How to not lose track of your windows?

Gullible Jones · 2010-12-30 05:57:21

Kind of inspired by litmotiv's comment on the new OSX window management...

I've tried a few tiling WMs. Well, more than a few. wmii and Awesome I used for a while, and dwm, scrotwm, and xmonad all saw use at some point.

I wound up abandoning all of them, mostly for the same reasons:

- No window list = no indication of what's on various desktops
- Tiling = need to use multiple desktops most of the time

So most of the time I found myself losing track of what windows I had open, which desktop they were on, etc. This resulted in wasting time trying to figure out what was where.

(The big exception was Awesome, which had a taskbar but IMHO suffered from overcomplicated configuration.)

So, the big question for tiling WM users here: how do you avoid losing track of where stuff is?

jasonwryan · 2010-12-30 06:02:02

Only put specific applications on specific tags; ie., mutt only ever gets opened in tag 3 "mail"...

You could also use something like tint2 to keep track for you

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jasonwryan/5270660692/

Awebb · 2010-12-30 07:12:46

Tint2 can be configured to show one "tab" in the taskbar for each desktop. If Icons are enough for you, you can have 20 open windows without ever losing track about there whereabouts.

karol · 2010-12-30 10:26:55

dwm has the bar which shows you if you have any windows open on which tags + tag 0 to see all the windows.
I don't actually name my tags, I keep them as numbers and I've never lost any window ("I'm sure I've got it here somewhere") although I sometimes forget I've opened another firefox window to do sth but was rudely interrupted and never got to do it.

dmz · 2010-12-30 12:17:07

I've never needed 'tags' or 'desktops'. There's things like GNU Screen and tmux for that kind of thing.

BaconPie · 2010-12-30 13:19:22

I get into a routine of opening related things on certain workspaces so that each workspace becomes a different task. For example I will have a full screen browser always open in one workspace, a terminal and a text editor on another, when I need to email I'll go to another workspace, open Thunderbird, send the email, go back to the other workspace. I'll keep all GIMP work in one workspace and so on.

The taskbar on most Window managers keeps track of windows local to that workspace so if one gets hidden behind another (lots of files in gimp) then I can find them.

Inxsible · 2010-12-30 13:30:56

i3, wmii and I beleive musca too drop the desktops when there are no more windows on it. That reduces the number of times i have to hit Alt + Tab while switching between workspaces.

i3 also allows for naming of the workspaces which is great. I also have specific apps on specific workspaces, so if I see my workspace bar in i3 and it shows me

1: main | 6: chrome

I know that my main screen has my screen running with rtorrent, htop, everything.log and a couple of bash terminals and on workspace 6 I have chromium running.

Cyrusm · 2010-12-30 14:37:36

Since I rarely have more than 6-8 windows open for any project, I usually organize by project across one or both monitors. and then switch to a different desktop for different tasks. a perfect example of this is my set-up for the way I like to do LaTeX compositions (which is usally the task for me involving the most open windows), on my left monitor I have vim + a terminal + a cheatsheat, on the right monitor I have a dvi viewer, and a browser. If I need to do another task, just switch a desktop. then I just remember what desktop I open what on, and try not to let the number of windows open get too crazy. sometimes I do end up having to cycle through the tesktops to find an open window, but this is trivial, as I just have to scan from the other 7 non-visible desktops, which since it's a tiling window manager, doesn't take very long as all the windows are right on top.

markbabc · 2010-12-30 14:44:33

off-topid: jasonwryan: i like your new avatar!

on-topic: like karol said with dwm alt+0 shows you every window you have open. Plus you assign things to certain tags. I have mine named: random, www, social, dev, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9.

Chromium (which is bound to alt+shift+w) opens to www, irssi (which is bound to alt+shift+i) pops up irssi in social, pidgin pops up in social in floating mode and it fits very nicely alongside irssi.

And i didnt assign nano or vim to dev because sometimes i like to work on stuff in different consoles, or if im bug-testing a program i want to give it its own tag so its full-screen.

But over all its not hard to keep track of where you placed a program. Also theres floating mode so you can layer your windows like you would in a floating WM.

So to answer you question: assign programs to different tags and you will be fine. (Also in dwm you could only use 4 tags and that way you defiantly know which tag your program is on.

hellomynameisphil · 2010-12-30 17:56:11

for window managers with ewmh support (musca, wmfs, echinus, optionally xmonad, etc.), 'wmctrl -l' shows all open windows across all workspaces. i made a little one-liners that pipes that into dmenu (plus a little bit of awk-wardness and so on) so i can easily find and raise whatever window i am looking for. however, it's rare for me to have more than 2 or 3 term windows open and a browser window, so i usually have only 2 workspaces in use at a time. i almost always use ws 1 for terms and 2 for a browser and sometimes a term (if i'm copying and pasting back and forth between the terminal and the browser). i've never needed more than 3 workspaces that i can recall.

tmux also makes it easy for term windows, and increasingly i use 1 tmux window to replace a bunch of terms.

fsckd · 2010-12-31 01:58:21

i use ipager with xmonad, it displays what windows are opened in workspaces and shows icons for most applications

+1 to tmux and other programs with built in tabbing
-1 to retarded windowing system that needs programs to have built in tabbing

i personally prefer tmux style window management and wish it could happen for graphical windows

vinhsynd · 2010-12-31 03:27:55

Just get more real estate: http://www.bored-face.com/wp-content/up … ng-001.jpg

-- mod edit: read the Forum Etiquette and only post thumbnails http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/For … s_and_Code --

Gullible Jones · 2010-12-31 21:43:35

I think I'm getting the picture... You people are just more organized than I am.

eduardo.eae · 2010-12-31 21:54:27

Xmonad's GridSelect FTW.

Wintervenom · 2011-01-01 02:13:14

My solution for Musca: Xmobar and a script to display the current group and open windows in that group.
[Screenshot]

#!/bin/bash
### Cyclic Musca Xmonad Bar ####
# Version 0.2 by Scott Garrett #
# Wintervenom [(at)] gmail.com #
################################
max_width=20

set -f
out () {
    id="<fc=#EAA>${1}</fc>"
    active=${2}
    shift 2
    title=${*}
    if [[ ${#title} -gt ${max_width} ]]; then
        offset=$(($(date +%s) * 2 % (${#title} + 4)))
        title="  ${*}$(printf "%${#title}s")  "
        title=${title:offset}
        title=${title:0:max_width}
    fi
    [[ "${active}" == '-' ]] &&
        title="<fc=#AEE>${title}</fc>" ||
        title="<fc=#FF6>${title}</fc>"
    echo -n "  ${id}: ${title} "
}
case "$1" in
    'window')
        out $(musca -c 'silent show windows' |
        grep '^[0-9]* \* ')
        ;;
    'group')
        out $(musca -c 'silent show groups' |
        grep '^[0-9]* \* ')
        ;;
    'groups')
        musca -c 'silent show groups' |
        while read group; do
            out ${group}
        done
        ;;
    *)
        musca -c 'silent show windows' |
        while read window; do
            out ${window}
        done
        ;;
esac
echo ' '

Last edited by Wintervenom (2011-01-01 02:24:44)

markbabc · 2011-01-01 02:18:06

Gullible Jones wrote:

I think I'm getting the picture... You people are just more organized than I am.

Lol im not organized at all. I just took 2 min to keep my clutter organized automatically by editing my config file. Its worth the 5 minutes to not have a huge mess.

Barrucadu · 2011-01-01 12:14:16

I just remember what I have opened where; even when using floating window managers, I rarely used the panel (or something similar) to keep track of my windows.

pogeymanz · 2011-01-02 16:35:38

For me, Openbox + Tint2 (shows all 4 desktops individually) + PyTyle does the trick for me.

Although, I don't feel the urge to tile super often. Only when I have a few terminals open and displaying stuff.

Gullible Jones · 2011-01-03 01:10:37

Hmm... Well earlier today I tried out Subtle and really liked it. Its forced-tag-association thing seems to do the trick for me.

Now if only Subtle widgets didn't rely on a whole separate freakin' package manager.

Runiq · 2011-01-03 01:20:18

Nobody has mentioned XMonad's TopicSpace module yet, so here it goes.

w1ntermute · 2011-01-09 07:16:23

My preferred approach with xmonad is to have a predefined purpose for each workspace. For example, 0 is for urxvt, 1 is for web browsing, 2 is for IM, etc. I think this has what you're looking for - you'll always know where a window will be, based on what its purpose is. I have my xmonad.hs set up so that depending on a window's title or which application it belongs to, it is automatically moved to the appropriate workspace when it is first created.

The other nice thing is that after a few weeks, the respective shortcuts will be burned into your muscle memory, and you'll be able to switch to what you want without even thinking about it. This was a benefit I didn't envision before switching to xmonad (my first and only tiling WM). It's astonishing how much more efficient this is than Openbox + tint2 (my old setup), where I had to Alt+Tab to the appropriate window.

Last edited by w1ntermute (2011-01-09 07:19:22)

unexist · 2011-01-25 18:30:59

Gullible Jones wrote:

Hmm... Well earlier today I tried out Subtle and really liked it. Its forced-tag-association thing seems to do the trick for me.
Now if only Subtle widgets didn't rely on a whole separate freakin' package manager.

This freakin' package manager just bundles sublets with icons and and a spec with description etc. You can install sublets manually if you insist, it's explained here: Doing it the hard way

I still think it's a good idea and you are in fact the first one complaining about that.

And to the topic: I am obviously a subtle user and I normally use the tagging or the verbose output of subtler:

> subtler -cl
  0x800009 * 4 1680 x  537 +  836 + 509   bottom_left ---- urxvt2 (URxvt)
  0xc00009 * 4 1680 x   23 +  836 + 509      top_left ---- urxvt1 (URxvt)
 0x100002b - 4    0 x   23 + 1676 + 1023       center ---- chrome (Chrome)
 0x1c00003 - 4    0 x   23 + 1670 + 974        center ---~ gvim (Gvim)
 0x1e00002 * 4 2537 x   96 +  800 + 800        center -^-- Xephyr (Xephyr)

Someone in the bbs asked for a something like the gridselect of xmonad or the subscription dialog of google reader, this is what I came up with: Selector

Also there is a sublet that provides a task list if needed.

Last edited by unexist (2011-01-25 20:21:36)

mhertz · 2011-01-26 10:53:02

Personally, then I never open more windows than I can keep track of myself from memory, and the workspace/tag seperation of different types of apps also helps...

I absolutely hate statusbars/menubars and that kinda stuff(in a WM) which takes away from the total screen-estate value, and instead I much rather prefer defining hotkeys to shortly show those kinda "messages"...

However, I must also confess that i'm not the type of guy which have a load of stuff running simultaneously, and e.g. also never understood the kind of persons which would normally have 20+ tabs open in a browser!

I guess that im not really fitting the target-group I believe from which the OP wants recomendations from...

Edit: Just wanted to reiterate that the above of course solly is my humble opinion, and is what goes best together with my personal work-flow, and not that I disrespect ppl with differing oppinions and preferences in any way...

Last edited by mhertz (2011-01-26 11:05:02)

unexist · 2011-01-26 11:49:49

mhertz wrote:

I absolutely hate statusbars/menubars and that kinda stuff(in a WM) which takes away from the total screen-estate value, and instead I much rather prefer defining hotkeys to shortly show those kinda "messages"...

That depends, most of the time you lose the total screen-estate value due to size preferences (size hints) of windows anyway. For example, when you have two urxvt tilied on your screen and wm honors size hints you will have gap and this is almost the size my panel needs and it makes good use of it.

I never have problems remembering where my windows are or what I have opened, but I like e.g. to know which track is currently playing without pressing a key.

eldragon · 2011-01-26 11:56:03

compiz + scale plugin.

this made me get rid of useless taskbars.

Arch Linux

#1 2010-12-30 05:57:21

How to not lose track of your windows?

#2 2010-12-30 06:02:02

Re: How to not lose track of your windows?

#3 2010-12-30 07:12:46

Re: How to not lose track of your windows?

#4 2010-12-30 10:26:55

Re: How to not lose track of your windows?

#5 2010-12-30 12:17:07

Re: How to not lose track of your windows?

#6 2010-12-30 13:19:22

Re: How to not lose track of your windows?

#7 2010-12-30 13:30:56

Re: How to not lose track of your windows?

#8 2010-12-30 14:37:36

Re: How to not lose track of your windows?

#9 2010-12-30 14:44:33

Re: How to not lose track of your windows?

#10 2010-12-30 17:56:11

Re: How to not lose track of your windows?

#11 2010-12-31 01:58:21

Re: How to not lose track of your windows?

#12 2010-12-31 03:27:55

Re: How to not lose track of your windows?

#13 2010-12-31 21:43:35

Re: How to not lose track of your windows?

#14 2010-12-31 21:54:27

Re: How to not lose track of your windows?

#15 2011-01-01 02:13:14

Re: How to not lose track of your windows?

#16 2011-01-01 02:18:06

Re: How to not lose track of your windows?

#17 2011-01-01 12:14:16

Re: How to not lose track of your windows?

#18 2011-01-02 16:35:38

Re: How to not lose track of your windows?

#19 2011-01-03 01:10:37

Re: How to not lose track of your windows?

#20 2011-01-03 01:20:18

Re: How to not lose track of your windows?

#21 2011-01-09 07:16:23

Re: How to not lose track of your windows?

#22 2011-01-25 18:30:59

Re: How to not lose track of your windows?

#23 2011-01-26 10:53:02

Re: How to not lose track of your windows?

#24 2011-01-26 11:49:49

Re: How to not lose track of your windows?

#25 2011-01-26 11:56:03

Re: How to not lose track of your windows?

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