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itscience

Member

From: UK Lancashire

Registered: 2015-05-10

Posts: 32

i3wm scratchpad - possible to configure / customise?

Up until now, I used dropdown terminals for various reasons. However, most don't work well wit tiling window managers..
The Scratchpad works fine but I saw someone people show code that make it look like it can directly be used with tmux, -e / -x programs, alter window size, etc..

I tried a few but they didn't work and I can't find much documentation about customising scratchpads..
Right now, I have to open a terminal and put it into scratchpad and then I can open and close it.

Is it possible to do all this or is scratchpad just a quick thing? Any alternatives?

Thanks for reading :-)

boban_dj

Member

Registered: 2015-03-17

Posts: 150

Re: i3wm scratchpad - possible to configure / customise?

Hi,
Also liked working with xfce4 dropdown terminal. Now changed to i3. In the beginning looked for a dropdown solution,
but eventually after a while working with i3 switching of workspaces, it works faster for me.

I did manage to find a dropdown/scratchpad terminal option. It starts up as a hidden workspace, and with mod+o (in my case mod=windows key)
it appears as a dropdown. Added a few comments, but you can figure it out what it does

###################################################################################################
# Quick terminal
###################################################################################################
# startup of the hidden terminal "metask"
exec --no-startup-id urxvt -name metask
# start it up if close the workspace (mod+q)
bindsym $mod+SHIFT+o exec --no-startup-id urxvt -name metask
# the actual conf for the dropdown terminal size
for_window [instance="metask"] move scratchpad; [instance="metask"] scratchpad show; move position 0px 22px;resize shrink height 300px; resize grow width 683px; move scratchpad
# bind mod+o key to show (add yours)
bindsym $mod+o [instance="metask"] scratchpad show

Last edited by boban_dj (2015-11-29 07:04:35)