Switching Windows and Desktops According to Window Names and Text Search

Update 2024-02-07: remark on Wayland below.

Here is a neat little PIM improvement which has a great impact on my personal way on how to deal with Virtual Desktops and windows on my GNU/Linux systems. After using it for a few months, I do find this method brilliant and therefore, I need to blog about it.

Working with many application windows on different Virtual Desktops comes with a burden. In most setups, you have to manually switch desktop before you can see the corresponding windows and switch to them. However, in my usual work I know exactly to what window I'm going to jump to, independent of my current Virtual Desktop.

Same as with using a (local) search engine to "teleport" to a specific web site, computer file or start an application, I introduced myself to a method to teleport to any open window on my computer.

In combination with the Firefox add-on "window-titler", I may switch to arbitrary windows by simply invoking a custom keyboard combination, enter a search term (if it's unique with few letters, it's really quick), press Enter and my focus is switched to the Virtual Desktop and the window of choice.

When I enter "evo" I may jump to my Evolution email client. When I enter "ema" I jump to my Emacs. Entering "rc" jumps to my Firefox window thich I named "[rc]" using the add-on from above. You get the idea.

I rarely switch desktops or apps otherwise, since I've got that method in place. Few small PIM tricks have had such a great impact on my daily computer usage than this one.

Update 2024-02-07: My implementation mentioned below is only working with X.org and not with Wayland. See discussions like that. If you know how to implement the workflow on Wayland-based machines, please do write a comment!

For the implementation, I found inspiration from that web page. My method requires the following tools:

• rofi: window switcher, application launcher and dmenu replacement
• wmctrl: controlling windows
• optional: rofi-theme-selector for changing the look and feel of the rofi popup window

As soon as you understood the principle, you can think of alternative implementation using different tools, of course.

In my xfce environment, I create a new keyboard shortcut. System Settings → "Keyboard" → "Shortcuts" → "Custom Shortcuts". Click the "+" and add the command:

 rofi -monitor -2 -show window -kb-accept-alt 'Return' \
      -kb-accept-entry 'Shift+Return' \
      -window-command "/home/vk/src/misc/vk-switch-to-windowid.sh {window}"	  

The name and location of the mentioned shell script may vary.

My personal preference for the keyboard shortcut is mapped via my QMK keyboard firmware to LAYER + SPACE for opening the rofi search window.

The vk-switch-to-windowid.sh script is:

#!/bin/bash

WINID="${1}"

## switch to the virtual desktop of the chosen window and show the window:
/usr/bin/wmctrl -i -a "${WINID}"

## xfce window manager has a bug where the focus is not correct with "focus
## follows mouse":
##   https://github.com/davatorium/rofi/discussions/1585
##   https://www.reddit.com/r/qtools/comments/siksac/using_rofi_show_window_with_focus_follows_mouse/
##   https://gitlab.xfce.org/xfce/xfwm4/-/issues/224
## This is a workaround to fix that by placing the mouse:
/usr/bin/xdotool mousemove -window "${WINID}" 100 -20

#end	  

You don't need the xdotool workaround if you're not affected by the xfce/xfwm4 issue mentioned.

If you want to switch to a different look and feel for rofi, you might want to invoke rofi-theme-selector. I personally use the theme named "arthur" at the moment.

Have fun improving your PIM workflows!