Arch Linux

pwittchen

Member

From: Poland

Registered: 2019-07-02

Posts: 25

Website

[SOLVED] i3 WM + laptop + external monitor - closing lid + workspaces

Hi,

Recently I switched from Gnome DE to i3 WM. Everything works perfectly fine, but I have one issue. I'm using ThinkPad Laptop and external monitor. I usually use computer in such way:
When I'm at home, I have my laptop connected to the external monitor. External keyboard, mouse and speaker/headphones are connected via Bluetooth. Laptop lid is closed all the time.
When I take my laptop from home, I disconnect it from all of it and work without any external devices.

When I'm at home and lid of my laptop is closed, laptop still have active workspace no. 1, which I'm not going to use in this setup.
Here's my question: Is it possible to move workspace no. 1 to the external monitor when laptop lid is closed and put it back to the laptop monitor when laptop lid is open?
Moreover, when I disconnect laptop from the external monitor, on the laptop I cannot use workspace, which I was using on the external monitor (without logging out and in again).
I would like to put it into laptop monitor when I disconnect the external monitor. Is something like that possible? I tried to search solutions on the web, but with no luck.

Regards,
Piotr

Last edited by pwittchen (2019-12-21 16:37:19)

pwittchen

Member

From: Poland

Registered: 2019-07-02

Posts: 25

Website

Re: [SOLVED] i3 WM + laptop + external monitor - closing lid + workspaces

OK, I played around with it and it seems, it works as I want! :-D

When my laptop lid was closed and I was logged in, I reloaded configs with: mod+R shortcut (mod is Win button by default) and when I switched to workspace no. 1, it appeared on my external screen and I could use it here. What is interesting, this workspace was not visible on my external screen on the list of workspaces until I switched into it. For now, this situation is good enough for me. It seems that reloading system configs after connecting/disconnecting screens or closing lid and switching into workspace no. 1 solves my issue.

EDIT:

Situation explained above was probably some kind of accident and it doesn't work all the time. I figured out how make it work properly.
With xrandr we can list all monitors:

xrandr --listmonitors

In my case, it looked like that:

 0: +*eDP-1 1920/309x1080/174+0+0  eDP-1
 1: +HDMI-2 3440/797x1440/333+1920+0  HDMI-2

Then, we can disable one monitor. E.g. laptop monitor (eDP-1)

xrandr --output eDP-1 --off

To reset these settings (enable laptop monitor back), we can invoke the following command:

xrandr --auto

so basically playing around with xrandr allows us to prepare desired monitor setup

Regards,
Piotr

Last edited by pwittchen (2019-12-22 11:16:55)