Getting active workspace with command

[mikkel1156]

Is there a way to get the active workspace using the terminal? Looked into dbus but does not seem to be used by the compositor at least.

Want this for EWW (custom topbar/panel) to show the current workspace.

I don't mind making a small program myself since I use Rust, but I don't know how an external can access the this state from the compositor at all right now.

[neeteshupreti]

COSMIC purposefully avoids using DBus for compositor-level state like workspaces to keep things Wayland-native and performant.

1. The Protocol

You need to use the zcosmic_workspace_unstable_v2 protocol. This is the custom extension COSMIC uses to manage and expose workspace states to external clients like panels and docks.

Manager: zcosmic_workspace_manager_v2

Handle: zcosmic_workspace_handle_v2

2. Implementation in Rust

You can use the following crates to build a small background "listener" that outputs the current workspace to stdout for EWW:

[cosmic-protocols](https://www.google.com/search?q=%5Bhttps://github.com/pop-os/cosmic-protocols%5D(https://github.com/pop-os/cosmic-protocols)): Provides the Rust bindings for the custom COSMIC extensions.

[smithay-client-toolkit](https://www.google.com/search?q=%5Bhttps://github.com/Smithay/smithay-client-toolkit%5D(https://github.com/Smithay/smithay-client-toolkit)) (SCTK): The standard library for writing Wayland clients in Rust.

3. High-Level Logic

   Bind to the Global: In your Wayland registry listener, look for zcosmic_workspace_manager_v2.

   Get Workspace Handles: Use the manager to get a list of active workspaces.

   Listen for the state Event: Each zcosmic_workspace_handle_v2 object will emit a state event. This event sends an array of states (e.g., Active, Urgent, Hidden).

   Detect Active: When a workspace's state array includes Active, that is your current workspace.

4. Reference Code

You can find the exact implementation of this logic in the official cosmic-workspaces-epoch repository. Specifically, look at how the workspace applet handles events to update its UI—you can effectively "strip down" that logic into a CLI tool.

There isn't a "one-liner" CLI tool like swaymsg yet, so writing a small Rust utility that stays open and prints the active workspace index/name to stdout whenever it changes is the most robust way to integrate with EWW's subscribe pollers.

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