Option to disable focusing windows on click

[kpko]

Hi,

I'm trying to make Niri work for my ultrawide setup. The option center-focused-column "always" got me very far, I love how my focus is always in the center in front of me and other windows surround my focus.

The only problem that occurs when clicking on a "secondary" window, for example when copying text or clicking a button, the focus changes to that other window. That of course is the intended behavior and it makes sense most of the time but in that moment I don't want the focus to change.

If there was an option to disable the focus change on click, I could center my focus with the keyboard, click a button on a "secondary" window and the focus wouldn't change automatically. Could this be an option in Niri?

Thank you very much!

[Sempyos]

Perhaps this..?
https://yalter.github.io/niri/Configuration%3A-Input.html#focus-follows-mouse

[kpko]

Hi, thank you for the suggestion. I want more of the opposite. This option changes the focus on hover, otherwise the focus would change on click. I dont even want the focus to change on click but only on a manual focus change via keybinds.

[Sempyos]

I'm unsure if that is uh currently achievable

[Xananax]

I have the opposite screen, but the same request. I use a cramped 13" monitor often, and a lot of my daily work involves copy-pasting strings from one application to another, or observing one application and writing a report in another window.

Often, one, or both applications are partially spilling out of my screen, which is fine, because I only need to focus on the part of the window. For example, say I am looking at a website in Firefox on the left, and taking notes in Obsidian to the right.
I use vertical tabs in firefox, which creates a large pane on the leftmost side of Firefox. And I've set up Obsidian to have its own GUI bars to the right.
I am fine with the vertical tab bar, and part of a website's margins disappearing to the left of my screen; and part of Obsidian disappearing to the right of my screen. The setup works well, and I can hover Firefox and mousescroll without my layout shifting under me. But the moment I click anywhere, I lose my cool setup. As a result, I need to reshift manually and resize windows a non negligible amount of times a day.

I would like an option for the layout to never move, under any circumstance, unless I explicitly require it with a keybind. I do not think this would be confusing, as I don't think there's a way to select a window that's out of view (except alt-tabbing, which would still of course focus a window). But if there were, then I suggest an arrow with a thumbnail preview pointing to the location of the selected window on either side of the screen (think directional damage indicators in games). Alternatively, the setting could only cancel shifts if a selected window is at least partially in view (based on a percentage, like "focus follows mouse").

I know OP and I are probably an incredibly small minority, but if that request could be considered, that'd be amazing.

[bczhc]

Hm sometimes this is actually of some use; I want to "lock" the layout to let it not scroll on mouse clicks. e.g. I have two ~50% windows side by side but one is slightly >50% (some windows don't event want the wm to set its width <=50%!) and when interacting between them, the layout keeps scrolling a bit on focus change. Or, a 100% & a 50% window layouted side by side and I only need the right-half content of the 100% window and in this case sometimes I hope it won't scroll and show me the whole window once clicking on the 100% window; and for some cases one may want controlling the window focus only via keys (for example Mod+Q & Mod+E for one hand keybind) but not mouse clicks.

These three lines of code do the thing. And removing them prevents it.

diff --git a/src/input/mod.rs b/src/input/mod.rs
index 50567530..d57d73fa 100644
--- a/src/input/mod.rs
+++ b/src/input/mod.rs
@@ -2993,10 +2993,6 @@ impl State {
                     }
                 }
 
-                if !is_overview_open {
-                    self.niri.layout.activate_window(&window);
-                }
-
                 // FIXME: granular.
                 self.niri.queue_redraw_all();
             } else if let Some((output, ws)) = is_overview_open

Maybe a config like mouse-focus-window = "hover" | "on-click" | "never" is more ergonomic then..

[Xananax]

Sounds neat. One thought that occurs to me reading your comment is that people may want to toggle this one or off. I don't know if that kind of design fits well with Niri (I'm new and not too acquainted yet with the design philosophy) and there are certainly ways to do it in userspace, but being able to conditionally lock your screen sounds potentially better than having it as a general all-encompassing property.

[bczhc]

Then it's possible and sed is not needed actually; just provide a niri action for this and one can call it using ipc command niri msg action toggle-layout-locked, or just in the config file, write something like this: Mod+XX { toggle-layout-locked; }.

btw there's a PR regarding screen magnification and they just do the similar thing for their magnifier properties: #3285 (comment). And in this case (just adding ipcs), i think niri won't get so unhappy about it if this feature pr can be done finally.

So our config topic is shifting from a mouse-focus-window to a toggle-layout-locked... Currently niri adjusts its scrolling layout on window focuses so disabling window focus changing on mouse clicks is a way to do "lock layout" but if just talking about the layout locking feature per se I don't know if niri allows focusing a window that has parts out of the screen, but without auto changing its layout.

[Xananax]

Right! I completely forgot about ipc.

At any rate, this is not urgent, I think it's good to leave it for later, I suppose it could be part of a more generic set of changes that could be cohesive. Also if we leave it open, maybe other people can chime in with their use case, which may inform this feature better.

[bczhc]

Currently niri adjusts its scrolling layout on window focuses so disabling window focus changing on mouse clicks is a way to do "lock layout" but if just talking about the layout locking feature per se I don't know if niri allows focusing a window that has parts out of the screen, but without auto changing its layout.

For the info, someone just opened a discussion about this! #4183

[Xananax]

Maybe worth inviting them here and rename this discussion's title?

[bczhc]

yea though I'm not sure if the op has some usecase that actually needs a "no auto focus" but not a "locked layout" anyway.

Cc @exodist

Btw I have luck with this quick hack to do this (locked layout).

diff --git a/src/layout/scrolling.rs b/src/layout/scrolling.rs
index 6ab0461b..b0515814 100644
--- a/src/layout/scrolling.rs
+++ b/src/layout/scrolling.rs
@@ -696,6 +696,10 @@ impl<W: LayoutElement> ScrollingSpace<W> {
         let offset_delta = old_col_x - new_col_x;
         self.view_offset.offset(offset_delta);
 
+        if std::path::Path::new("/tmp/layout-locked").exists() {
+            return;
+        }
+
         let pixel = 1. / self.scale;
 
         // If our view offset is already this or animating towards this, we don't need to do

Also with keybinds like this:

    Mod+F1 { spawn-sh "touch /tmp/layout-locked"; }
    Mod+F2 { spawn-sh "rm /tmp/layout-locked || true"; }

for a quick testing.

[Uzlkav]

#1877 implements this

[bczhc]

Oh thanks for the info.