I hope this makes clear the basic navigation and how to work within i3. Fedora Magazines Getting Started With The i3 Window Manager.I will leave you with some references for further reading on i3 and using it which I found useful: Ironically you have to click “yes” with you mouse! That will return you to your login manager. To exit i3 you need to hit $mod+shift+e which will bring up the i3 nagbar and ask if you really want to exit. So that sums up opening applications, navigation, moving between applications and workspaces and closing the applications down. $mod+e will also change the tiling mode from horizontal and vertical. You move to tabbed layout using $mod+w or you revert to tiled layout using $mod+e. You still move between the stacked application windows or tabs with the $mod+ arrow keys (or home row). It also supports stacked and tabbed layouts. Tiling is what we have been using up until now. The last main key combinations to know about are how to handle switching layout mode. To dismiss the menu you can use the Esc key. To open the menu you use $mod+d and then type the application name you want to open. d-menu is a dynamic menu system for X and is almost always used by default within i3. How do we open our applications? You use d-menu. OK, so we can open terminals and move between them and move them to over workspaces. In order to close an application window, you use $mod+shift+q. To do that you can use $mod+f and to exit full screen you also use $mod+f. Obviously, tiling is very useful but there are times you need to full screen a window. If you open an application on workspace one and decide you want to move it to workspace 2 then you can use $mod+shift+ workspace number. Most configurations will only show the workspace indicator in i3 bar if you have an application open within it. There are 8 workspaces you can access using $mod+1 through to 8. When you launch a new i3 session you will start on workspace 1. So if you have a browser and the terminal open split horizontally and hit $mod+shift+j then you will have the terminal and the browser instead. You can mix in the shift key to the arrows of home row keys to actually move the application window within the tiling layout of the current workspace. $mod+j moves to the left and $mod+ moves to the right. You can also move between windows using keys from the home row (like Vim). You can change the focus of the open applications by using $mod+ one of the arrow keys. You can use $mod+h to switch back to horizontal split mode. If you want to tile your next application under a current one then you need to use $mod+v to change the behaviour. By default in a workspace when you open a new application window it will open horizontally tiled. You can divide up your workspace by tiling horizontally or vertically. This is the “tiling” idea that is core to i3. If you repeat the $mod+Enter command you will get a second terminal open to the right of the first terminal. Now we have the $mod key configured how do we use it? The equivalent of a “Hello World” example for i3 is to execute the $mod+Enter command. (The i3 configuration file is usually found at ~/.i3/config)Īs an aside if you want to find a list of alternative mod key mappings to use then run the following in your terminal: The key can be configured in the i3 configuration file using: The wizard mentioned above suggests either the Windows key or the left Alt key. Most distros tend to use the Windows key as the $mod key. You will use the $mod key to open applications, move windows and change workspaces. The first thing to know is that all the keyboard shortcuts involve the $mod key. Now you have a working environment, how do you do anything? Where is the menu? Where are the icons? I will follow up the post next week with details on i3 and my configuration. It will offer you the ability to use default options or start with an empty config. If you install i3 via your existing distro then when you log in you will see a setup wizard. If you use a distro like Manjaro i3 then when you log in you will have a working environment. It also uses extensive keyboard shortcuts for navigation.ĭepending on how you install i3 you may need to set up some basic configuration. i3 is a tiling window manager which is much lighter on resources than an environment such as Gnome. Last week I shared the fact that I have migrated over to i3wm (i3) from a full desktop environment. Navigating & Using i3 Window Manager 15 January 2019
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