I3ALTLAYOUT

i3altlayout helps you handle more efficiently your screen real estate in i3wm by auto-splitting windows on their longest side.

If you open 4 windows, your workspace would look

             like this                               instead of this

+-----------------------------------+        +---------------------------------+
| +--------------+ +--------------+ |        | +-----+ +-----+ +-----+ +-----+ |
| |              | |              | |        | |     | |     | |     | |     | |
| |              | |      2       | |        | |     | |     | |     | |     | |
| |              | |              | |        | |     | |     | |     | |     | |
| |      1       | +--------------+ |        | |  1  | |  2  | |  3  | |  4  | |
| |              | +--------------+ |        | |     | |     | |     | |     | |
| |              | |      ||      | |        | |     | |     | |     | |     | |
| |              | |   3  ||  4   | |        | |     | |     | |     | |     | |
| +--------------+ +--------------+ |        | +-----+ +-----+ +-----+ +-----+ |
+-----------------------------------+        +---------------------------------+

---

Installation

Install the script from pypi

$ sudo pip3 install i3altlayout

Offline installation

Either install the dependencies and copy the i3altlayout.py file:

• i3ipc (python3-i3ipc on debian/fedora)
• docopt (python3-docopt on debian/fedora)

Or package the pypi package:

## on online host
$ mkdir -p /tmp/i3altlayout && pip3 download -d /tmp/i3altlayout i3altlayout

## move the /tmp/i3altlayout directory to the offline host

## on offline host
$ sudo pip3 install --no-index --find-links=/tmp/i3altlayout i3altlayout

Usage

Start the script directly with i3 by adding it to your config file (usually under ~/.config/i3/config):

exec --no-startup-id "i3altlayout"

Or test it by running it from the command line (i3altlayout) and open a few windows.

Related projects

This project is similar to i3-alternating-layout but uses the i3ipc library instead of the unmaintained i3-py library.

Contribution

If you are having trouble installing or using i3altlayout, open an issue.

If you want to contribute, feel free to do a PR (please follow PEP8).

License

This project is licensed under the terms of the GPLv3 license.