snav

OBSOLETE - replacing this project with xnav - a rewrite in Clojure.

snav stands for screen navigator. It is a window, workspace and monitor navigator for X.

The motivation for writing this app is so I could navigate windows, workspaces and monitors as easily as with tiling window managers like i3, bspwm, etc. but without having to use one.

There's a lot to like about tiling window managers but I find there are also many drawbacks. E.g. there's a lot of extra things you need to setup manually that most desktop environments provide out-of-the-box (working with multiple monitors, a good panel, desktop themes, etc.). It's also generally difficult to work with and nagivate between floating windows. E.g. bspwm requires you to create explicit rules so that some windows behave as you'd expect (e.g. Team Viewer). And this process is tedious enough that I often just don't get around to it.

Perhaps my favourite thing about tiling window managers is how easy it is to traverse workspaces and windows. Windows can be traversed according to how they are visually laid out on the screen. I find this much easier than working with ALT-TAB (beyond just switching to the last window). This is the primary goal of this app.

Features

• Navigate to a specific workspace (by number)
• Navigate to a workspace relative to current one (left, right)
• Navigate to the last viewed workspace
• Focus a window relative to current one (up, down, left, right)
• Move window to monitor relative to current monitor (up, down, left, right)

Requirements

• wmctrl
• xdotool
• xprop (Xorg util)
• xwininfo (Xorg util)

Running

Just grab the snav executable from releases. See the Config section for command examples. You can also just run snav help.

Config

I prefer to bind the snav commands to key-bindings via sxhkd. Here is a sample config:

# Focus window up
super + k
  snav focus up

# Focus window down
super + j
  snav focus down

# Focus window to the left
super + h
  snav focus left

# Focus window to the right
super + l
  snav focus right

# Move window to up monitor
super + alt + k
  snav move up

# Move window to down monitor
super + alt + j
  snav move down

# Move window to right monitor
super + alt + l
  snav move right

# Move window to left monitor
super + alt + h
  snav move left

# Go to a specific workspace
super + {1-9,0}
  snav workspace '{1-9,10}'

# Go to the next workspace
super + ctrl + l
  snav workspace next

# Go to the previous workspace
super + ctrl + h
  snav workspace previous

# Go to last active workspace
super + grave
  snav workspace last

Building

I prefer to use roswell to easily build an executable from source. The build script leverages this.