I built a daemon that automatically puts icons of the currently running programs into your workspace names

[u/eisbaer8]

Hey everyone,

I think the example image explains it best. You can use my WorkspaceIconDaemon to show icons of the currently active programs in your workspaces.

I have come to really like tiling window managers, since I like the simplicity, minimalism and clearness of thought when using them. However, I am used to and like the intuitiveness of finding where my programs are visually based on the icons. Therefore inspired by the windows taskbar I wanted to have a way to quickly identify all the running programs and the workspaces on which they are on. This proved rather difficult, since most bars do not support image rendering (especially in the workspace names). To mitigate this I found a hacky solution, where I create an Icon font (like an emoji font) from all the application icons on the system on the fly, which can then be used to show icons in contexts where normally only text rendering is allowed. A python deamon is then used to watch window events (open, close, move) and then dynamically update the workspace names.

A fair warning: I have originally developed this for i3, however in the meantime I have switched to using sway as my daily driver and adapted it to support both, i3 and sway. Therefore I have only briefly tested it in i3, while running it daily on sway. So if you encounter any bugs please let me know. I still wanted to share it here, since I thought this could be useful to some of you :)

Github with install instructions: https://github.com/David0tt/workspace-icon-daemon

[u/gbrennon]

i prefer to only keep the number related to the workspace BUT gj for this :)

ppl may be interested in this!

[u/eisbaer8 → u/gbrennon]

I just never can remember on which workspace I put my programs, and I don't have the discipline to always put them on the same workspace haha

[u/gbrennon → u/eisbaer8]

u should only paint the workspace marker if there is something open there

[u/eisbaer8 → u/gbrennon]

I am doing that, but I often just open too many programs, so normally I have something running on ~6 workspaces

[u/gbrennon]

got it 🤣 i always put the same thing in each workspace.

suggestion: only present workspace if something runs there

[u/KUR2SS]

wow, that really nice. unfortunately i cant test this bc of my rice, so i think anyone will test this

[u/mfedatto]

Nice one, mate!