Disabling workspaces

[tazjin]

Hey!

I'm curious if there is a way to completely disable user-facing interactions with workspaces (i.e. rely only on the scrolling on one workspace per output).

I got pretty far by simply removing all the workspace related stuff from my configuration, but the one thing that remains is that when disconnecting an output its "workspace" gets moved to another output and (if you've removed all workspace keybindings) becomes inaccessible.

If this can be toggled somehow (e.g. merging workspaces into the workspace of the primary screen), that'd be great.

Why do this: I like simple things, and Niri's model is pretty excellent for that. Workspaces are an abstraction I don't need that takes up valuable "keyboard real estate".

If this isn't in Niri itself, I guess it might be doable through RPC interactions with Niri without changing the code?

[YaLTeR]

Hey,

It's not possible to disable workspaces since they are deeply ingrained in the niri layout system. However, with the new event stream IPC you can watch for changes like the workspace moving to another output, and after I add by-id addressing to window actions, it should be possible to make a script that automatically moves all windows to the right workspace in this case. (Though, it will likely misfire if the output replugs itself upon DPMS or some such.)

[tazjin]

Okay, cool. DPMS messing with stuff is fine, a price I'm willing to pay)

I think for a simple script all that's needed is an IPC call for getting all windows per workspace (could probably run it through udev, or just in a loop, to avoid dealing with an event stream). Does something like that exist? I didn't find it in the CLI.

By the way, niri is amazing, and I'm impressed by how polished your project is! Thanks a lot!))

[YaLTeR]

I think for a simple script all that's needed is an IPC call for getting all windows per workspace (could probably run it through udev, or just in a loop, to avoid dealing with an event stream). Does something like that exist? I didn't find it in the CLI.

This now exists (merged this morning): niri msg --json windows then filter by workspace_id. What doesn't exist is the ability to call niri msg action on a window by ID (rather than on the focused window).

By the way, niri is amazing, and I'm impressed by how polished your project is! Thanks a lot!))

Thanks, glad you're enjoying it!

[YaLTeR]

I just finished implementing by-id window addressing in the IPC and in the niri msg CLI. It should now be possible to watch for workspace output change through the event stream, then use Action::MoveWindowToWorkspace specifying the window id and the workspace id to move all windows to the first workspace.

This will break apart columns though; that part can come later.

[tazjin]

Perfect, I wrote a small tool that "reaps" the windows from other workspaces for me: https://cl.tvl.fyi/c/depot/+/12451

I made some (untested) assumptions about indices changing if workspaces get deleted during this, but haven't tried that out yet.