Insert workspace before current one

[AprilGrimoire]

Currently, when I close the last window in a workspace and leave the workspace, I cannot restore the workspaces to the previous state. As in some office suites, I suggest a functionality to insert a workspace before (or after) the current one.

[LuckShiba]

you mean empty-workspace-before-first?

[ccjmne]

@AprilGrimoire, I think you may find move-workspace-{up,down} helpful here!

They have some default bindings:

    Mod+Shift+Page_Down { move-workspace-down; }
    Mod+Shift+Page_Up   { move-workspace-up; }

You can move one of the empty at the top or bottom right in the middle of your existing workspaces, but note that as soon as you leave the overview, it'll disappear. If you have a hotkey to spawn something (e.g., a new terminal), you could start it up right there from the overview. Otherwise, you can still just populate either of the "placeholder" workspaces, then move it.

It doesn't exactly do what you had in mind, but considering that niri (to my understanding) always prune empty workspaces, I don't think we can really make "create empty workspace below/above" work too elegantly.

[AprilGrimoire]

@ccjmne How about creating an empty workspace above and focusing on it?

[ccjmne]

You can try that out, create a script that invokes "the right things", but I'm pretty sure it'll instantaneously destroyed, since niri currently (I believe) always removes empty workspaces (except at the extremity-ies). Maybe that's configurable, though :)

If you can figure out how/whether we can have an empty workspace kept around among the populated ones, we can definitely put together some short script that moves an empty workspace to the position that you want.

I highly suspect it'd have to have some application on it to not be destroyed immediately, but: we can most likely come up with a script that spawns the app of your choice "in a new workspace above".

[AprilGrimoire]

You can try that out, create a script that invokes "the right things", but I'm pretty sure it'll instantaneously destroyed, since niri currently (I believe) always removes empty workspaces (except at the extremity-ies). Maybe that's configurable, though :)

If you can figure out how/whether we can have an empty workspace kept around among the populated ones, we can definitely put together some short script that moves an empty workspace to the position that you want.

I highly suspect it'd have to have some application on it to not be destroyed immediately, but: we can most likely come up with a script that spawns the app of your choice "in a new workspace above".

If this is not doable, can I add an integer recording the number of locks temporarily blocking a workspace from being destroyed to Niri itself?

[ccjmne]

I have no idea with regards to what's possible beyond what the CLI API offers.
However, here's what you can do right away on your end:

On your PATH, create move-to-new-workspace (7xx):

#! /bin/sh

idx=$(niri msg --json workspaces | jq '.[] | select (.is_focused) | .idx')
niri msg action move-window-to-workspace 1
[ "$1" = above ]
niri msg action move-workspace-to-index $(( idx + $? ))

Then bind it to something:

Mod+N { spawn "move-to-new-workspace"; }

This will move your currently focused window to a new workspace created right below your current one.

You can pass above as its first argument to create that new workspace above instead:

Mod+N { spawn "move-to-new-workspace" "above"; }

Note

This assumes empty-workspace-above-first, but I'm sure you get the gist.
If you only have an empty workspace at the bottom, I reckon you can just replace the 1 in the script above with 99.

[heyoeyo]

How about creating an empty workspace above and focusing on it?

There's a slightly messy way to do this using the IPC, which relies on the fact that named workspaces don't get auto-cleared. The idea is you name the last workspace, position it where you want, focus it, and then un-name it. So something like:

#!/bin/bash

# Create workspace 'above' current workspace and focus it
NIRI_WS_INFO=$(niri msg -j workspaces)
LAST_WS_IDX=$(jq 'length' <<< $NIRI_WS_INFO)
CURR_WS_IDX=$(jq '.[] | select(.is_focused == true)' <<< $NIRI_WS_INFO | jq .idx)
niri msg action set-workspace-name _tempws --workspace $LAST_WS_IDX
niri msg action move-workspace-to-index $CURR_WS_IDX --reference _tempws
niri msg action focus-workspace _tempws
niri msg action unset-workspace-name _tempws