7 releases
0.3.2 | Feb 26, 2023 |
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0.3.0 | Feb 26, 2023 |
0.2.0 | Feb 26, 2023 |
0.1.3 | Feb 26, 2023 |
#820 in GUI
10KB
105 lines
i3-back
An i3/Sway utility to switch focus to your last focused window. Allows for behavior similar to Alt+Tab on other desktop environments.
Features:
- Can switch between your 2 most recent windows
- Runs a daemon (background process) to listen for focus changes and sets a mark
- Supports i3 and Sway
- Supports floating windows
- Can be binded to any key through i3's
bindsym
Demo
https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/2672503/221384419-3d62413d-8987-4147-82bc-5e87cea8bb90.mp4
Installation
i3-back requires i3/Sway. It is written in Rust. It can be installed through many method:
-
Cargo (Rust's package manager) package:
cargo install i3-back
-
Arch Linux from the AUR (i3-back-bin):
yay -S i3-back-bin # Or with paru or other AUR wrappers # Or manually: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Arch_User_Repository#Installing_and_upgrading_packages
-
Debian/Ubuntu as a
deb
from GitHub releases -
Binary from GitHub releases
Setup
In your i3/Sway configuration (~/.config/i3/config
/~/.config/sway/config
):
# Start the daemon which listens to focus changes and sets _back mark
exec --no-startup-id ~/.cargo/bin/i3-back
# Bind a switch key, which focuses the previously focused window
bindsym $mod+Tab [con_mark=_back] focus
Replace ~/.cargo/bin
with wherever the i3-back binary is placed if not installed through Cargo.
Options
Options are passed to i3-back
as flags. Use --help
/-h
to see all options.
Example exec
with options:
exec --no-startup-id ~/.cargo/bin/i3-back --debug --mark _last
Available options:
--help
/-h
: See help text. Also see--version
--mark <MARK>
/-m <MARK>
: Change the default_back
mark name. Make sure to update your switcher bind'scon_mark
to match--debug
/-d
: Print extra debugging information
Example i3-back --help
:
An i3/Sway utility to switch focus to your last focused window. Allows for behavior similar to Alt+Tab on other desktop environments.
Usage: i3-back [OPTIONS]
Options:
-m, --mark <MARK> Change the name of the mark to set [default: _back]
-d, --debug Print extra debugging information
-h, --help Print help
-V, --version Print version
How it works
The daemon (i3-back
) listen for i3 window events (through i3's socket, from the I3SOCK
environment variable).
When a window event is received, i3-back records the previously focused window ID.
When the previous focus has changed, it sets the _back
mark (or whichever is configured through the --mark
flag) to the last focused window.
When the switch bind is called (through i3's bindsym
), it focuses the mark set by the daemon.
Prior work
Dependencies
~3–11MB
~128K SLoC