i3/docs/userguide

i3 User’s Guide
===============
Michael Stapelberg <michael+i3@stapelberg.de>
June 2009

This document contains all information you need to configuring and using the i3
window manager. If it does not, please contact me on IRC, Jabber or E-Mail and
I’ll help you out.

For a complete listing of the default keybindings, please see the manpage.

== Using i3

=== Creating terminals and moving around

A very basic operation is to create a new terminal. By default, the keybinding
for that is Mod1+Enter, that is Alt+Enter in the default configuration. By
pressing Mod1+Enter, a new terminal will be created and it will fill the whole
space which is available on your screen.

image:single_terminal.png[Single terminal]

It is important to keep in mind that i3 uses a table to manage your windows. At
the moment, you have exactly one column and one row which leaves you with one
cell. In this cell, there is a container in which your newly opened terminal is.

If you now open another terminal, you still have only one cell. However, the
container has both of your terminals.

image:two_terminals.png[Two terminals]

To move the focus between the two terminals, you use the direction keys which
you may know from the editor +vi+. However, in i3, your homerow is used for
these keys (in +vi+, the keys are shifted to the left by one for compatibility
with most keyboard layouts). Therefore, +Mod1+J+ is left, +Mod1+K+ is down, +Mod1+L+
is up and `Mod1+;` is right. So, to switch between the terminals, use +Mod1+K+ or
+Mod1+L+.

To create a new row/column, you can simply move a terminal (or any other window)
to the direction you want to expand your table. So, let’s expand the table to
the right by pressing `Mod1+Shift+;`.

image:two_columns.png[Two columns]

=== Changing mode of containers

A container can be in two modes at the moment (more to be implemented later):
+default+ or +stacking+. In default mode, clients are sized so that every client
gets an equal amount of space of the container. In stacking mode, only one
focused client of the container is displayed and you get a list of windows
at the top of the container.

To switch the mode, press +Mod1+h+ for stacking and +Mod1+e+ for default.

=== Toggling fullscreen mode for a window

To display a window fullscreen or to go out of fullscreen mode again, press
+Mod1+f+.

=== Opening other applications

Aside from opening applicatios from a terminal, you can also use the handy
+dmenu+ which is opened by pressing +Mod1+v+ by default. Just type the name
(or a part of it) of the application which you want to open. It has to be in
your +$PATH+ for that to work.

Furthermore, if you have applications you open very frequently, you can also
create a keybinding for it. See the section "Configuring i3" for details.

=== Closing windows

If an application does not provide a mechanism to close (most applications
provide a menu, the escape key or a shortcut like +Control+W+ to close), you
can press +Mod1+Shift+q+ to kill a window. For applications which support
the WM_DELETE protocol, this will correctly close the application (saving
any modifications or doing other cleanup). If the application doesn’t support
it, your X server will kill the window and the behaviour depends on the
application.

=== Using workspaces

Workspaces are an easy way to group a set of windows. By default, you are on
the first workspace, as the bar on the bottom left indicates. To switch to
another workspace, press +Mod1+num+ where +num+ is the number of the workspace
you want to use. If the workspace does not exist yet, it will be created.

A common paradigm is to put the web browser on one workspace, communication
applications (+mutt+, +irssi+, ...) on another one and the ones with which you
work on the third one. Of course, there is no need to follow this approach.

If you have multiple screens, a workspace will be created on each screen. If
you open a new workspace, it will be bound to the screen you created it on.
When you switch to a workspace on another screen, i3 will set focus to this
screen.

=== Moving windows to workspaces

To move a window to another workspace, simply press +Mod1+Shift+num+ where
+num+ is (like when switching workspaces) the number of the target workspace.
Similarly to switching workspaces, the target workspace will be created if
it does not yet exist.

=== Resizing columns

To resize columns just grab the border between the two columns and move it to
the wanted size.

A command for doing this via keyboard will be implemented soon.

=== Restarting i3 inplace

To restart i3 inplace (and thus get it into a clean state if it has a bug, to
reload your configuration or even to upgrade to a newer version of i3) you
can use +Mod1+Shift+r+. Be aware, though, that this kills your current layout
and all the windows you have opened will be put in a default container in only
one cell. Saving the layout will be implemented in a later version.

=== Exiting i3

To cleanly exit i3 without killing your X server, you can use +Mod1+Shift+e+.

=== Snapping

Snapping is a mechanism to increase/decrease the colspan/rowspan of a container.
Colspan/rowspan is the amount of columns/rows a specific cell of the table
consumes. This is easier explained by giving an example, so take the following
layout:

image:snapping.png[Snapping example]

To use the full size of your screen, you can now snap container 3 downwards
by pressing +Mod1+Control+k+ (or snap container 2 rightwards).

=== Floating

Floating is the opposite of tiling mode. The position and size of a window
are then not managed by i3, but by you. Using this mode violates the tiling
paradigm but can be useful for some corner cases like "Save as" dialog
windows or toolbar windows (GIMP or similar).

You can enable floating for a window by pressing +Mod1+Shift+Space+. By
dragging the window’s titlebar with your mouse, you can move the window
around. By grabbing the borders and moving them you can resize the window.

Bindings for doing this with your keyboard will follow.

Floating clients are always on top of tiling clients.

== Configuring i3

This is where the real fun begins ;-). Most things are very dependant on your
ideal working environment, so we can’t make reasonable defaults for them.

While not using a programming language for the configuration, i3 stays
quite flexible regarding to the things you usually want your window manager
to do.

For example, you can configure bindings to jump to specific windows,
you can set specific applications to start on a specific workspace, you can
automatically start applications, you can change the colors of i3 or bind
your keys to do useful stuff.

terminal::
	Specifies the terminal emulator program you prefer. It will be started
	by default when you press Mod1+Enter, but you can overwrite this. Refer
	to it as +$terminal+ to keep things modular.
font::
	Specifies the default font you want i3 to use. Use an X core font
	descriptor here, like
	+-misc-fixed-medium-r-normal--13-120-75-75-C-70-iso10646-1+. You can
	use +xfontsel(1)+ to pick one.

=== Keyboard bindings

You can use each command (see below) using keyboard bindings. At the moment,
keyboard bindings require you to specify the keycode (38) of the key, not its key
symbol ("a"). This has some advantages (keybindings make sense regardless of
the layout you type) and some disadvantages (hard to remember, you have to look
them up every time).

*Syntax*:
--------------------------------
bind [Modifiers+]keycode command
--------------------------------

*Examples*:
--------------------------------
# Fullscreen
bind Mod1+41 f

# Restart
bind Mod1+Shift+27 restart
--------------------------------

Available Modifiers:

Mod1-Mod5, Shift, Control::
Standard modifiers, see +xmodmap(1)+

Mode_switch::
Unlike other window managers, i3 can use Mode_switch as a modifier. This allows
you to remap capslock (for example) to Mode_switch and use it for both: typing
umlauts or special characters 'and' having some comfortably reachable key
bindings. For example, when typing, capslock+1 or capslock+2 for switching
workspaces is totally convenient. Try it :-).

=== Variables

As you learned in the previous section about keyboard bindings, you will have
to configure lots of bindings containing modifier keys. If you want to save
yourself some typing and have the possibility to change the modifier you want
to use later, variables can be handy.

*Syntax*:
--------------
set name value
--------------

*Examples*:
------------------------
set $m Mod1
bind $m+Shift+27 restart
------------------------

Variables are directly replaced in the file when parsing, there is no fancy
handling and there are absolutely no plans to change this. If you need a more
dynamic configuration, you should create a little script, like when configuring
wmii.

=== Automatically putting clients on specific workspaces

It is recommended that you match on window classes whereever possible because
some applications first create their window and then care about setting the
correct title. Firefox with Vimperator comes to mind, as the window starts up
being named Firefox and only when Vimperator is loaded, the title changes. As
i3 will get the title as soon as the application maps the window (mapping means
actually displaying it on the screen), you’d need to have to match on Firefox
in this case.

You can use the special workspace +~+ to specify that matching clients should
be put into floating mode.

*Syntax*:
----------------------------------------------------
assign ["]window class[/window title]["] [→] workspace
----------------------------------------------------

*Examples*:
----------------------
assign urxvt 2
assign urxvt → 2
assign "urxvt" → 2
assign "urxvt/VIM" → 3
assign "gecko" → ~
----------------------

=== Automatically starting applications on startup

By using the +exec+ keyword outside a keybinding, you can configure which
commands will be performed by i3 on the first start (not when reloading inplace
however). The commands will be run in order.

*Syntax*:
------------
exec command
------------

*Examples*:
--------------------------------
exec sudo i3status | dzen2 -dock
--------------------------------

=== Jumping to specific windows

Especially when in a multi-monitor environment, you want to quickly jump to a specific
window, for example while currently working on workspace 3 you may want to jump to
your mailclient to mail your boss that you’ve achieved some important goal. Instead
of figuring out how to navigate to your mailclient, it would be more convenient to
have a shortcut.

*Syntax*:
----------------------------------------------------
jump ["]window class[/window title]["]
jump workspace [ column row ]
----------------------------------------------------

You can either use the same matching algorithm as in the +assign+ command (see above)
or you can specify the position of the client if you always use the same layout.

*Examples*:
--------------------------------------
# Get me to the next open VIM instance
bind Mod1+38 jump "urxvt/VIM"
--------------------------------------

=== Traveling the focus stack

This mechanism can be thought of as the opposite of the +jump+ command. It travels
the focus stack and jumps to the window you focused before.

*Syntax*:
--------------
focus [number] | floating | tilling | ft
--------------

Where +number+ by default is 1 meaning that the next client in the focus stack will
be selected.

The special values have the following meaning:

floating::
	The next floating window is selected.
tiling::
	The next tiling window is selected.
ft::
	If the current window is floating, the next tiling window will be selected
	and vice-versa.

=== Changing colors

You can change all colors which i3 uses to draw the window decorations and the
bottom bar.

*Syntax*:
--------------------------------------------
colorclass border background text
--------------------------------------------

Where colorclass can be one of:

client.focused::
	A client which currently has the focus.
client.focused_inactive::
	A client which is the focused one of its container, but it does not have
	the focus at the moment.
client.unfocused::
	A client which is not the focused one of its container.
bar.focused::
	The current workspace in the bottom bar.
bar.unfocused::
	All other workspaces in the bottom bar.

Colors are in HTML hex format, see below.

*Examples*:
--------------------------------------
# class        border  backgr. text
client.focused #2F343A #900000 #FFFFFF
--------------------------------------