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Managing windows and focusing specific apps on Linux? (lemmy.world)

submitted 4 weeks ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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TLDR: I want to be able to set specific window sizes and positions of the current window with hotkeys, as well as focus on specific apps with hotkeys, but I'm overwhelmed.

I've been trying to switch to Asahi Linux Fedora, and trying Gnome as my desktop environment since it can be customized with CSS, and with Wayland. I tried looking up how to change window layouts with hotkeys and it's confusing on what solution(s) I would end up wanting to use. Would I want to use a window manager?

Ultimate I want an alternative to Rectangle Pro app on Mac, which let's you set many hotketys for changing the current window's size & position: like use up the left or right halves or thirds of the screen, or corners and taking up a quarter of the screen. You can also make custom window layouts and bind those to keys.

I didn't find many results while looking up how to focus on specifc apps with hotkeys. For instance, I'd want to press CTRL Shift Z to switch specifically to Zen Browser or open it if it isn't opened, and CTRL Shift O to open or switch to Obsidian. I looked this up and didn't find options other than wmctrl or wlrctl. I tried the later: wlrctl window focus firefox, but got the error Foreign Toplevel Management interface not found!. on macOS there are many apps for this like BetterTouchTool & Hammerspoon.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 weeks ago

You're using the wrong window manager. You can do what you want with xdotool and a lot of scripting, but there are better window managers designed around controlling every aspect of windows with bindings and commands. Herbstluftwm is a good one, bspwm is another. i3 is less scripting focused, but is still fairly controllable with the CLI tool.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 weeks ago

You'll need to write an extension to get access to scripting and hotkeys which will then allow you to do that.

It might be easier to do with KWin since it's got pretty good scripting out of the box and good documentation about it, but should be doable on Gnome too.