Hello folks,

As you probably know, reddit is going through some very unpopular changes: https://www.reddit.com/r/ModCoord/comments/148ks6u/indefinite_blackout_next_steps_polling_your/

Even though, we have moved the official i3 support channel to GitHub discussions, i3's biggest community is still on reddit and if things continue like that there is going to be a lot of helpful content on an increasingly closed platform.

Since /r/i3wm is a community platform, we would like for the community to decide this subreddit's future. I am creating two polls for this:

1. The short-term future of the community, should we make this subreddit read-only or private until June 30th: https://www.reddit.com/r/i3wm/comments/14d5yvh/the_shortterm_future_of_the_community_should_we/ (shorter duration as more imminent)
2. (This post) The long-term future of this community, if the API changes are not reversed, should we leave this subreddit indefinitely in read-only mode?

We are not considering going private for the long-term because this subreddit holds significant knowledge that is valuable to the community.

If we go read-only in the long term, I expect that most of new questions & content will move to Github discussions.

View Poll

See main post for details

Note: For "do nothing" to pass it needs >50% since people that vote for "going private" would probably prefer "read-only" over nothing.

View Poll

Hi guys, since reddit is a shit place, is there any i3wm community on an opensource platform? A matrix room would be great.

Hi all. I am configuring my display to use DPMS, so xset dpms standbytime suspendtime offtime . As XFCE4-power-manager also does the same thing, so it is kinda redundant. So I try not to use the XFCE4-power-manager.

Now, in the XFCE4-power-manager, there is an option for brightness control, i.e. dim the screen to 20% after 50 seconds inactive when on battery power, dim to 50% when on AC after 120 seconds. Is there a way to do this without using the XFCE tool?

My environment is Debian 12.0 with kernel 6.1.0-7-rt-amd64, and network-manager-gnome v1.30.0-2, i3-wm 4.19.1-1.

The problem is my mouse and touchpad stop working. So I can't right clicking the nm-applet in order to configure and connect to the internet. Now I use use tethering.

So my question is - in i3wm, what hotkey I can apply simulating right clicking the nm-applet like mouse? Or any alternative recommended keyboard friendly network manager?

Many thanks!

What are the pros and cons of opening more terminal windows like with mod+enter vs splitting one terminal like kitty or tmux?

Side note, kitty seems to open “os windows” way faster than i can launch new terminals with mod+enter anyone know why?

Edit: seems like opening more Kitty windows with i3wm mod+enter is much faster on fedora than it was on void. Not sure why!

I have an issue while using i3 and picom that the top border with the window title doesn't appear on Firefox. This would be the one that states "Firefox: NAME OF SITE". I've included my configs below, let me know what I'm missing. Thank you!

Edit: I've fixed it, apparently Firefox can hide it's own title bar. Going into the hamburger menu -> More Tools -> Customize Toolbar -> There will be a check box in the bottom left stating "Title Bar" this needs to be checked.

Hopefully my idiocy can help someone else.

I've recently noticed that some windows (Evolution, Alacritty) are displayed without the title bar when they are alone in the workspace, making use of all the available space. Some others instead (Firefox, VS Code) always have the title bar visible. How can I make all windows behave as "maximized"? $mod-f or F11 are not the solution I'm looking for, as they trigger full-screen mode which I believe to be different. For instance, with both commands, Firefox will hide tabs and the status bar, as does VS Code. The only difference I could find between the two types of windows is that for Evolution, xprops shows _NET_WM_STATE(ATOM) = _NET_WM_STATE_MAXIMIZED_VERT, _NET_WM_STATE_MAXIMIZED_HORZ, whereas for Firefox this line is empty. According to these docs this property seems to be relevant, but curiously for Alacritty it's empty yet it displays as maximized.

I'm quite confused by this difference and I'd love to understand more, particularly if I can set all windows to display as maximized when alone in a workspace.

Thank you!

I'm running 4.22-4 on Arch. My display is configured to go to sleep after 5 minutes idle or when the lid is closed. Recently (last few weeks), when I try to wake the screen, the backlight comes on but the screen itself stays blank. I can't change to TTYs, use function buttons to turn the screen off and back on, nothing -- though I know it isn't the computer itself freezing since I can still access it via ssh.

I've looked through X, lightDM, and journal and I don't see any errors. Not sure how to troubleshoot this further -- anyone have any ideas?

Hello!

I'm on ParrotOS attempting to install i3 version 4.22 from the Ubuntu repositories following these instructions (2.1) https://i3wm.org/docs/repositories.html. ParrotOS has i3 within the default repositories, but not the latest version which contains gaps. I'm familiar with installing from source but am configuring a new install, so I'd rather not.

I installed the relevant keyring and have "deb http://debian.sur5r.net/i3/ jammy universe" in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/.

I "apt update"d and attempted to install via "sudo apt install i3=4.22". This failed, saying the version was unavailable, and after some browsing of "apt list"'s output, I noticed that only the dbgsym packages were present. The ParrotOS packages are present, but not the ones from the new repository.

"sudo apt list | grep jammy"

```

i3-wm-dbgsym/unknown 4.22-2~~jammy1 amd64
i3lock-dbgsym/unknown 2.14.1-1~~jammy1 amd64
i3status-dbgsym/unknown 2.14-2~~jammy1 amd64

```

I've tried "sudo apt -t jammy install i3", and it fails with:

```

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
i3-wm : Depends: i3status but it is not going to be installed
Depends: libc6 (>= 2.34) but 2.31-13+deb11u6 is to be installed
Recommends: libanyevent-i3-perl but it is not going to be installed
Recommends: libjson-xs-perl but it is not going to be installed

E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

```

Any help would be appriciated, thanks!

Hi! I'm i3wm newbie)

Very annoying behavior.

Is it possible to make all child PyCharm child windows floating?

​

Solution:

no_focus [class="jetbrains-pycharm" window_type="dialog"]

for_window [class="jetbrains-pycharm" window_type="dialog"] floating enable border normal, move container to workspace 1

Hi all. This is the config for my workspace: https://pastebin.pl/view/1bd8d47d

Now, on workspace 2, Firefox will automatically spawn here. But say I want to move Firefox to workspace 3 where there is already an application there, e.g. emacs. Pressing Mod+Shift+3 (my keybinds) will move Firefox to a blank workspace 3 and in full screen. So I would see 2x workspace 3 on the indicator.

I have tried to test to move Firefox from 2 to say 5. In 5 I have a text editor open. Doing this will move Firefox to 5 and in split view. I also do not have double workspace like before. This is the behavior I want.

I've been diggig through all of my config and the only thing that deals with $ws3 is in the link above. Still, I made sure the names are correct but couldnt figure out how to fix it. I also tried to just use generic names, so no special icons => still get the same issue.

#I can no longer set the site to private because reddit has disabled me from making those edits as a moderate#

Hey All;

This isn't the ideal situation with the profiteering that that the moron Spez is actioning on to "make reddit profitable".

Killing 3rd party apps is ridiculous. Charging $2 million a month is ridiculous.

Please let me know if you want this sub to go dark permanently or maybe go read-only?

i make all i can, but my polybar not start when i login on my i3, i search on forums and asked to chat gpt but nothin work, someone can pls help me

__________________________________________________________________

my polybar exec on i3/config

exec_always --no-startup-id ~/.config/polybar/launch.sh

my launch.sh file

#!/bin/bash
pkill polybar
Polybar -r & main <-- name of my bar

How did you configure your layouts on an ultrawide monitor? Is it possible to always show the first opened window in the center, and the next two left and right? Like with 3 monitors, so that the main "monitor" is always centered, and the whole ultrawide screen is not split in half suddenly when opening a new window

Here is the log of Xorg

​

https://preview.redd.it/6ilhe0hyp45b1.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=9a81bddc7bbd232307fa8aa3f72fe866528472b1

As the title suggest

$mod + d - does not register flatpak packages

How can I add flatpak packages to the $mod d search bar?

Media keys like fn+pause, play, stop suddenly stopped working on any audio source, but next and previous still workedOn the other hand, my headset microphone is not detected automatically and every time I connect and disconnect my headset I need to manually open pulseaudio control panel and select the headset microphone as default input

EDIT:

OS: Manjaro

Current config for media keys (I recently added the -a option and now it works, but then it plays/pauses youtube as well as spotify if I have both open) :

bindsym XF86AudioPlay exec playerctl -a play-pause
bindsym XF86AudioPause exec playerctl -a play-pause
bindsym XF86AudioNext exec playerctl -a next
bindsym XF86AudioPrev exec playerctl -a previous

I have not configured anything related to pulseaudio yet, been searching around, trying things from google but nothing works
Playerctl does not output anything when I try it on command line

I installed i3 on Debian 12,

Upon installation it asked if I want to use the alt or the windows key as my $mod

I selected the window key.

I added this to my i3/config file:

exec_always "setxkbmap -layout us,us,il -variant ,dvorak,phonetic -option grp:alt_shift_toggle"

I use Dvorak layout

tl;dr : how do I get i3 to use my kjlh keys of my dvorak layout

more context info

I noticed the mapped keys jklh are actually jhl; *and* they are not mapped to my dvorak keyboard but to the normal qwerty layout.

I found this quote in the docs:

Note that when starting i3 without a config file, i3-config-wizard will offer you to create a config file in which the key positions (!) match what you see in the image above, regardless of the keyboard layout you are using.

If you prefer to use a config file where the key letters match what you are seeing above, just decline i3-config-wizard’s offer and base your config on /etc/i3/config.

It might be the fact I am not a native English speaker - but these two sentences don't make sense to me.

The first sentence says - used without config file you'll get keys as positioned in the image

the second sentence - up to the comma - suggests that if you want to get the same keys as in the image, decline the wizard

seems to me a contradiction.

Any how - how do I get i3 to use my kjlh keys of my dvorak layout

so i installed i3 yesterday and im keep on getting this error where the i3status supposed to be idk whats wrong also when i run i3status in the terminal i get Could not set locale. Please make sure all your LC_* / LANG settings are correct.

but i did run the locale-gen
my /etc/locale.conf looks like

LANG=en_US.UTF-8

LC_CTYPE="en_US.UTF-8"

LC_NUMERIC="en_US.UTF-8"

LC_TIME="en_US.UTF-8"

LC_COLLATE="en_US.UTF-8"

LC_MONETARY="en_US.UTF-8"

LC_MESSAGES="en_US.UTF-8"

LC_PAPER="en_US.UTF-8"

LC_NAME="en_US.UTF-8"

LC_ADDRESS="en_US.UTF-8"

LC_TELEPHONE="en_US.UTF-8"

LC_MEASUREMENT="en_US.UTF-8"

LC_IDENTIFICATION="en_US.UTF-8"

LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8

I use ranger and have been using feh as my default image opener. I have set feh to float in my config. This works great for me.

I want to use meh instead in the same way. However, I can not get the class of the meh window. The window criteria xprop script that comes in so handy only returns an id. No class, title, nor instance in the output.

I've never seen this. How can I get meh (from the AUR meh-git package) to automatically float?

I have used i3 for a few years now, but now I have to start using macOS for work. I am not really looking for an i3 replacement (don't really want to use yabai or amethyst), but the desktop management on macOS just feels super weird to me - for eg. if I maximize a window, it takes up the entire desktop and I cannot drag another window on top of it unless I minimize it. Using Rectangle is useful as it makes it easier to arrange different windows on the same desktop. Are there any other tips and tricks to make my life easier?

I am specifically referring to this project

https://github.com/quantum5/i3bgwin

I'm using i3 with XFCE and I have no bar at the bottom.

Here is my config:

# Start i3bar to display a workspace bar (plus the system information i3status
# finds out, if available)
bar {
        status_command i3status
}

Do I need to add it to the startup programs for XFCE?

Edit: I got it to show up by running i3bar. I added it to my startup applications and will see if it resolves my issue.

it's not natively installed on pop os and I'm too lazy to try and find their prompt's command

Lots of the questions around this topic are years old and somebody said compton is now deprecated. What are my options?