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Groups

A group is a container for a bunch of windows, analogous to workspaces in other window managers. Each client window managed by the window manager belongs to exactly one group. The groups config file variable should be initialized to a list of ~libqtile.dgroups.DGroup objects.

~libqtile.dgroups.DGroup objects provide several options for group configuration. Groups can be configured to show and hide themselves when they're not empty, spawn applications for them when they start, automatically acquire certain groups, and various other options.

Example

from libqtile.config import Group, Match
groups = [
    Group("a"),
    Group("b"),
    Group("c", matches=[Match(wm_class=["Firefox"])]),
]

# allow mod3+1 through mod3+0 to bind to groups; if you bind your groups
# by hand in your config, you don't need to do this.
from libqtile.dgroups import simple_key_binder
dgroups_key_binder = simple_key_binder("mod3")

Reference

libqtile.dgroups.simple_key_binder

Group Matching

ScratchPad and DropDown

~libqtile.config.ScratchPad is a special - by default invisible -group which acts as a container for ~libqtile.config.DropDown configurations. A DropDown can be configured to spawn a defined process and bind thats process' window to it. The associated window can then be shown and hidden by the lazy command dropdown_toggle() (see lazy) from the ScratchPad group. Thus - for example - your favorite terminal emulator turns into a quake-like terminal by the control of Qtile.

If the DropDown window turns visible it is placed as a floating window on top of the current group. If the DropDown is hidden, it is simply switched back to the ScratchPad group.

Example

from libqtile.config import Group, ScratchPad, DropDown, Key
from libqtile.command import lazy
groups = [
    ScratchPad("scratchpad", [
        # define a drop down terminal.
        # it is placed in the upper third of screen by default.
        DropDown("term", "urxvt", opacity=0.8),

        # define another terminal exclusively for ``qtile shell` at different position
        DropDown("qtile shell", "urxvt -hold -e 'qtile shell'",
                 x=0.05, y=0.4, width=0.9, height=0.6, opacity=0.9,
                 on_focus_lost_hide=True) ]),
    Group("a"),
]

keys = [
  # toggle visibiliy of above defined DropDown named "term"
  Key([], 'F11', lazy.group['scratchpad'].dropdown_toggle('term')),
  Key([], 'F12', lazy.group['scratchpad'].dropdown_toggle('qtile shell')),
]

Note that if the window is set to not floating, it is detached from DropDown and ScratchPad, and a new process is spawned next time the DropDown is set visible.

Some programs run in a server-like mode where the spawned process does not directly own the window that is created, which is instead created by a background process. In this case, the window may not be correctly caught in the scratchpad group. To work around this, you can pass a config.Match object to the corresponding Dropdown. See below.

Reference