i3 Workspace Handler

Create i3 workspaces on the fly and call them by name.

Pressing Mod+Space (on my setup I press in sequence left and right thumbs) a dmenu with the workspaces list appears, allowing to choose one.

Typing a non existing name a new one will be created.

With Mod+Shift+Space (left thumb, left pinkie, right thumb) you can move the selected container.

Installing

• Copy lsws in a folder in your $PATH, or read below to see what it does.

• Add these lines in your .i3/config:

bindsym $mod+space        exec i3-msg workspace $(lsws | dmenu -p "→")
bindsym $mod+Shift+space  exec i3-msg move container to workspace $(lsws | dmenu -p "|→")
bindsym $mod+u            workspace back_and_forth

Eventually changing them with your Mod key and your colors and font configuration.

Details

lsws

List workspaces. As seen before we need to get the workspace names list in a dmenu-friendly way, but i3-msg -t get_workspaces prints a json.

i3-msg -t get_workspaces |  # get the json
tr , '\n' |                 # replace commas with newline
grep name |                 # "name":"workspace-name"
cut -d \" -f 4              #         ^ 4th field, spliting by "

If you have it already installed you can use Jq to do the same job in a cleaner way:

i3-msg -t get_workspaces | jq -r ".[].name"

License

Licensed under the Beerware License:

As long as you retain this notice you can do whatever you want with this stuff.
If we meet some day, and you think this stuff is worth it, you can buy me a
beer in return.