &lt;cols|rows&gt; &lt;value&gt;</tt></pre>
</div></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p><strong>Examples</strong>:</p></div>
<div class="listingblock">
<div class="content">
<pre><tt>new_container tabbed</tt></pre>
</div></div>
<h3 id="_border_style_for_new_windows">3.6. Border style for new windows</h3><div style="clear:left"></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>This option determines which border style new windows will have.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p><strong>Syntax</strong>:</p></div>
<div class="listingblock">
<div class="content">
<pre><tt>new_window &lt;bp|bn|bb&gt;</tt></pre>
</div></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p><strong>Examples</strong>:</p></div>
<div class="listingblock">
<div class="content">
<pre><tt>new_window bp</tt></pre>
</div></div>
<h3 id="_variables">3.7. Variables</h3><div style="clear:left"></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>As you learned in the section about keyboard bindings, you will have
to configure lots of bindings containing modifier keys. If you want to save
yourself some typing and be able to change the modifier you use later,
variables can be handy.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p><strong>Syntax</strong>:</p></div>
<div class="listingblock">
<div class="content">
<pre><tt>set name value</tt></pre>
</div></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p><strong>Examples</strong>:</p></div>
<div class="listingblock">
<div class="content">
<pre><tt>set $m Mod1
bindsym $m+Shift+r restart</tt></pre>
</div></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>Variables are directly replaced in the file when parsing. There is no fancy
handling and there are absolutely no plans to change this. If you need a more
dynamic configuration you should create a little script which generates a
configuration file and run it before starting i3 (for example in your
<tt>.xsession</tt> file).</p></div>
<h3 id="_automatically_putting_clients_on_specific_workspaces">3.8. Automatically putting clients on specific workspaces</h3><div style="clear:left"></div>
<div class="paragraph" id="assign_workspace"><p>It is recommended that you match on window classes wherever possible because
some applications first create their window, and then worry about setting the
correct title. Firefox with Vimperator comes to mind. The window starts up
being named Firefox, and only when Vimperator is loaded does the title change.
As i3 will get the title as soon as the application maps the window (mapping
means actually displaying it on the screen), you’d need to have to match on
<em>Firefox</em> in this case.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>You can prefix or suffix workspaces with a <tt>~</tt> to specify that matching clients
should be put into floating mode. If you specify only a <tt>~</tt>, the client will
not be put onto any workspace, but will be set floating on the current one.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p><strong>Syntax</strong>:</p></div>
<div class="listingblock">
<div class="content">
<pre><tt>assign ["]window class[/window title]["] [→] [~ | workspace]</tt></pre>
</div></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p><strong>Examples</strong>:</p></div>
<div class="listingblock">
<div class="content">
<pre><tt>assign urxvt 2
assign urxvt → 2
assign "urxvt" → 2
assign "urxvt/VIM" → 3
assign "gecko" → ~4
assign "xv/MPlayer" → ~</tt></pre>
</div></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>Note that the arrow is not required, it just looks good :-). If you decide to
use it, it has to be a UTF-8 encoded arrow, not "&#8594;" or something like that.</p></div>
<h3 id="_automatically_starting_applications_on_i3_startup">3.9. Automatically starting applications on i3 startup</h3><div style="clear:left"></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>By using the <tt>exec</tt> keyword outside a keybinding, you can configure which
commands will be performed by i3 on initial startup (not when restarting i3
in-place however). These commands will be run in order.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p><strong>Syntax</strong>:</p></div>
<div class="listingblock">
<div class="content">
<pre><tt>exec command</tt></pre>
</div></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p><strong>Examples</strong>:</p></div>
<div class="listingblock">
<div class="content">
<pre><tt>exec sudo i3status | dzen2 -dock</tt></pre>
</div></div>
<h3 id="workspace_screen">3.10. Automatically putting workspaces on specific screens</h3><div style="clear:left"></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>If you assign clients to workspaces, it might be handy to put the
workspaces on specific screens. Also, the assignment of workspaces to screens
will determine which workspace i3 uses for a new screen when adding screens
or when starting (e.g., by default it will use 1 for the first screen, 2 for
the second screen and so on).</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p><strong>Syntax</strong>:</p></div>
<div class="listingblock">
<div class="content">
<pre><tt>workspace &lt;number&gt; output &lt;output&gt;</tt></pre>
</div></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>The <em>output</em> is the name of the RandR output you attach your screen to. On a
laptop, you might have VGA1 and LVDS1 as output names. You can see the
available outputs by running <tt>xrandr --current</tt>.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p><strong>Examples</strong>:</p></div>
<div class="listingblock">
<div class="content">
<pre><tt>workspace 1 output LVDS1
workspace 5 output VGA1</tt></pre>
</div></div>
<h3 id="_named_workspaces">3.11. Named workspaces</h3><div style="clear:left"></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>If you always have a certain arrangement of workspaces, you might want to give
them names (of course UTF-8 is supported):</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p><strong>Syntax</strong>:</p></div>
<div class="listingblock">
<div class="content">
<pre><tt>workspace &lt;number&gt; &lt;name&gt;
workspace &lt;number&gt; output &lt;output&gt; name</tt></pre>
</div></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>For more details about the <em>output</em> part of this command, see above.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p><strong>Examples</strong>:</p></div>
<div class="listingblock">
<div class="content">
<pre><tt>workspace 1 www
workspace 2 work
workspace 3 i ♥ workspaces</tt></pre>
</div></div>
<h3 id="_changing_colors">3.12. Changing colors</h3><div style="clear:left"></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>You can change all colors which i3 uses to draw the window decorations and the
bottom bar.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p><strong>Syntax</strong>:</p></div>
<div class="listingblock">
<div class="content">
<pre><tt>colorclass border background text</tt></pre>
</div></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>Where colorclass can be one of:</p></div>
<div class="dlist"><dl>
<dt class="hdlist1">
client.focused
</dt>
<dd>
<p>
        A client which currently has the focus.
</p>
</dd>
<dt class="hdlist1">
client.focused_inactive
</dt>
<dd>
<p>
        A client which is the focused one of its container, but it does not have
        the focus at the moment.
</p>
</dd>
<dt class="hdlist1">
client.unfocused
</dt>
<dd>
<p>
        A client which is not the focused one of its container.
</p>
</dd>
<dt class="hdlist1">
client.urgent
</dt>
<dd>
<p>
        A client which has its urgency hint activated.
</p>
</dd>
<dt class="hdlist1">
bar.focused
</dt>
<dd>
<p>
        The current workspace in the bottom bar.
</p>
</dd>
<dt class="hdlist1">
bar.unfocused
</dt>
<dd>
<p>
        All other workspaces in the bottom bar.
</p>
</dd>
<dt class="hdlist1">
bar.urgent
</dt>
<dd>
<p>
        A workspace which has at least one client with an activated urgency hint.
</p>
</dd>
</dl></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>Colors are in HTML hex format (#rrggbb), see the following example:</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p><strong>Examples</strong>:</p></div>
<div class="listingblock">
<div class="content">
<pre><tt># class        border  backgr. text
client.focused #2F343A #900000 #FFFFFF</tt></pre>
</div></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>Note that for the window decorations, the color around the child window is the
background color, and the border color is only the two thin lines at the top of
the window.</p></div>
<h3 id="_interprocess_communication">3.13. Interprocess communication</h3><div style="clear:left"></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>i3 uses unix sockets to provide an IPC interface. This allows third-party
programs to get information from i3, such as the current workspaces
(to display a workspace bar), and to control i3.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>To enable it, you have to configure a path where the unix socket will be
stored. The default path is <tt>~/.i3/ipc.sock</tt>.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p><strong>Examples</strong>:</p></div>
<div class="listingblock">
<div class="content">
<pre><tt>ipc-socket ~/.i3/ipc.sock</tt></pre>
</div></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>You can then use the <tt>i3-msg</tt> application to perform any command listed in
the next section.</p></div>
<h3 id="_disable_focus_follows_mouse">3.14. Disable focus follows mouse</h3><div style="clear:left"></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>If you have a setup where your mouse usually is in your way (like a touchpad
on your laptop which you do not want to disable completely), you might want
to disable <em>focus follows mouse</em> and control focus only by using your keyboard.
The mouse will still be useful inside the currently active window (for example
to click on links in your browser window).</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p><strong>Syntax</strong>:</p></div>
<div class="listingblock">
<div class="content">
<pre><tt>focus_follows_mouse &lt;yes|no&gt;</tt></pre>
</div></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p><strong>Examples</strong>:</p></div>
<div class="listingblock">
<div class="content">
<pre><tt>focus_follows_mouse no</tt></pre>
</div></div>
<h3 id="_internal_workspace_bar">3.15. Internal workspace bar</h3><div style="clear:left"></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>The internal workspace bar (the thing at the bottom of your screen) is very
simple&#8201;&#8212;&#8201;it does not provide a way to display custom text and it does not
offer advanced customization features. This is intended because we do not
want to duplicate functionality of tools like <tt>dzen2</tt>, <tt>xmobar</tt> and so on
(they render bars, we manage windows). Instead, there is an option which will
turn off the internal bar completely, so that you can use a separate program to
display it (see <tt>i3-wsbar</tt>, a sample implementation of such a program):</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p><strong>Syntax</strong>:</p></div>
<div class="listingblock">
<div class="content">
<pre><tt>workspace_bar &lt;yes|no&gt;</tt></pre>
</div></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p><strong>Examples</strong>:</p></div>
<div class="listingblock">
<div class="content">
<pre><tt>workspace_bar no</tt></pre>
</div></div>
</div>
<h2 id="_list_of_commands">4. List of commands</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<h3 id="_manipulating_layout">4.1. Manipulating layout</h3><div style="clear:left"></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>To change the layout of the current container to stacking, use <tt>s</tt>, for default
use <tt>d</tt> and for tabbed, use <tt>T</tt>. To make the current client (!) fullscreen,
use <tt>f</tt>, to make it span all outputs, use <tt>fg</tt>, to make it floating (or
tiling again) use <tt>t</tt>:</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p><strong>Examples</strong>:</p></div>
<div class="listingblock">
<div class="content">
<pre><tt>bindsym Mod1+s s
bindsym Mod1+l d
bindsym Mod1+w T

# Toggle fullscreen
bindsym Mod1+f f

# Toggle global fullscreen
bindsym Mod1+Shift+f fg

# Toggle floating/tiling
bindsym Mod1+t t</tt></pre>
</div></div>
<h3 id="_focusing_moving_snapping_clients_containers_screens">4.2. Focusing/Moving/Snapping clients/containers/screens</h3><div style="clear:left"></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>To change the focus, use one of the <tt>h</tt>, <tt>j</tt>, <tt>k</tt> and <tt>l</tt> commands, meaning
left, down, up, right (respectively). To focus a container, prefix it with
<tt>wc</tt>. To focus a screen, prefix it with <tt>ws</tt>.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>The same principle applies for moving and snapping: just prefix the command
with <tt>m</tt> when moving and with <tt>s</tt> when snapping:</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p><strong>Examples</strong>:</p></div>
<div class="listingblock">
<div class="content">
<pre><tt># Focus clients on the left, bottom, top, right:
bindsym Mod1+j h
bindsym Mod1+k j
bindsym Mod1+j k
bindsym Mod1+semicolon l

# Move client to the left, bottom, top, right:
bindsym Mod1+j mh
bindsym Mod1+k mj
bindsym Mod1+j mk
bindsym Mod1+semicolon ml

# Snap client to the left, bottom, top, right:
bindsym Mod1+j sh
bindsym Mod1+k sj
bindsym Mod1+j sk
bindsym Mod1+semicolon sl

# Focus container on the left, bottom, top, right:
bindsym Mod3+j wch
…</tt></pre>
</div></div>
<h3 id="_changing_workspaces_moving_clients_to_workspaces">4.3. Changing workspaces/moving clients to workspaces</h3><div style="clear:left"></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>To change to a specific workspace, the command is just the number of the
workspace, e.g. <tt>1</tt> or <tt>3</tt>. To move the current client to a specific workspace,
prefix the number with an <tt>m</tt>.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>You can also switch to the next and previous workspace with the commands <tt>nw</tt>
and <tt>pw</tt>, which is handy, for example, if you have workspace 1, 3, 4 and 9 and
you want to cycle through them with a single key combination.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p><strong>Examples</strong>:</p></div>
<div class="listingblock">
<div class="content">
<pre><tt>bindsym Mod1+1 1
bindsym Mod1+2 2
...

bindsym Mod1+Shift+1 m1
bindsym Mod1+Shift+2 m2
...

bindsym Mod1+o nw
bindsym Mod1+p pw</tt></pre>
</div></div>
<h3 id="resizingconfig">4.4. Resizing columns/rows</h3><div style="clear:left"></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>If you want to resize columns/rows using your keyboard, you can use the
<tt>resize</tt> command, I recommend using it inside a so called <tt>mode</tt>:</p></div>
<div class="listingblock">
<div class="title">Example: Configuration file, defining a mode for resizing</div>
<div class="content">
<pre><tt>mode "resize" {
        # These bindings trigger as soon as you enter the resize mode

        # They resize the border in the direction you pressed, e.g.
        # when pressing left, the window is resized so that it has
        # more space on its left

        bindsym n resize left -10
        bindsym Shift+n resize left +10

        bindsym r resize bottom +10
        bindsym Shift+r resize bottom -10

        bindsym t resize top -10
        bindsym Shift+t resize top +10

        bindsym d resize right +10
        bindsym Shift+d resize right -10

        bind 36 mode default
}

# Enter resize mode
bindsym Mod1+r mode resize</tt></pre>
</div></div>
<h3 id="_jumping_to_specific_windows">4.5. Jumping to specific windows</h3><div style="clear:left"></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>Often when in a multi-monitor environment, you want to quickly jump to a
specific window. For example, while working on workspace 3 you may want to
jump to your mail client to email your boss that you’ve achieved some
important goal. Instead of figuring out how to navigate to your mailclient,
it would be more convenient to have a shortcut.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p><strong>Syntax</strong>:</p></div>
<div class="listingblock">
<div class="content">
<pre><tt>jump ["]window class[/window title]["]
jump workspace [ column row ]</tt></pre>
</div></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>You can either use the same matching algorithm as in the <tt>assign</tt> command
(see above) or you can specify the position of the client if you always use
the same layout.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p><strong>Examples</strong>:</p></div>
<div class="listingblock">
<div class="content">
<pre><tt># Get me to the next open VIM instance
bindsym Mod1+a jump "urxvt/VIM"</tt></pre>
</div></div>
<h3 id="_vim_like_marks_mark_goto">4.6. VIM-like marks (mark/goto)</h3><div style="clear:left"></div>
<div class="paragraph" id="vim_like_marks"><p>This feature is like the jump feature: It allows you to directly jump to a
specific window (this means switching to the appropriate workspace and setting
focus to the windows). However, you can directly mark a specific window with
an arbitrary label and use it afterwards.  You do not need to ensure that your
windows have unique classes or titles, and you do not need to change your
configuration file.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>As the command needs to include the label with which you want to mark the
window, you cannot simply bind it to a key.  <tt>i3-input</tt> is a tool created
for this purpose: It lets you input a command and sends the command to i3. It
can also prefix this command and display a custom prompt for the input dialog.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p><strong>Syntax</strong>:</p></div>
<div class="listingblock">
<div class="content">
<pre><tt>mark &lt;identifier&gt;
goto &lt;identifier&gt;</tt></pre>
</div></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p><strong>Examples</strong>:</p></div>
<div class="listingblock">
<div class="content">
<pre><tt># Read 1 character and mark the current window with this character
bindsym Mod1+m exec i3-input -p 'mark ' -l 1 -P 'Mark: '

# Read 1 character and go to the window with the character
bindsym Mod1+g exec i3-input -p 'goto ' -l 1 -P 'Goto: '</tt></pre>
</div></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>Alternatively, if you do not want to mess with <tt>i3-input</tt>, you could create
seperate bindings for a specific set of labels and then only use those labels.</p></div>
<h3 id="_traveling_the_focus_stack">4.7. Traveling the focus stack</h3><div style="clear:left"></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>This mechanism can be thought of as the opposite of the <tt>jump</tt> command.
It travels the focus stack and jumps to the window which had focus previously.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p><strong>Syntax</strong>:</p></div>
<div class="listingblock">
<div class="content">
<pre><tt>focus [number] | floating | tiling | ft</tt></pre>
</div></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>Where <tt>number</tt> by default is 1 meaning that the next client in the focus stack
will be selected.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>The special values have the following meaning:</p></div>
<div class="dlist"><dl>
<dt class="hdlist1">
floating
</dt>
<dd>
<p>
        The next floating window is selected.
</p>
</dd>
<dt class="hdlist1">
tiling
</dt>
<dd>
<p>
        The next tiling window is selected.
</p>
</dd>
<dt class="hdlist1">
ft
</dt>
<dd>
<p>
        If the current window is floating, the next tiling window will be
       selected; and vice-versa.
</p>
</dd>
</dl></div>
<h3 id="_changing_border_style">4.8. Changing border style</h3><div style="clear:left"></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>To change the border of the current client, you can use <tt>bn</tt> to use the normal
border (including window title), <tt>bp</tt> to use a 1-pixel border (no window title)
and <tt>bb</tt> to make the client borderless. There is also <tt>bt</tt> which will toggle
the different border styles.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p><strong>Examples</strong>:</p></div>
<div class="listingblock">
<div class="content">
<pre><tt>bindsym Mod1+t bn
bindsym Mod1+y bp
bindsym Mod1+u bb</tt></pre>
</div></div>
<h3 id="stack-limit">4.9. Changing the stack-limit of a container</h3><div style="clear:left"></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>If you have a single container with a lot of windows inside it (say, more than
10), the default layout of a stacking container can get a little unhandy.
Depending on your screen’s size, you might end up seeing only half of the
titlebars for each window in the container.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>Using the <tt>stack-limit</tt> command, you can limit the number of rows or columns
in a stacking container. i3 will create columns or rows (depending on what
you limited) automatically as needed.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p><strong>Syntax</strong>:</p></div>
<div class="listingblock">
<div class="content">
<pre><tt>stack-limit &lt;cols|rows&gt; &lt;value&gt;</tt></pre>
</div></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p><strong>Examples</strong>:</p></div>
<div class="listingblock">
<div class="content">
<pre><tt># I always want to have two window titles in one line
stack-limit cols 2

# Not more than 5 rows in this stacking container
stack-limit rows 5</tt></pre>
</div></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p><span class="image">
<img src="stacklimit.png" alt="Container limited to two columns" />
</span></p></div>
<h3 id="_reloading_restarting_exiting">4.10. Reloading/Restarting/Exiting</h3><div style="clear:left"></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>You can make i3 reload its configuration file with <tt>reload</tt>. You can also
restart i3 inplace with the <tt>restart</tt> command to get it out of some weird state
(if that should ever happen) or to perform an upgrade without having to restart
your X session. However, your layout is not preserved at the moment, meaning
that all open windows will end up in a single container in default layout
after the restart. To exit i3 properly, you can use the <tt>exit</tt> command,
however you don’t need to (simply killing your X session is fine as well).</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p><strong>Examples</strong>:</p></div>
<div class="listingblock">
<div class="content">
<pre><tt>bindsym Mod1+Shift+r restart
bindsym Mod1+Shift+w reload
bindsym Mod1+Shift+e exit</tt></pre>
</div></div>
</div>
<h2 id="multi_monitor">5. Multiple monitors</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<div class="paragraph"><p>As you can see in the goal list on the website, i3 was specifically developed
with support for multiple monitors in mind. This section will explain how to
handle multiple monitors.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>When you have only one monitor, things are simple. You usually start with
workspace 1 on your monitor and open new ones as you need them.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>When you have more than one monitor, each monitor will get an initial
workspace.  The first monitor gets 1, the second gets 2 and a possible third
would get 3. When you switch to a workspace on a different monitor, i3 will
switch to that monitor and then switch to the workspace. This way, you don’t
need shortcuts to switch to a specific monitor, and you don’t need to remember
where you put which workspace. New workspaces will be opened on the currently
active monitor.  It is not possible to have a monitor without a workspace.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>The idea of making workspaces global is based on the observation that most
users have a very limited set of workspaces on their additional monitors.
They are often used for a specific task (browser, shell) or for monitoring
several things (mail, IRC, syslog, …). Thus, using one workspace on one monitor
and "the rest" on the other monitors often makes sense. However, as you can
create an unlimited number of workspaces in i3 and tie them to specific
screens, you can have the "traditional" approach of having X workspaces per
screen by changing your configuration (using modes, for example).</p></div>
<h3 id="_configuring_your_monitors">5.1. Configuring your monitors</h3><div style="clear:left"></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>To help you get going if you have never used multiple monitors before, here is
a short overview of the xrandr options which will probably be of interest to
you. It is always useful to get an overview of the current screen configuration.
Just run "xrandr" and you will get an output like the following:</p></div>
<div class="listingblock">
<div class="content">
<pre><tt>$ xrandr
Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 1280 x 800, maximum 8192 x 8192
VGA1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
LVDS1 connected 1280x800+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 261mm x 163mm
   1280x800       60.0*+   50.0
   1024x768       85.0     75.0     70.1     60.0
   832x624        74.6
   800x600        85.1     72.2     75.0     60.3     56.2
   640x480        85.0     72.8     75.0     59.9
   720x400        85.0
   640x400        85.1
   640x350        85.1</tt></pre>
</div></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>Several things are important here: You can see that <tt>LVDS1</tt> is connected (of
course, it is the internal flat panel) but <tt>VGA1</tt> is not. If you have a monitor
connected to one of the ports but xrandr still says "disconnected", you should
check your cable, monitor or graphics driver.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>The maximum resolution you can see at the end of the first line is the maximum
combined resolution of your monitors. By default, it is usually too low and has
to be increased by editing <tt>/etc/X11/xorg.conf</tt>.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>So, say you connected VGA1 and want to use it as an additional screen:</p></div>
<div class="listingblock">
<div class="content">
<pre><tt>xrandr --output VGA1 --auto --left-of LVDS1</tt></pre>
</div></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>This command makes xrandr try to find the native resolution of the device
connected to <tt>VGA1</tt> and configures it to the left of your internal flat panel.
When running "xrandr" again, the output looks like this:</p></div>
<div class="listingblock">
<div class="content">
<pre><tt>$ xrandr
Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 2560 x 1024, maximum 8192 x 8192
VGA1 connected 1280x1024+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 338mm x 270mm
   1280x1024      60.0*+   75.0
   1280x960       60.0
   1152x864       75.0
   1024x768       75.1     70.1     60.0
   832x624        74.6
   800x600        72.2     75.0     60.3     56.2
   640x480        72.8     75.0     66.7     60.0
   720x400        70.1
LVDS1 connected 1280x800+1280+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 261mm x 163mm
   1280x800       60.0*+   50.0
   1024x768       85.0     75.0     70.1     60.0
   832x624        74.6
   800x600        85.1     72.2     75.0     60.3     56.2
   640x480        85.0     72.8     75.0     59.9
   720x400        85.0
   640x400        85.1
   640x350        85.1</tt></pre>
</div></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>Please note that i3 uses exactly the same API as xrandr does, so it will see
only what you can see in xrandr.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>See also <a href="#presentations">[presentations]</a> for more examples of multi-monitor setups.</p></div>
<h3 id="_interesting_configuration_for_multi_monitor_environments">5.2. Interesting configuration for multi-monitor environments</h3><div style="clear:left"></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>There are several things to configure in i3 which may be interesting if you
have more than one monitor:</p></div>
<div class="olist arabic"><ol class="arabic">
<li>
<p>
You can specify which workspace should be put on which screen. This
   allows you to have a different set of workspaces when starting than just
   1 for the first monitor, 2 for the second and so on. See
   <a href="#workspace_screen">[workspace_screen]</a>.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
If you want some applications to generally open on the bigger screen
   (MPlayer, Firefox, …), you can assign them to a specific workspace, see
   <a href="#assign_workspace">[assign_workspace]</a>.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
If you have many workspaces on many monitors, it might get hard to keep
   track of which window you put where. Thus, you can use vim-like marks to
   quickly switch between windows. See <a href="#vim_like_marks">[vim_like_marks]</a>.
</p>
</li>
</ol></div>
</div>
<h2 id="_i3_and_the_rest_of_your_software_world">6. i3 and the rest of your software world</h2>
<div class="sectionbody">
<h3 id="_displaying_a_status_line">6.1. Displaying a status line</h3><div style="clear:left"></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>A very common thing amongst users of exotic window managers is a status line at
some corner of the screen. It is an often superior replacement to the widget
approach you have in the task bar of a traditional desktop environment.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>If you don’t already have your favorite way of generating such a status line
(self-written scripts, conky, …), then i3status is the recommended tool for
this task. It was written in C with the goal of using as few syscalls as
possible to reduce the time your CPU is woken up from sleep states.</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>Regardless of which application you use to generate the status line, you
want to make sure that the application does one of the following things:</p></div>
<div class="olist arabic"><ol class="arabic">
<li>
<p>
Register as a dock window using EWMH hints. This will make i3 position the
   window above the workspace bar but below every other client. This is the
   recommended way, but in case of dzen2, for example, you need to check out
   the source of dzen2 from subversion, as the -dock option is not present
   in the released versions.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>
Overlay the internal workspace bar. This method will not waste any space
   on the workspace bar, however, it is rather hackish. Just configure
   the output window to be over the workspace bar (say -x 200 and -y 780 if
   your screen is 800 px height).
</p>
</li>
</ol></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>The planned solution for this problem is to make the workspace bar optional
and switch to a third party application completely (dzen2 for example)
which will then contain the workspace bar.</p></div>
<h3 id="_giving_presentations_multi_monitor">6.2. Giving presentations (multi-monitor)</h3><div style="clear:left"></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>When giving a presentation, you typically want the audience to see what you see
on your screen and then go through a series of slides (if the presentation is
simple). For more complex presentations, you might want to have some notes
which only you can see on your screen, while the audience can only see the
slides.</p></div>
<h4 id="presentations">6.2.1. Case 1: everybody gets the same output</h4>
<div class="paragraph"><p>This is the simple case. You connect your computer to the video projector,
turn on both (computer and video projector) and configure your X server to
clone the internal flat panel of your computer to the video output:</p></div>
<div class="listingblock">
<div class="content">
<pre><tt>xrandr --output VGA1 --mode 1024x768 --same-as LVDS1</tt></pre>
</div></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>i3 will then use the lowest common subset of screen resolutions, the rest of
your screen will be left untouched (it will show the X background). So, in
our example, this would be 1024x768 (my notebook has 1280x800).</p></div>
<h4 id="_case_2_you_can_see_more_than_your_audience">6.2.2. Case 2: you can see more than your audience</h4>
<div class="paragraph"><p>This case is a bit harder. First of all, you should configure the VGA output
somewhere near your internal flat panel, say right of it:</p></div>
<div class="listingblock">
<div class="content">
<pre><tt>xrandr --output VGA1 --mode 1024x768 --right-of LVDS1</tt></pre>
</div></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>Now, i3 will put a new workspace (depending on your settings) on the new screen
and you are in multi-monitor mode (see <a href="#multi_monitor">[multi_monitor]</a>).</p></div>
<div class="paragraph"><p>Because i3 is not a compositing window manager, there is no ability to
display a window on two screens at the same time. Instead, your presentation
software needs to do this job (that is, open a window on each screen).</p></div>
</div>
</div>
<div id="footnotes"><hr /></div>
<div id="footer">
<div id="footer-text">
Last updated 2010-06-09 09:44:56 CEST
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