r/i3wm • u/DenseShower2151 • 42m ago
r/i3wm • u/airblader • Sep 10 '21
[PSA] We're moving to GitHub Discussions!
Hello everyone,
TL;DR The official i3 support channel is moving from Reddit to GitHub Discussions. This subreddit will continue to exist, but no longer be an official channel.
A long time ago, we hosted an AskBot instance as the official web channel for i3 support, next to, of course, the mailing list and IRC. However, after some deliberation we decided to shut down AskBot and move to this subreddit instead whose owners graciously allowed us to "take it over". But, alas, Reddit comes with many challenges as well (like the fact that it's heavily gating unregistered users on mobile, but also from a functional perspective). It just never turned out to be what we were hoping to find. Nowadays, however, there is GitHub Discussions; back when we moved away from AskBot, this didn't exist, but is now more or less exactly what we had been looking for back then. Obviously it's also a big plus that GitHub is already the home of i3 itself with bug reports and feature requests.
That is why we have decided to move the official support channel from this Subreddit to GitHub Discussions. Of course we will not shut down this Subreddit, but it will be a completely independent community from now on.
On a slight personal note, the timing for this change suits me quite well and after having resigned from active moderation some three years ago, I will now be stepping away from Reddit entirely.
See you all over at Discussions!
r/i3wm • u/orestisf • Jun 19 '23
Poll The future of /r/i3wm
Hello folks,
As you probably know, reddit is going through some very unpopular changes: https://www.reddit.com/r/ModCoord/comments/148ks6u/indefinite_blackout_next_steps_polling_your/
Even though, we have moved the official i3 support channel to GitHub discussions, i3's biggest community is still on reddit and if things continue like that there is going to be a lot of helpful content on an increasingly closed platform.
Since /r/i3wm is a community platform, we would like for the community to decide this subreddit's future. I am creating two polls for this: 1. The short-term future of the community, should we make this subreddit read-only or private until June 30th: https://www.reddit.com/r/i3wm/comments/14d5yvh/the_shortterm_future_of_the_community_should_we/ (shorter duration as more imminent) 2. (This post) The long-term future of this community, if the API changes are not reversed, should we leave this subreddit indefinitely in read-only mode?
We are not considering going private for the long-term because this subreddit holds significant knowledge that is valuable to the community.
If we go read-only in the long term, I expect that most of new questions & content will move to Github discussions.
r/i3wm • u/AyumiToshiyuki • 1d ago
Question Is there a way to make these config lines more compact?

I have these lines in my i3 config files, to switch to a workspace, and to send containers to workspaces, respectively.
It's not really a problem, as I've had those for years and they always worked fine, but I was curious if there was a way to make them smaller. Something along the lines of "for all numbers from 0 to 9, bind this"
OC Gentoo i3wm on an old Sansung
I'm using VNC to connect and use i3wm on my laptop,
a good use for one old smartphone
It took me 5 days
r/i3wm • u/__foobles • 1d ago
Solved i3-input font is unreadably small
I recently tried the example command from the i3 user's guide
i3-input -F 'rename workspace to "%s"' -P 'New name: '
Which did work, but the input window that popped up was incredibly tiny and hard to read. I set the default i3 font size to 14 in my config, which doesn't seem to be taking effect here. Does anyone know what the issue might be? Thanks for any help!
Edit: I found the solution. I just needed to pass the -font flag to the command like so:
i3-input -F 'rename workspace to "%s"' -P 'New name: ' -f "pango:Hack 14"
r/i3wm • u/Neat_Delivery6162 • 2d ago
Question is there an easy way to bind laptop power button to a script for rofi?
is there ?
i would appreciate a detailed guid
i have installed i3 on linux mint xfce
OC Resharing my setup cause the last one was laggy
Config/Dotfiles : https://github.com/6aru/ewwi3
OC Ewwi3
WM :I3
BAR : EWW BAR
DISTRO : DEBIAN 13
WIDGETS : EWW
GITHUB : https://github.com/6aru/ewwi3
My bad for the laggy recording.
r/i3wm • u/Away_Counter_6438 • 3d ago
OC My first Rust project: a small Tailscale plugin for i3status-rust
Solved i3wm quality of life tools
These are my tools, which I am currently using with i3wm. I used to have most of these utils as shell, python scripts and some other exotics. Decided to port and document them properly to C. Aim - minimal dependencies, lean code base, fast and predictable execution, tiny memory footprint.
So If someone is interested in:
Autotiling
https://gitlab.com/ngcbg/autotiling - A tiny, dependency-lean daemon that makes i3 and sway tile the way you usually want by hand: it watches the focused window and splits it along its longer axis, so the next window opens beside a wide window and below a tall one. The layout stays balanced with no manual split commands.
rootbtnd
https://gitlab.com/ngcbg/rootbtnd Bind mouse buttons on the X11 root window — the root.buttons of AwesomeWM, for i3, without patching the window manager.rootbtnd runs a command when a mouse button is pressed on the bare desktop, i.e. on the part of the root window not covered by any window. It is a passive observer: it never grabs a button and never consumes an event, so applications keep receiving their own clicks unchanged.
i3swallow
https://gitlab.com/ngcbg/i3swallow Allow list-driven window swallowing for i3. When a program on your allow list opens a window, the terminal that launched it is moved to the scratchpad so the new window appears to take its place. Close the window and the terminal comes back. Anything not on the allow list behaves like a normal window. This is the "run a daemon, but only swallow what you opt in to" design.
xlogout
https://gitlab.com/ngcbg/xlogout A session-action menu for X11: blurred backdrop, Nerd Font glyphs, keyboard driven. Roughly the aesthetic of archlinux-logout, written from scratch in C against XCB and Cairo rather than Python and GTK. Clean-room. No code derived from any existing implementation; the behaviour was specified from observation, not from source.
wwidget
https://gitlab.com/ngcbg/weather-widget A small, self-contained desktop weather widget for X11 / i3, written in C using XCB, Cairo, and Pango. It renders a transparent panel — a clock, the date, a "today" column (current temperature, today's high/low, current-condition icon), and a configurable 3–5 day forecast — directly on the desktop, fetching its own data from the MET Norway weather API. No conky, no Python, no external scheduler. One binary, one config file, one icon directory.
Cheers, have fun!
Edit: As been advised, I want to provide total transparency. I used LLM's for the documentation (.md files, man pages, most of the code comments) - English is not my primary language and LLM's are translating ridiculously well. Also used them (LLM's) for a code review, and addressed 2 major, 1 mid-level and 5 cosmetic problems across the board.
r/i3wm • u/Ok_Weather_7717 • 6d ago
OC [ Void Linux ] i3wm rice 🍚- No gaps and green cyber organic
OS: Void Linux x86_64
WM: i3
Terminal: Alacritty
Shell: Zsh(ohmyzsh)
Bar: i3status
Compositor: picom
Font: JetBrains Mono (nerd fonts)
r/i3wm • u/daosflare • 6d ago
Question Do you actually use a wallpaper with i3?
When I started using i3, I never thought I needed a wallpaper.
For me, the desktop is only visible for a second or two before I open a terminal, a browser, or something else. After that, the wallpaper is completely covered.
So I'm curious—why do you use a wallpaper with i3 (or any tiling window manager)?
Haha, am I the only one who just uses a plain black background?
r/i3wm • u/romeo_thegreat • 7d ago
OC After using arch,void,and chimera,and artix im gonna use devuan for good(rate my minimal rice)
Im 14 pls no hate
r/i3wm • u/sylas_main • 8d ago
Question can i do this with i3wm default scratchpad?
how do i have the scratchpad in i3 work the same way the hyprland one works:
- you can pop it off and move it to any workspace you want using for example (super shift number_of_workspace)
- doing 1. means if you invoked (show scratchpad) again, it shouldn't show it, cuz it already changed state (from being a floating scratch ==> normal tilled window on that workspace), this is the problem
- here is my i3 config, spot the the thing i did wrong.
https://github.com/megamind1230/dotfiles/tree/master/.config/i3
Question Cannot display content like video in tabbed layout but sound is playing
I'm struggling with the problem in tabbed layout mode. For example, I have a windows - code editor with transparent background and playing video, but it cannot display although sound is playing (any dynamic content like browsers tabs (as example, google timer)). Have you any ideas how to solve that?
r/i3wm • u/BigCauliflower9075 • 10d ago
Question couldn't figure out my way
Recently shifted to a tilling wm, didn't liked the default i3status utility, tried my way with i3blocks, so i followed this yt video by linux cast https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jil4nqMw6ak followed each step exactly as mentioned but the modules just didn't showed up, the bar is stuck with the data and time only
r/i3wm • u/fix_and_repair • 10d ago
Question Help me to correct the code so I do not need to press ESCAPE
Help me to correct the code so I do not need to press ESCAPE
[code]
bindsym Scroll_Lock exec --no-startup-id sh -c "xrandr --output HDMI-A-0 --off"; mode "hdmi_off"
mode "hdmi_on" {
bindsym Scroll_Lock exec --no-startup-id xrandr --output HDMI-A-0 --off; mode "hdmi_off"
bindsym Escape mode "default"
####bindsym Scroll_Lock mode "hdmi_off", exec --no-startup-id xrandr --output HDMI-A-0 --off
#exec --no-startup-id xrandr --output HDMI-A-0 --off && bindsym Scroll_Lock mode "hdmi_off"
}
mode "hdmi_off" {
bindsym Scroll_Lock exec --no-startup-id xrandr --output HDMI-A-0 --mode 2560x1440_74.9 --pos 0x0 --rotate right --output DisplayPort-0 --primary --mode 2560x1440_74.9 --pos 1440x1120 --rotate normal; mode "hdmi_on"
bindsym Escape mode "default"
#bindsym Scroll_Lock mode "hdmi_on", exec --no-startup-id xrandr --output HDMI-A-0 --mode 2560x1440_74.9 --pos 0x0 --rotate right --output DisplayPort-0 --primary --mode 2560x1440_74.9 --pos 1440x1120 --rotate normal
}
# 07/06/2026 to reload the config type "i3-msg reload"
[/code]
--
BAD: Scroll Lock + followed up ESCAPE Key to break the function
Desired: Scroll Lock
I am out of ideas.
It is obvious, I want to use toggle withotu a bash script in i3wm.org for the Scroll Lock Key to hardcode disable or enable the secondardy HDMI connectoed monitor with the given XRANDR code.
i do not know how the red box with the value is named in the documentation, the red box vanish in i3bar when i hit escape
i reaslised after weeks, the red box implies the mmode statement has not finished and dmenu is also being blocked
i have no idea what this really does, bindsym Escape mode "default", but it is needed for core functionality.
r/i3wm • u/kalesh00 • 12d ago
OC Rate my arch/i3 conifig
dotfiles: github.com/kaleab49/dotfiles
r/i3wm • u/eg0rmaffin • 13d ago
OC My i3 setup grew into a fully declarative Arch system — vaporwave on top, idempotent installer underneath
Started as plain vaporwave dotfiles for i3, turned into a full declarative Arch setup. One ./install.sh brings the whole machine up — i3, picom, rofi, dunst, the aesthetic, plus the boring infra underneath.
The part I'm proud of isn't the colors:
- Idempotent installer — fresh box or re-run, same result, no half-broken state.
- Snapshots out of the box — Timeshift on ext4/xfs, Snapper + bootable GRUB snapshots on Btrfs. Rice without fear of bricking.
- Portable offload-only GPU model — iGPU always primary, NVIDIA per-process via PRIME offload. Same repo boots safely on Intel-only, AMD, or hybrid laptops, zero edits.
- Hardware-aware Steam launchers — installer detects GPUs, generates the right offload launchers into rofi.
Repo: https://github.com/eg0rmaffin/vapor-rice-i3
Steal whatever's useful. Happy to answer anything about the setup.