Hyprland/workspaces improvements and further development

[zjeffer]

I'm creating this issue so we can keep track of further development for the newly implemented hyprland/workspaces module (by @Anakael in #2264)

Here are some features I would personally like to see:

• Urgent class
• Focused class
• Visible class (In PR: Implement 'active_only' option and 'visible' class in hyprland/workspaces #2408)
• Option to only show active workspaces (same as above)
• Persistent workspaces (+persistent css class)
• Multi-monitor: option to disable showing all workspaces on every output
• on-click action
• on-scroll action
• Improve special workspace integration (add support for "activespecial" IPC event hyprwm/Hyprland#3163)
• Refactor persistent workspaces to use Hyprland's new persistent workspace rule (Hyprland/workspaces: use Hyprland's workspace rules for persistency #2603)

Bugs to fix:

• The jsonparser doesn't work with escaped unicode characters #2495
• Hyprland/workspaces: active workspace bug #2484
• Moving workspace to another monitor in Hyprland does not update origin monitor's workspaces #2555

[Anakael]

Active (focused) class is already implemented.

[Anakael]

Wiki is updated:
https://github.com/Alexays/Waybar/wiki/Module:-Hyprland
(Also fixed wrong class name in https://github.com/Alexays/Waybar/wiki/Module:-Workspaces)

[vincentberthier]

Hi,
It seems the icons for the workspaces specified in the configuration only work if they’re specified for a workspace ID, not its name.
The icons also aren’t updated when a workspace is created, but the icons appear fine if the bar is killed and recreated.
Oh and the active workspace doesn’t seem to be tracked properly.

[maxwelljens]

• For me, multi-monitor displaying does not work. All the workspaces are shown on both bars in my dual monitor setup.
• Names also do not work, with Waybar claiming that the argument {name} does not exist.
• As in above user's case, the active workspace does not track properly in a dual monitor setup. If I switch or hover mouse over a workspace on the other monitor, it will still show the workspace from the other monitor as being active. Active workspace only updates when an unseen workspace is switched to.

I can open up a separate issue for this, if it sounds interesting.

[zjeffer]

@maxwelljens @vincentberthier Can you guys share your configs?

For me, the multi-monitor displaying & active workspace tracking does work properly. I use this config:

"hyprland/workspaces": {
    "format": "{name}",
    "format-icons": {
      "active": "",
      "default": "",
      "persistent": ""
    },
    "on-scroll-up": "hyprctl dispatch workspace r-1",
    "on-scroll-down": "hyprctl dispatch workspace r+1",
    "all-outputs": false,
    "persistent_workspaces": {
      "*": 5
    }
  }

and my style.css:

button {
    box-shadow: inset 0 -3px transparent;
    border: none;
    border-radius: 0;
}

button:hover {
    transition-duration: .1s;
    background: inherit;
    box-shadow: inset 0 -3px #ffffff;
}

#workspaces button {
    padding: 0 5px;
    background-color: #ffffff;
    color: #2e3440;
}

#workspaces button.persistent {
    background-color: #d8dee9;
    color: #4c566a;
}

#workspaces button.active {
    box-shadow: inset 0 -4px #4c566a;
    background-color: #ffffff;
}

@maxwelljens Some questions for you:

Active workspace only updates when an unseen workspace is switched to.

What do you mean by "unseen workspace"?

Names also do not work, with Waybar claiming that the argument {name} does not exist.

Can you share the exact error?

[vincentberthier]

That’s not me for the unseen ^^
I changed my configuration to use IDs instead of names, it works fine now. I think.

[maxwelljens]

@zjeffer I tried many different configurations and the one you presented is one of those I tried. None of the options seem to do anything, except format.

    "hyprland/workspaces": {
        "format": "{id}",
        "all-outputs": false,
        "persistent_workspaces": {
                "*": 5
            }
    },

The error in question is this, if you set "format": "{name}":

[2023-08-11 08:54:32.006] [error] hyprland/workspaces: argument not found
[2023-08-11 08:54:32.121] [error] hyprland/workspaces: argument not found

It is definitely that element, because if I set "format": "{id}" or "format": "{}" then it does not show that error. No other errors are present either.

What do you mean by "unseen workspace"?

I should have said "not visible" instead. If we have three workspaces 1, 2, and 3:

• 1 is visible on left monitor
• 2 is visible on right monitor
• 3 is not visible, whether assigned to left or right monitor
• If I switch between 1 and 2 in Hyprland, then the active workspace in Waybar is always shown as being either 1 or 2, regardless of which workspace is actually active in Hyprland.
• If I switch to 3 in Hyprland, then the active workspace will correctly switch to 3 in Waybar, as expected.

Hope that was clear enough.

[zjeffer]

That's so strange, I don't have any of those issues.

Here's a video of me moving my mouse between two of my monitors:

2023-08-11.20-27-35.mp4

It was kind of difficult to record so I only managed to record the workspace regions of my left and middle monitors. I move the mouse and the active workspace changes. Active means a white line appears at the bottom. Non-empty workspaces are a slightly whiter color. At the end of the video, I moved to my third monitor, which makes the other monitors not have an active workspace.

This seems to work perfectly fine on my system. Can you double-check you are running the latest version?

[maxwelljens]

According to waybar --version, I am indeed running the latest version 0.9.20.

[zjeffer]

Is that the release version or the latest git commit? Because the 0.9.20 release was published a month ago, while my PR with the changes necessary for persistent workspaces was merged two weeks ago (6006535)

I use v0.9.20-64-gb084bf72 from the AUR, which is the latest git version.

[maxwelljens]

I believe it is the release version. I use Waybar as distributed in the Fedora 38 repositories.