Feature: Implement sticky floating windows

[nikitabobko]

https://i3wm.org/docs/userguide.html#_sticky_floating_windows

• Implement sticky floating windows
• Implement sticky sidebar windows (feature interaction with: flatten-workspace-tree, close-all-windows-but-current)

Note to myself: review usages of visualWorkspace

[AlJohri]

Is it possible to have sticky non-floating windows? SImilar to this request: koekeishiya/yabai#1843

I'd like to have a constant window on my screen as I flip through workspaces.

[nikitabobko]

"sticky sidebar" windows bring some challenges

• What if users want to have several sticky sidebar windows
• What should happen if a sticky sidebar window is moved with the mouse?
  • Should it become a regular tiling window?
  • Or should it remain sticky sidebar?
• Should "sticky sidebar" windows be a per-monitor thing?
  • If the answer is yes, how users are supposed to move sticky sidebar window between monitors?
    • What should happen if users move a window to a monitor where another sticky sidebar windows is already presented?

But in general, I like the suggestion, I always wanted to have sticky non-floating windows in i3

[nikitabobko]

Maybe we are better off with a feature like "virtual monitors". That way you could place two virtual monitors on your physical monitor. You could cycle workspaces only on one of those virtual monitors

[nasyxx]

Is there any update on this? I have some widget windows; it would be great if we could keep them on all workspaces.

[tngafwlehmann]

Maybe we are better off with a feature like "virtual monitors". That way you could place two virtual monitors on your physical monitor. You could cycle workspaces only on one of those virtual monitors

That's indeed a great thing to have. For i3 I typically use xrandr to split up a 5120x? physical device into three virtual monitors, the latter of which can then be used for workspace assignments.

But this does not necessarily solve the issue for floating (possibly workspace-independent) windows (assuming a certain preference for floating Zoom/Teams/etc. because it's easier to re-arrange during meetings). So I'd vote for both :)

[TC-MO]

Has this ever been implemented? I'm looking for a way to keep FF PiP window in the same position when moving workspaces

[farzadmf]

For now, I'm manually doing this when I switch workspaces:

• Before I switch; I search to see if there are any PIP windows
• I focus that window and move it to the target workspace (too bad aerospace doesn't let me do move-node-to-workspace --window-id <window-id> <target-ws> ... so sad 😔 )
• Then, I switch to the target workspace.

I must say, it's a very weird and terrible experience, but at least the PIP window is "sticky"! 😐

[gservat]

Would be super neat to keep a Zoom floating window as sticky so I can see whats going on in a meeting while I cycle through workspaces.

[bitskc]

I'm definitely in need of this feature! Hope it comes soon!

[PaRr0tBoY]

Can we extend the functionality of exec-on-workspace-change,force specific windows to move-node-to-{{currently focused workspace}}?

[andsnpl]

I thought this would be possible to jury-rig for at least one window using exec-on-workspace-change, but I'm not having much success. My attempt, in case anyone can make it work:

exec-on-workspace-change = ['/bin/bash', '-c',
  'WIN=$(aerospace list-windows --all | grep "<Window Title>" | cut -d" " -f1); [ -n "$WIN" ] && aerospace move-node-to-workspace --window-id="$WIN" "$AEROSPACE_FOCUSED_WORKSPACE"'
]

[gservat]

@andsnpl: I think the issue with yours is the = after --window-id. This works:

exec-on-workspace-change = ['/bin/bash', '-c',
  'WIN=$(aerospace list-windows --all | grep "<Window Title>" | cut -d" " -f1); [ -n "$WIN" ] && aerospace move-node-to-workspace --window-id "$WIN" "$AEROSPACE_FOCUSED_WORKSPACE"'
]

However, it seemed to move the window to the focused workspace but it lost focus so it would be behind my other windows. I tried giving it focus as part of exec-on-workspace-change (see below), which kinda works (moves the window and gives it focus), but it's not really useable for my needs as clicking on any other window will send it to the back:

exec-on-workspace-change = ['/bin/bash', '-c',
  'WIN=$(aerospace list-windows --all | grep "<Window Title>" | cut -d" " -f1); [ -n "$WIN" ] && aerospace move-node-to-workspace --window-id "$WIN" "$AEROSPACE_FOCUSED_WORKSPACE" && aerospace focus --window-id "$WIN"'
]

[andsnpl]

Edit: my bad. aerospace command was not in PATH for bash. It looks like I needed to run bash with --login to pick up the path through /etc/profile. Now I'm just curious why this wasn't an issue for you...

Thanks for the feedback @gservat. It still doesn't work for me. I tried echoing the winId to a file:

exec-on-workspace-change = ['/bin/bash', '-c',
  # 'WIN=$(aerospace list-windows --all | grep "<Window Title>" | cut -d" " -f1); [ -n "$WIN" ] && aerospace move-node-to-workspace --window-id "$WIN" "$AEROSPACE_FOCUSED_WORKSPACE"'
  'WIN=$(aerospace list-windows --all | grep "<Window Title>" | cut -d" " -f1); echo "$WIN -> $AEROSPACE_FOCUSED_WORKSPACE" > "$HOME/Desktop/floating_window.txt"'
]

but the value printed is empty.

 -> G

This is the case no matter what window title I'm searching for. I wonder if there is something in my config that is causing the nested aerospace invocations to not see the current window list.

As far as the focus/always-on-top shortcomings, I can see how that would need some built-in solution. In my case, the window I'm trying to move has that behavior anyway so it's not a problem for me.

[gservat]

@andsnpl: aerospace lives in /opt/homebrew/bin for me. This is added to $PATH by the homebrew init script in my zsh environment. Guessing when bash is loaded by aerospace, it inherits my zsh environment? Not sure why it doesn't work for you though as I'm guessing its in your path too.

[andsnpl]

@gservat ah, I think that's it. You seem to be on Apple silicon and I'm still on Intel, so homebrew has different install behavior. My aerospace lives in /usr/local/bin, not /opt/homebrew/bin.

If you're using the start-at-login config option in aerospace.toml, then AeroSpace is being started for you by launchd, as it is for me. It's not (unless I'm much mistaken) executing any zsh environment for either of us. Instead what's happening is AeroSpace is manually inserting the /opt/homebrew dir into the path as described here, and probably nobody's realized that that's not good enough for Intel macs.

[gservat]

@andsnpl: ahhh yes, good find! I wonder if it's worth filing a PR to update the default exec env variables to add /usr/local/bin to the path?

[farzadmf]

I have the following script (defined as on-ws-change.sh and executable) to move Chrome PiP window:

#!/usr/bin/env sh

ws=${1:-$AEROSPACE_FOCUSED_WORKSPACE}

IFS=$'\n' all_wins=$(aerospace list-windows --all --format '%{window-id}|%{app-name}|%{window-title}|%{monitor-id}|%{workspace}')
IFS=$'\n' all_ws=$(aerospace list-workspaces --all --format '%{workspace}|%{monitor-id}')

chrome_pip=$(printf '%s\n' $all_wins | rg 'Picture in Picture')
target_mon=$(printf '%s\n' $all_ws | rg "$ws" | cut -d'|' -f2 | xargs)

move_win() {
  local win="$1"

  [[ -n $win ]] || return 0

  local win_mon=$(printf $win | cut -d'|' -f4 | xargs)
  local win_id=$(printf $win | cut -d'|' -f1 | xargs)
  local win_app=$(printf $win | cut -d'|' -f2 | xargs)
  local win_ws=$(printf $win | cut -d'|' -f5 | xargs)

  [[ $target_mon != $win_mon ]] && return 0
  [[ $ws == $win_ws ]] && return 0

  aerospace move-node-to-workspace --window-id $win_id $ws
}

move_win "${chrome_pip}"

And in my aerospace.toml, I have this:

exec-on-workspace-change = ['<full-path-to>/on-ws-change.sh']

[pencilcheck]

It looks like pip is a very common use case, safari pip seems to work out of box (perhaps it is due to the script I installed to fix zen browser pip?), would be nice if this is buildin instead

[thalesmello]

@farzadmf Your code breaks when I have multiple monitors connected (1 or 2), and I'm trying to switch to workspace named 1 or 2.

A quick fix would be to anchor the rg regex at the beginning of the string, when calculating the variable target_mon.

target_mon=$(printf '%s\n' $all_ws | rg "^$ws" | cut -d'|' -f2 | xargs)

Adding it here as reference in case there's anyone else trying to troubleshoot this.

[farzadmf]

Oh cool, thanks for letting me know @thalesmello ; I didn't even think that someone would be using my code 😆