Save and restore window and workspace layout within an i3wm instance.
i3-snapshot has two modes:
- record: read i3 current state and emit to stdout
i3-snapshot > snapshot.txt - restore: modify the i3 window state from a previous configuration.
i3-snapshot < snapshot.txt
This program is intended to be used when window layouts are mangled by display hotplug events or other changes that cause i3wm to restructure the containment layout.
i3-snapshot employs a 'best effort' and 'fail-fast' strategy. This means that it does little validation and aborts execution upon any failure.
The output is meant to be somewhat human readable for basic troubleshooting purposes.
i3-snapshot is not an alternative to i3-save-tree. i3-save-tree is for long-lived workspace structures that are to be populated by users interactively. i3-snapshot only works within a single i3wm instance because it uses the internal ids to reference specific windows. This means that a snapshot cannot be used after the i3wm session it was recorded in exits.
To save your current window and workspace layout to a file:
$ i3-snapshot > layout.txt
To restore a layout from a file:
$ i3-snapshot < layout.txt
Bind i3-snapshot to keys such that layouts can be saved and restored like this:
bindsym $mod+comma exec /usr/local/bin/i3-snapshot -o > /tmp/i3-snapshot.txt
bindsym $mod+period exec /usr/local/bin/i3-snapshot -c < /tmp/i3-snapshot.txt
A Debian package i3-snapshot for Ubuntu is available at ppa:kgilmer/speed-ricer for Bionic, Disco, and Eoan releases.
Direct dependencies are integrated via git submodules. Additionally, the i3/ipc.h header file from the i3 package, libjsoncpp-dev, and libsigc++-2.0-dev are required.
$ git clone https://github.com/regolith-linux/i3-snapshot.git
...``
$ cd i3-snapshot
...
$ git submodule init
$ git submodule update
$ mkdir build && cd build
$ cmake ..
$ make
...
$ ./i3-snapshot
sudo cp i3-snapshot /usr/local/bin/
i3-snapshot should be considered alpha quality.