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Owners of AMD (previously ATI) video cards have a choice between
(AUR) and the open source drivers ( for older or
for newer cards). This article covers the ATI/ open source driver for older cards.
The open source driver is on par performance-wise with the proprietary
driver for many cards. (See this .)
If unsure, try the open source driver first, it will suit most needs and is
generally less problematic. See the
to know what is supported for the GPU. See the
to translate marketing names (e.g. Radeon HD4330) to chip names (e.g. R700).
Depending on the card you have, find the right driver in . This page has instructions for ATI.
Note: If coming from the proprietary Catalyst driver, see
package, which provides the DRI driver for 3D acceleration.
For 32-bit application support, also install the
package from the
repostory.
For the DDX driver (which provides 2D acceleration in ), install the
Support for
is provided by
The radeon kernel module should load fine automatically on system boot.
If it does not happen, then:
Make sure you do not have nomodeset or vga= as a , since radeon requires .
Also, check that you have not disabled radeon by using any .
Tip: If you have problems with the resolution,
(KMS) is supported by the radeon driver and is mandatory and enabled by default.
KMS is typically initialized after the . It is possible, however, to enable KMS during the initramfs stage. To do this, add the radeon module to the MODULES line in /etc/mkinitcpio.conf:
MODULES="... radeon ..."
Now, regenerate the initramfs:
# mkinitcpio -p linux
The change takes effect at the next reboot.
Xorg will automatically load the driver and it will use your monitor's EDID to set the native resolution. Configuration is only required for tuning the driver.
If you want manual configuration, create /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-radeon.conf, and add the following:
Section "Device"
Identifier "Radeon"
Driver "radeon"
EndSection
Using this section, you can enable features and tweak the driver settings.
The following options apply to /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-radeon.conf.
Please read
first before applying driver options.
Acceleration architecture; Glamor is available as a 2D acceleration method implemented through OpenGL, and it
for R600 (Radeon HD2000 series) and newer graphic cards. Older cards use EXA.
Option "AccelMethod" "glamor"
DRI3 is enabled by default . For older drivers, which use DRI2 by default, switch to DRI3 with the following option:
Option "DRI" "3"
TearFree is a tearing prevention option which prevents tearing by using the hardware page flipping mechanism:
Option "TearFree" "on"
ColorTiling and ColorTiling2D are supposed to be enabled by default. Tiled mode can provide significant performance benefits with 3D applications. It is disabled if the DRM module is too old or if the current display configuration does not support it. KMS ColorTiling2D is only supported on R600 (Radeon HD2000 series) and newer chips:
Option "ColorTiling" "on"
Option "ColorTiling2D" "on"
When using Glamor as acceleration architecture, it is possible to enable the ShadowPrimary option, which enables a so-called "shadow primary" buffer for fast CPU access to pixel data, and separate scanout
controller
(CRTC). This may improve performance for some 2D workloads, potentially at the expense of other (e.g. 3D, video) workloads. Note that enabling this option currently disables Option "EnablePageFlip":
Option "ShadowPrimary" "on"
is only available when using EXA and can be enabled to avoid tearing by stalling the engine until the display controller has passed the destination region. It reduces tearing at the cost of performance and has been known to cause instability on some chips:
Option "EXAVSync" "yes"
Below is a sample configuration file of /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-radeon.conf:
Section "Device"
Identifier
Driver "radeon"
Option "AccelMethod" "glamor"
Option "DRI" "3"
Option "TearFree" "on"
Option "ColorTiling" "on"
Option "ColorTiling2D" "on"
EndSection
is a tool which allows several settings to be modified: vsync, anisotropic filtering, texture compression, etc. Using this tool it is also possible to "disable Low Impact fallback" needed by some programs (e.g. Google Earth).
Tip: You may want to debug the new parameters with systool as stated in .
Defining the gartsize, if not autodetected, can be done by adding radeon.gartsize=32 as a .
Note: Setting this parameter should not be needed anymore with modern AMD video cards:
[drm] Detected VRAM RAM=2048M, BAR=256M
[drm] radeon: 2048M of VRAM memory ready
[drm] radeon: 2048M of GTT memory ready.
The changes take effect at the next reboot.
Since kernel 3.6, PCI Express 2.0 in radeon is turned on by default.
It may be unstable with some motherboards. It can be deactivated by adding radeon.pcie_gen2=0 as a .
for more information.
The radeon driver supports the activation of a heads-up display (HUD) which can draw transparent graphs and text on top of applications that are rendering, such as games. These can show values such as the current frame rate or the CPU load for each CPU core or an average of all of them. The HUD is controlled by the GALLIUM_HUD environment variable, and can be passed the following list of parameters among others:
"fps" - displays current frames per second
"cpu" - displays the average CPU load
"cpu0" - displays the CPU load for the first CPU core
"cpu0+cpu1" - displays the CPU load for the first two CPU cores
"draw-calls" - displays how many times each material in an object is drawn to the screen
"requested-VRAM" - displays how much VRAM is being used on the GPU
"pixels-rendered" - displays how many pixels are being displayed
To see a full list of parameters, as well as some notes on operating GALLIUM_HUD, you can also pass the "help" parameter to a simple application such as glxgears and see the corresponding terminal output:
# GALLIUM_HUD="help" glxgears
More information can be found from this
It is the technology used on recent laptops equiped with two GPUs, one power-efficent (generally Intel integrated card) and one more powerful and more power-hungry (generally Radeon or Nvidia). There are two ways to get it work:
If it is not required to run 'GPU-hungry' applications, it is possible to disable the discrete card (see ): echo OFF & /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo/switch.
: Is a proper way to use hybrid graphics on Linux, but still requires a bit of manual intervention from the user.
Note: Power management is supported on all chips that include the appropriate power state tables in the vbios (R1xx and newer). "dpm" is only supported on R6xx and newer chips.
With the radeon driver, power saving is disabled by default and has to be enabled manually if desired.
You can choose between three different methods:
(enabled by default since kernel 3.13)
for more details.
Since kernel 3.13, DPM is enabled by default for . If you want to disable it, add the parameter radeon.dpm=0 to the .
DPM works on R6xx gpus, but is not enabled by default in the kernel (only R7xx and up). Setting the radeon.dpm=1 kernel parameter will enable dpm.
Unlike , the "dpm" method uses hardware on the GPU to dynamically change the clocks and voltage based on GPU load. It also enables clock and power gating.
There are 3 operation modes to choose from:
battery lowest power consumption
balanced sane default
performance highest performance
They can be changed via sysfs
# echo battery & /sys/class/drm/card0/device/power_dpm_state
For testing or debugging purposes, you can force the card to run in a set performance mode:
auto uses all levels in the power state
low enforces the lowest performance level
high enforces the highest performance level
# echo low & /sys/class/drm/card0/device/power_dpm_force_performance_level
- A script to get and set DPM power states and levels
This method dynamically changes the frequency depending on GPU load, so performance is ramped up when running GPU intensive apps, and ramped down when the GPU is idle. The re-clocking is attempted during vertical blanking periods, but due to the timing of the re-clocking functions, does not always complete in the blanking period, which can lead to flicker in the display. Due to this, dynpm only works when a single head is active.
It can be activated by simply running the following command:
# echo dynpm & /sys/class/drm/card0/device/power_method
This method will allow you to select one of the five profiles (described below). Different profiles, for the most part, end up changing the frequency/voltage of the GPU. This method is not as aggressive, but is more stable and flicker free and works with multiple heads active.
To activate the method, run the following command:
# echo profile & /sys/class/drm/card0/device/power_method
Select one of the available profiles:
default uses the default clocks and does not change the power state. This is the default behaviour.
auto selects between mid and high power states based on the whether the system is on battery power or not.
low forces the gpu to be in the low power state all the time. Note that low can cause display problems on some laptops, which is why auto only uses low when monitors are off. Selected on other profiles when the monitors are in the -off state.
mid forces the gpu to be in the mid power state all the time.
high forces the gpu to be in the high power state all the time.
As an example, we will activate the low profile (replace low with any of the aforementioned profiles as necessary):
# echo low & /sys/class/drm/card0/device/power_profile
The activation described above is not persistent, you may use this
rule (example for ):
/etc/udev/rules.d/30-radeon-pm.rules
KERNEL=="dri/card0", SUBSYSTEM=="drm", DRIVERS=="radeon", ATTR{device/power_method}="profile", ATTR{device/power_profile}="low"
Note: If the above rule is failing, try removing the dri/ prefix.
Radeon-tray — A small program to control the power profiles of your Radeon card via systray icon. It is written in PyQt4 and is suitable for non-Gnome users.
To view the speed that the GPU is running at, perform the following command and you will get something like this output:
# cat /sys/kernel/debug/dri/0/radeon_pm_info
state: PM_STATE_ENABLED
default engine clock: 300000 kHz
current engine clock: 300720 kHz
default memory clock: 200000 kHz
It depends on which GPU line yours is, however. Along with the radeon driver versions, kernel versions, etc. So it may not have much/any voltage regulation at all.
Thermal sensors are implemented via external i2c chips or via the internal thermal sensor (rv6xx-evergreen only). To get the temperature on asics that use i2c chips, you need to load the appropriate hwmon driver for the sensor used on your board (lm63, lm64, etc.). The drm will attempt to load the appropriate hwmon driver. On boards that use the internal thermal sensor, the drm will set up the hwmon interface automatically. When the appropriate driver is loaded, the temperatures can be accessed via
tools or via sysfs in /sys/class/hwmon.
While the power saving features above should handle fan speeds quite well, some cards may still be too noisy in their idle state. In this case, and when your card supports it, you can change the fan speed manually.
Keep in mind that the following method sets the fan speed to a fixed value, hence it will not adjust with the stress of the GPU, which can lead to overheating under heavy load.
Check GPU temperature when applying lower than standard values.
Issue the following command to enable the manual adjustment of the fan speed of your graphics card (or the first GPU in case of a multi GPU setup).
# echo 1 & /sys/class/drm/card0/device/hwmon/hwmon0/pwm1_enable
Then set your desired fan speed from 0 to 255, which corresponds to 0-100% fan speed (the following command sets it to roughly 20%):
# echo 55 & /sys/class/drm/card0/device/hwmon/hwmon0/pwm1
For persistence, see the example in .
If a fixed value is not desired, there are possibilities to define a custom fan curve manually by, for example, writing a script in which fan speeds are set depending on the current temperature (current value in /sys/class/drm/card0/device/hwmon/hwmon0/temp1_input).
A GUI solution is available by installing AUR.
First, check that you have an S-video output: xrandr should give you something like
Screen 0: minimum 320x200, current , maximum
S-video disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
Now we should tell Xorg that it is actually connected (it is, right?)
xrandr --output S-video --set "load detection" 1
Setting TV standard to use:
xrandr --output S-video --set "tv standard" ntsc
Adding a mode for it (currently supports only 800x600):
xrandr --addmode S-video 800x600
Clone mode:
xrandr --output S-video --same-as VGA-0
Now let us try to see what we have:
xrandr --output S-video --mode 800x600
At this point you should see a 800x600 version of your desktop on your TV.
To disable the output, do
xrandr --output S-video --off
The kernel can recognize video= parameter in following form (see
for more details):
video=&conn&:&xres&x&yres&[M][R][-&bpp&][@&refresh&][i][m][eDd]
For example:
video=DVI-I-1:@60e
Parameters with whitespaces must be quoted:
"video=9-pin DIN-1:@60e"
Current mkinitcpio implementation also requires # in front. For example:
root=/dev/disk/by-uuid/d950a14f-fc0c-451d-b0d4-f95c2adefee3 ro quiet radeon.modeset=1 security=none # video=DVI-I-1:@60e "video=9-pin DIN-1:@60e"
can pass such command line as is.
needs backslashes for doublequotes (append # \"video=9-pin DIN-1:@60e\")
You can get list of your video outputs with following command:
$ ls -1 /sys/class/drm/ | grep -E '^card[[:digit:]]+-' | cut -d- -f2-
HDMI audio is supported in the
video driver. To disable HDMI audio add radeon.audio=0 to your .
If there is no video after boot up, the driver option has to be disabled.
If HDMI audio does not work after installing the driver, test your setup with the procedure at .
If the sound is distorted in PulseAudio try setting tsched=0 as described in
and make sure rtkit daemon is running.
Your sound card might use the same module, since HDA compliant hardware is pretty common.
using one of the suggested methods, which include using the defaults node in alsa configuration.
how to setup multiple monitors by using .
Independent dual-headed setups can be configured the usual way. However you might want to know that the radeon driver has a "ZaphodHeads" option which allows you to bind a specific device section to an output of your choice:
/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-radeon.conf
Section "Device"
Identifier "Device0"
Driver "radeon"
Option "ZaphodHeads" "VGA-0"
VendorName "ATI"
BusID "PCI:1:0:0"
EndSection
This can be a life-saver, when using videocards that have more than two outputs. For instance one HDMI out, one DVI, one VGA, will only select and use HDMI+DVI outputs for the dual-head setup, unless you explicitly specify "ZaphodHeads" "VGA-0".
The radeon driver will enable vsync by default, which is perfectly fine except for benchmarking. To turn it off, create ~/.drirc (or edit it if it already exists) and add the following section:
&device screen="0" driver="dri2"&
&application name="Default"&
&option name="vblank_mode" value="0" /&
&/application&
&!-- Other devices ... --&
&/driconf&
Make sure the driver is dri2, not your video card code (like r600).
The factual accuracy of this article or section is disputed.
Reason: If the above does not work, please file a bug report. Also, why is the SwapbuffersWait option relevant here? (Discuss in )
If vsync is still enabled, you can try to disable it by editing the xf86-video-ati configuration :
/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-radeon.conf
Section "Device"
Identifier
"My Graphics Card"
Driver "radeon"
Option "EXAVSync" "off"
Option "SwapbuffersWait" "false"
EndSection
Note: This only applies to cards older than R600 (Radeon X1000 series and older). Newer cards you should use Glamor instead of EXA.
If having 2D performance issues, like slow scrolling in a terminal or webbrowser, adding Option "MigrationHeuristic" "greedy" as device option may solve the issue.
In addition disabling EXAPixmaps may solve artifacts issues, although this is generally not recommended and may cause other issues.
/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-radeon.conf
Section "Device"
Identifier "Radeon"
Driver "radeon"
Option "AccelMethod" "exa"
Option "MigrationHeuristic" "greedy"
#Option "EXAPixmaps" "off"
EndSection
Note: Make sure the tv has been setup correctly (see manual) before attempting the following solution.
When connecting a TV using the HDMI port, the TV may show a blurry picture with a 2-3cm border around it. This protects against overscanning (see ), but can be turned off using xrandr:
xrandr --output HDMI-0 --set underscan off
This is a solution to the no-console problem that might come up, when using two or more ATI cards on the same PC. Fujitsu Siemens Amilo PA 3553 laptop for example has this problem. This is due to fbcon console driver mapping itself to the wrong framebuffer device that exists on the wrong card. This can be fixed by adding this to the kernel boot line:
fbcon=map:1
This will tell the fbcon to map itself to the /dev/fb1 framebuffer dev and not the /dev/fb0, that in our case exists on the wrong graphics card. If that does not fix your problem, try booting with
fbcon=map:0
There are three possible solutions:
Try adding pci=nomsi to your boot loader .
If this does not work, you can try adding noapic instead of pci=nomsi.
If none of the above work, then you can try running vblank_mode=0 glxgears or vblank_mode=1 glxgears to see which one works for you, then install
and set that option in ~/.drirc.
If the cursor becomes corrupted like it's repeating itself vertically after the monitor(s) comes out of sleep, set "SWCursor" "True" in the "Device" section of the /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-radeon.conf configuration file.
Try booting with the
radeon.audio=0.
Firmware issues with R9-390 series cards include poor performance and crashes (frequently caused by gaming or using Google Maps) possibly related DPM. Comment 115 of this bug
includes instructions for a fix.
Older cards have their pixel clock limited to 165MHz for HDMI. Hence, they do not support QHD or 4k only via dual-link DVI but not over HDMI.
One possibility to work around this is to use , e.g. 30Hz.
Another one is a kernel patch removing the pixel clock limit, but this may damage the card!
Official kernel bug ticket with patch for 4.8:
The patch introduces a new kernel parameter radeon.hdmimhz which alters the pixel clock limit.
Be sure to use a high speed HDMI cable for this.
: Hidden category:i3: i3 User’s Guide
JavaScript must be enabled in your browser to display the table of contents.
This document contains all the information you need to configure and use the i3
window manager. If it does not, please check
first, then contact us on IRC (preferred) or post your question(s) on the
mailing list.
1. Default keybindings
For the " didn’t read" people, here is an overview of the default
keybindings (click to see the full-size image):
Keys to use with $mod (Alt):
Keys to use with Shift+$mod:
The red keys are the modifiers you need to press (by default), the blue keys
are your homerow.
Note that when starting i3 without a config file, i3-config-wizard will offer
you to create a config file in which the key positions (!) match what you see
in the image above, regardless of the keyboard layout you are using. If you
prefer to use a config file where the key letters match what you are seeing
above, just decline i3-config-wizard’s offer and base your config on
/etc/i3/config.
2. Using i3
Throughout this guide, the keyword $mod will be used to refer to the
configured modifier. This is the Alt key (Mod1) by default, with the Windows
key (Mod4) being a popular alternative that largely prevents conflicts with
application-defined shortcuts.
2.1. Opening terminals and moving around
One very basic operation is opening a new terminal. By default, the keybinding
for this is $mod+Enter, that is Alt+Enter (Mod1+Enter) in the default
configuration. By pressing $mod+Enter, a new terminal will be opened.
will fill the whole space available on your screen.
If you now open another terminal, i3 will place it next to the current one,
splitting the screen size in half. Depending on your monitor, i3 will put the
created window beside the existing window (on wide displays) or below the
existing window (rotated displays).
To move the focus between the two terminals, you can use the direction keys
which you may know from the editor vi. However, in i3, your homerow is used
for these keys (in vi, the keys are shifted to the left by one for
compatibility with most keyboard layouts). Therefore, $mod+j is left, $mod+k
is down, $mod+l is up and $mod+; is right. So, to switch between the
terminals, use $mod+k or $mod+l. Of course, you can also use the arrow keys.
At the moment, your workspace is split (it contains two terminals) in a
specific direction (horizontal by default). Every window can be split
horizontally or vertically again, just like the workspace. The terminology is
"window" for a container that actually contains an X11 window (like a terminal
or browser) and "split container" for containers that consist of one or more
TODO: picture of the tree
To split a window vertically, press $mod+v before you create the new window.
To split it horizontally, press $mod+h.
2.2. Changing the container layout
A split container can have one of the following layouts:
splith/splitv
Windows are sized so that every window gets an equal amount of space in the
container. splith distributes the windows horizontally (windows are right next
to each other), splitv distributes them vertically (windows are on top of each
Only the focused window in the container is displayed. You get a list of
windows at the top of the container.
The same principle as stacking, but the list of windows at the top is only
a single line which is vertically split.
To switch modes, press $mod+e for splith/splitv (it toggles), $mod+s for
stacking and $mod+w for tabbed.
2.3. Toggling fullscreen mode for a window
To display a window in fullscreen mode or to go out of fullscreen mode again,
press $mod+f.
There is also a global fullscreen mode in i3 in which the client will span all
available outputs (the command is fullscreen toggle global).
2.4. Opening other applications
Aside from opening applications from a terminal, you can also use the handy
dmenu which is opened by pressing $mod+d by default. Just type the name
(or a part of it) of the application which you want to open. The corresponding
application has to be in your $PATH for this to work.
Additionally, if you have applications you open very frequently, you can
create a keybinding for starting the application directly. See the section
for details.
2.5. Closing windows
If an application does not provide a mechanism for closing (most applications
provide a menu, the escape key or a shortcut like Control+w to close), you
can press $mod+Shift+q to kill a window. For applications which support
the WM_DELETE protocol, this will correctly close the application (saving
any modifications or doing other cleanup). If the application doesn’t support
the WM_DELETE protocol your X server will kill the window and the behaviour
depends on the application.
2.6. Using workspaces
Workspaces are an easy way to group a set of windows. By default, you are on
the first workspace, as the bar on the bottom left indicates. To switch to
another workspace, press $mod+num where num is the number of the workspace
you want to use. If the workspace does not exist yet, it will be created.
A common paradigm is to put the web browser on one workspace, communication
applications (mutt, irssi, …) on another one, and the ones with which you
work, on the third one. Of course, there is no need to follow this approach.
If you have multiple screens, a workspace will be created on each screen at
startup. If you open a new workspace, it will be bound to the screen you
created it on.
When you switch to a workspace on another screen, i3 will set
focus to that screen.
2.7. Moving windows to workspaces
To move a window to another workspace, simply press $mod+Shift+num where
num is (like when switching workspaces) the number of the target workspace.
Similarly to switching workspaces, the target workspace will be created if
it does not yet exist.
2.8. Resizing
The easiest way to resize a container is by using the mouse: Grab the border
and move it to the wanted size.
You can also use
to define a mode for resizing via the
keyboard. To see an example for this, look at the
2.9. Restarting i3 inplace
To restart i3 in place (and thus get into a clean state if there is a bug, or
to upgrade to a newer version of i3) you can use $mod+Shift+r.
2.10. Exiting i3
To cleanly exit i3 without killing your X server, you can use $mod+Shift+e.
By default, a dialog will ask you to confirm if you really want to quit.
2.11. Floating
Floating mode is the opposite of tiling mode. The position and size of
a window are not managed automatically by i3, but manually by
you. Using this mode violates the tiling paradigm but can be useful
for some corner cases like "Save as" dialog windows, or toolbar
windows (GIMP or similar). Those windows usually set the appropriate
hint and are opened in floating mode by default.
You can toggle floating mode for a window by pressing $mod+Shift+Space. By
dragging the window’s titlebar with your mouse you can move the window
around. By grabbing the borders and moving them you can resize the window. You
can also do that by using the . Another way to resize
floating windows using the mouse is to right-click on the titlebar and drag.
For resizing floating windows with your keyboard, see the resizing binding mode
provided by the i3 .
Floating windows are always on top of tiling windows.
i3 stores all information about the X11 outputs, workspaces and layout of the
windows on them in a tree. The root node is the X11 root window, followed by
the X11 outputs, then dock areas and a content container, then workspaces and
finally the windows themselves. In previous versions of i3 we had multiple lists
(of outputs, workspaces) and a table for each workspace. That approach turned
out to be complicated to use (snapping), understand and implement.
3.1. The tree consists of Containers
The building blocks of our tree are so-called Containers. A Container can
host a window (meaning an X11 window, one that you can actually see and use,
like a browser). Alternatively, it could contain one or more Containers. A
simple example is the workspace: When you start i3 with a single monitor, a
single workspace and you open two terminal windows, you will end up with a tree
like this:
Figure 1. Two terminals on standard workspace
3.2. Orientation and Split Containers
It is only natural to use so-called Split Containers in order to build a
layout when using a tree as data structure. In i3, every Container has an
orientation (horizontal, vertical or unspecified) and the orientation depends
on the layout the container is in (vertical for splitv and stacking, horizontal
for splith and tabbed). So, in our example with the workspace, the default
layout of the workspace Container is splith (most monitors are widescreen
nowadays). If you change the layout to splitv ($mod+v in the default config)
and then open two terminals, i3 will configure your windows like this:
Figure 2. Vertical Workspace Orientation
An interesting new feature of i3 since version 4 is the ability to split anything:
Let’s assume you have two terminals on a workspace (with splith layout, that is
horizontal orientation), focus is on the right terminal. Now you want to open
another terminal window below the current one. If you would just open a new
terminal window, it would show up to the right due to the splith layout.
Instead, press $mod+v to split the container with the splitv layout (to
open a Horizontal Split Container, use $mod+h). Now you can open a new
terminal and it will open below the current one:
Figure 3. Vertical Split Container
You probably guessed it already: There is no limit on how deep your hierarchy
of splits can be.
3.3. Focus parent
Let’s stay with our example from above. We have a terminal on the left and two
vertically split terminals on the right, focus is on the bottom right one. When
you open a new terminal, it will open below the current one.
So, how can you open a new terminal window to the right of the current one?
The solution is to use focus parent, which will focus the Parent Container of
the current Container. In this case, you would focus the Vertical Split
Container which is inside the horizontally oriented workspace. Thus, now new
windows will be opened to the right of the Vertical Split Container:
Figure 4. Focus parent, then open new terminal
3.4. Implicit containers
In some cases, i3 needs to implicitly create a container to fulfill your
One example is the following scenario: You start i3 with a single monitor and a
single workspace on which you open three terminal windows. All these terminal
windows are directly attached to one node inside i3’s layout tree, the
workspace node. By default, the workspace node’s orientation is horizontal.
Now you move one of these terminals down ($mod+Shift+k by default). The
workspace node’s orientation will be changed to vertical. The terminal window
you moved down is directly attached to the workspace and appears on the bottom
of the screen. A new (horizontal) container was created to accommodate the
other two terminal windows. You will notice this when switching to tabbed mode
(for example). You would end up having one tab with a representation of the split
container (e.g., "H[urxvt firefox]") and the other one being the terminal window
you moved down.
4. Configuring i3
This is where -). Most things are very dependent on your
ideal working environment so we can’t make reasonable defaults for them.
While not using a programming language for the configuration, i3 stays
quite flexible in regards to the things you usually want your window manager
For example, you can configure bindings to jump to specific windows,
you can set specific applications to start on specific workspaces, you can
automatically start applications, you can change the colors of i3, and you
can bind your keys to do useful things.
To change the configuration of i3, copy /etc/i3/config to ~/.i3/config
(or ~/.config/i3/config if you like the XDG directory scheme) and edit it
with a text editor.
On first start (and on all following starts, unless you have a configuration
file), i3 will offer you to create a configuration file. You can tell the
wizard to use either Alt (Mod1) or Windows (Mod4) as modifier in the config
file. Also, the created config file will use the key symbols of your current
keyboard layout. To start the wizard, use the command i3-config-wizard.
Please note that you must not have ~/.i3/config, otherwise the wizard will
Since i3 4.0, a new configuration format is used. i3 will try to automatically
detect the format version of a config file based on a few different keywords,
but if you want to make sure that your config is read with the new format,
include the following line in your config file:
# i3 config file (v4)
It is possible and recommended to use comments in your configuration file to
properly document your setup for later reference. Comments are started with
a # and can only be used at the beginning of a line:
# This is a comment
4.2. Fonts
i3 has support for both X core fonts and FreeType fonts (through Pango) to
render window titles.
To generate an X core font description, you can use xfontsel(1). To see
special characters (Unicode), you need to use a font which supports the
ISO-10646 encoding.
A FreeType font description is composed by a font family, a style, a weight,
a variant, a stretch and a size.
FreeType fonts support right-to-left rendering and contain often more
Unicode glyphs than X core fonts.
If i3 cannot open the configured font, it will output an error in the logfile
and fall back to a working font.
font &X core font description&
font pango:&family list& [&style options&] &size&
font -misc-fixed-medium-r-normal--13-120-75-75-C-70-iso10646-1
font pango:DejaVu Sans Mono 10
font pango:DejaVu Sans Mono, Terminus Bold Semi-Condensed 11
font pango:Terminus 11px
4.3. Keyboard bindings
A keyboard binding makes i3 execute a command (see below) upon pressing a
specific key. i3 allows you to bind either on keycodes or on keysyms (you can
also mix your bindings, though i3 will not protect you from overlapping ones).
A keysym (key symbol) is a description for a specific symbol, like "a"
or "b", but also more strange ones like "underscore" instead of "_". These
are the ones you use in Xmodmap to remap your keys. To get the current
mapping of your keys, use xmodmap -pke. To interactively enter a key and
see what keysym it is configured to, use xev.
Keycodes do not need to have a symbol assigned (handy for custom vendor
hotkeys on some notebooks) and they will not change their meaning as you
switch to a different keyboard layout (when using xmodmap).
My recommendation is: If you often switch keyboard layouts but you want to keep
your bindings in the same physical location on the keyboard, use keycodes.
If you don’t switch layouts, and want a clean and simple config file, use
Some tools (such as import or xdotool) might be unable to run upon a
KeyPress event, because the keyboard/pointer is still grabbed. For these
situations, the --release flag can be used, which will execute the command
after the keys have been released.
bindsym [--release] [&Group&+][&Modifiers&+]&keysym& command
bindcode [--release] [&Group&+][&Modifiers&+]&keycode& command
# Fullscreen
bindsym $mod+f fullscreen toggle
bindsym $mod+Shift+r restart
# Notebook-specific hotkeys
bindcode 214 exec --no-startup-id /home/michael/toggle_beamer.sh
# Simulate ctrl+v upon pressing $mod+x
bindsym --release $mod+x exec --no-startup-id xdotool key --clearmodifiers ctrl+v
# Take a screenshot upon pressing $mod+x (select an area)
bindsym --release $mod+x exec --no-startup-id import /tmp/latest-screenshot.png
Available Modifiers:
Mod1-Mod5, Shift, Control
Standard modifiers, see xmodmap(1)
Group1, Group2, Group3, Group4
When using multiple keyboard layouts (e.g. with setxkbmap -layout us,ru), you
can specify in which XKB group (also called “layout”) a keybinding should be
active. By default, keybindings are translated in Group1 and are active in all
groups. If you want to override keybindings in one of your layouts, specify the
corresponding group. For backwards compatibility, the group “Mode_switch” is an
alias for Group2.
4.4. Mouse bindings
A mouse binding makes i3 execute a command upon pressing a specific mouse
button in the scope of the clicked container (see ). You
can configure mouse bindings in a similar way to key bindings.
bindsym [--release] [--border] [--whole-window] [--exclude-titlebar] [&Modifiers&+]button&n& command
By default, the binding will only run when you click on the titlebar of the
window. If the --release flag is given, it will run when the mouse button
is released.
If the --whole-window flag is given, the binding will also run when any part
of the window is clicked, with the exception of the border. To have a bind run
when the border is clicked, specify the --border flag.
If the --exclude-titlebar flag is given, the titlebar will not be considered
for the keybinding.
# The middle button over a titlebar kills the window
bindsym --release button2 kill
# The middle button and a modifer over any part of the window kills the window
bindsym --whole-window $mod+button2 kill
# The right button toggles floating
bindsym button3 floating toggle
bindsym $mod+button3 floating toggle
# The side buttons move the window around
bindsym button9 move left
bindsym button8 move right
4.5. Binding modes
You can have multiple sets of bindings by using different binding modes. When
you switch to another binding mode, all bindings from the current mode are
released and only the bindings defined in the new mode are valid for as long as
you stay in that binding mode. The only predefined binding mode is default,
which is the mode i3 starts out with and to which all bindings not defined in a
specific binding mode belong.
Working with binding modes consists of two parts: defining a binding mode and
switching to it. For these purposes, there are one config directive and one
command, both of which are called mode. The directive is used to define the
bindings belonging to a certain binding mode, while the command will switch to
the specified mode.
It is recommended to use binding modes in combination with
order to make maintenance easier. Below is an example of how to use a binding
Note that it is advisable to define bindings for switching back to the default
Note that it is possible to use
for binding modes, but you
need to enable it explicitly by passing the --pango_markup flag to the mode
definition.
# config directive
mode [--pango_markup] &name&
mode &name&
# Press $mod+o followed by either f, t, Escape or Return to launch firefox,
# thunderbird or return to the default mode, respectively.
set $mode_launcher Launch: [f]irefox [t]hunderbird
bindsym $mod+o mode "$mode_launcher"
mode "$mode_launcher" {
bindsym f exec firefox
bindsym t exec thunderbird
bindsym Escape mode "default"
bindsym Return mode "default"
4.6. The floating modifier
To move floating windows with your mouse, you can either grab their titlebar
or configure the so-called floating modifier which you can then press and
click anywhere in the window itself to move it. The most common setup is to
use the same key you use for managing windows (Mod1 for example). Then
you can press Mod1, click into a window using your left mouse button, and drag
it to the position you want.
When holding the floating modifier, you can resize a floating window by
pressing the right mouse button on it and moving around while holding it. If
you hold the shift button as well, the resize will be proportional (the aspect
ratio will be preserved).
floating_modifier &Modifier&
floating_modifier Mod1
4.7. Constraining floating window size
The maximum and minimum dimensions of floating windows can be specified. If
either dimension of floating_maximum_size is specified as -1, that dimension
will be unconstrained with respect to its maximum value. If either dimension of
floating_maximum_size is undefined, or specified as 0, i3 will use a default
value to constrain the maximum size. floating_minimum_size is treated in a
manner analogous to floating_maximum_size.
floating_minimum_size &width& x &height&
floating_maximum_size &width& x &height&
floating_minimum_size 75 x 50
floating_maximum_size -1 x -1
4.8. Orientation for new workspaces
New workspaces get a reasonable default orientation: Wide-screen monitors
(anything wider than high) get horizontal orientation, rotated monitors
(anything higher than wide) get vertical orientation.
With the default_orientation configuration directive, you can override that
default_orientation horizontal|vertical|auto
default_orientation vertical
4.9. Layout mode for new containers
This option determines in which mode new containers on workspace level will
workspace_layout default|stacking|tabbed
workspace_layout tabbed
4.10. Default border style for new windows
This option determines which border style new windows will have. The default is
normal. Note that default_floating_border applies only to windows which are starting out as
floating windows, e.g., dialog windows, but not windows that are floated later on.
default_border normal|none|pixel
default_border normal|pixel &px&
default_floating_border normal|none|pixel
default_floating_border normal|pixel &px&
Please note that new_window and new_float have been deprecated in favor of the above options
and will be removed in a future release. We strongly recommend using the new options instead.
default_border pixel
The "normal" and "pixel" border styles support an optional border width in
# The same as default_border none
default_border pixel 0
# A 3 px border
default_border pixel 3
4.11. Hiding borders adjacent to the screen edges
You can hide container borders adjacent to the screen edges using
hide_edge_borders. This is useful if you are using scrollbars, or do not want
to waste even two pixels in displayspace. The "smart" setting hides borders on
workspaces with only one window visible, but keeps them on workspaces with
multiple windows visible. Default is none.
hide_edge_borders none|vertical|horizontal|both|smart
hide_edge_borders vertical
4.12. Arbitrary commands for specific windows (for_window)
With the for_window command, you can let i3 execute any command when it
encounters a specific window. This can be used to set windows to floating or to
change their border style, for example.
for_window &criteria& &command&
# enable floating mode for all XTerm windows
for_window [class="XTerm"] floating enable
# Make all urxvts use a 1-pixel border:
for_window [class="urxvt"] border pixel 1
# A less useful, but rather funny example:
# makes the window floating as soon as I change
# directory to ~/work
for_window [title="x200: ~/work"] floating enable
The valid criteria are the same as those for commands, see .
4.13. Don’t focus window upon opening
When a new window appears, it will be focused. The no_focus directive allows preventing
this from happening and must be used in combination with .
Note that this does not apply to all cases, e.g., when feeding data into a running application
causing it to request being focused. To configure the behavior in such cases, refer to
no_focus will also be ignored for the first window on a workspace as there shouldn’t be
a reason to not focus the window in this case. This allows for better usability in
combination with workspace_layout.
no_focus &criteria&
no_focus [window_role="pop-up"]
4.14. Variables
As you learned in the section about keyboard bindings, you will have
to configure lots of bindings containing modifier keys. If you want to save
yourself some typing and be able to change the modifier you use later,
variables can be handy.
set $&name& &value&
set $m Mod1
bindsym $m+Shift+r restart
Variables are directly replaced in the file when parsing. Variables expansion
is not recursive so it is not possible to define a variable with a value
containing another variable. There is no fancy handling and there are
absolutely no plans to change this. If you need a more dynamic configuration
you should create a little script which generates a configuration file and run
it before starting i3 (for example in your ~/.xsession file).
to learn how to create variables based on resources
loaded from the X resource database.
4.15. X resources
can also be created using a value configured in the X resource
database. This is useful, for example, to avoid configuring color values within
the i3 configuration. Instead, the values can be configured, once, in the X
resource database to achieve an easily maintainable, consistent color theme
across many X applications.
Defining a resource will load this resource from the resource database and
assign its value to the specified variable. A fallback must be specified in
case the resource cannot be loaded from the database.
set_from_resource $&name& &resource_name& &fallback&
# The ~/.Xresources should contain a line such as
*color0: #121212
# and must be loaded properly, e.g., by using
xrdb ~/.Xresources
# This value is picked up on by other applications (e.g., the URxvt terminal
# emulator) and can be used in i3 like this:
set_from_resource $black i3wm.color0 #000000
4.16. Automatically putting clients on specific workspaces
To automatically make a specific window show up on a specific workspace, you
can use an assignment. You can match windows by using any criteria,
see . It is recommended that you match on window classes
(and instances, when appropriate) instead of window titles whenever possible
because some applications first create their window, and then worry about
setting the correct title. Firefox with Vimperator comes to mind. The window
starts up being named Firefox, and only when Vimperator is loaded does the
title change. As i3 will get the title as soon as the application maps the
window (mapping means actually displaying it on the screen), you’d need to have
to match on Firefox in this case.
You can also assign a window to show up on a specific output. You can use RandR
names such as VGA1 or names relative to the output with the currently focused
workspace such as left and down.
Assignments are processed by i3 in the order in which they appear in the config
file. The first one which matches the window wins and later assignments are not
considered.
assign &criteria& [→] [workspace] [number] &workspace&
assign &criteria& [→] output left|right|up|down|primary|&output&
# Assign URxvt terminals to workspace 2
assign [class="URxvt"] 2
# Same thing, but more precise (exact match instead of substring)
assign [class="^URxvt$"] 2
# Same thing, but with a beautiful arrow :)
assign [class="^URxvt$"] → 2
# Assignment to a named workspace
assign [class="^URxvt$"] → work
# Assign to the workspace with number 2, regardless of name
assign [class="^URxvt$"] → number 2
# You can also specify a number + name. If the workspace with number 2 exists, assign will skip the text part.
assign [class="^URxvt$"] → number "2: work"
# Start urxvt -name irssi
assign [class="^URxvt$" instance="^irssi$"] → 3
# Assign urxvt to the output right of the current one
assign [class="^URxvt$"] → output right
# Assign urxvt to the primary output
assign [class="^URxvt$"] → output primary
Note that you might not have a primary output configured yet. To do so, run:
xrandr --output &output& --primary
Also, the arrow is not required, it just looks good :-). If you decide to
use it, it has to be a UTF-8 encoded arrow, not -& or something like that.
To get the class and instance, you can use xprop. After clicking on the
window, you will see the following output:
WM_CLASS(STRING) = "irssi", "URxvt"
The first part of the WM_CLASS is the instance ("irssi" in this example), the
second part is the class ("URxvt" in this example).
Should you have any problems with assignments, make sure to check the i3
logfile first (see ). It includes more
details about the matching process and the window’s actual class, instance and
title when starting up.
Note that if you want to start an application just once on a specific
workspace, but you don’t want to assign all instances of it permanently, you
can make use of i3’s startup-notification support (see ) in your config
file in the following way:
Start iceweasel on workspace 3 (once):
# Start iceweasel on workspace 3, then switch back to workspace 1
# (Being a command-line utility, i3-msg does not support startup notifications,
hence the exec --no-startup-id.)
# (Starting iceweasel with i3’s exec command is important in order to make i3
create a startup notification context, without which the iceweasel window(s)
cannot be matched onto the workspace on which the command was started.)
exec --no-startup-id i3-msg 'workspace 3; workspace 1'
4.17. Automatically starting applications on i3 startup
By using the exec keyword outside a keybinding, you can configure
which commands will be performed by i3 on initial startup. exec
commands will not run when restarting i3, if you need a command to run
also when restarting i3 you should use the exec_always
keyword. These commands will be run in order.
for details on the special meaning of ; (semicolon)
and , (comma): they chain commands together in i3, so you need to use quoted
strings (as shown in ) if they appear in your command.
exec [--no-startup-id] &command&
exec_always [--no-startup-id] &command&
exec chromium
exec_always ~/my_script.sh
# Execute the terminal emulator urxvt, which is not yet startup-notification aware.
exec --no-startup-id urxvt
The flag --no-startup-id is explained in .
4.18. Automatically putting workspaces on specific screens
If you assign clients to workspaces, it might be handy to put the
workspaces on specific screens. Also, the assignment of workspaces to screens
will determine which workspace i3 uses for a new screen when adding screens
or when starting (e.g., by default it will use 1 for the first screen, 2 for
the second screen and so on).
workspace &workspace& output &output&
The output is the name of the RandR output you attach your screen to. On a
laptop, you might have VGA1 and LVDS1 as output names. You can see the
available outputs by running xrandr --current.
If your X server supports RandR 1.5 or newer, i3 will use RandR monitor objects
instead of output objects. Run xrandr --listmonitors to see a list. Usually,
a monitor object contains exactly one output, and has the same name as the
but should that not be the case, you may specify the name of either the
monitor or the output in i3’s configuration. For example, the Dell UP2414Q uses
two scalers internally, so its output names might be “DP1” and “DP2”, but the
monitor name is “Dell UP2414Q”.
(Note that even if you specify the name of an output which doesn’t span the
entire monitor, i3 will still use the entire area of the containing monitor
rather than that of just the output’s.)
If you use named workspaces, they must be quoted:
workspace 1 output LVDS1
workspace 5 output VGA1
workspace "2: vim" output VGA1
4.19. Changing colors
You can change all colors which i3 uses to draw the window decorations.
&colorclass& &border& &background& &text& &indicator& &child_border&
Where colorclass can be one of:
client.focused
A client which currently has the focus.
client.focused_inactive
A client which is the focused one of its container, but it does not have
the focus at the moment.
client.unfocused
A client which is not the focused one of its container.
client.urgent
A client which has its urgency hint activated.
client.placeholder
Background and text color are used to draw placeholder window contents
(when restoring layouts). Border and indicator are ignored.
client.background
Background color which will be used to paint the background of the
client window on top of which the client will be rendered. Only clients
which do not cover the whole area of this window expose the color. Note
that this colorclass only takes a single color.
Colors are in HTML hex format (#rrggbb), see the following example:
Examples (default colors):
backgr. text
indicator child_border
client.focused
#4c #ffffff #2e9ef4
client.focused_inactive #f676a #ffffff #484e50
client.unfocused
client.urgent
#2f343a #900000 #ffffff #900000
client.placeholder
#c0c0c #ffffff #000000
client.background
Note that for the window decorations, the color around the child window is the
"child_border", and "border" color is only the two thin lines around the
The indicator color is used for indicating where a new window will be opened.
For horizontal split containers, the right border will be painted in indicator
color, for vertical split containers, the bottom border. This only applies to
single windows within a split container, which are otherwise indistinguishable
from single windows outside of a split container.
4.20. Interprocess communication
i3 uses Unix sockets to provide an IPC interface. This allows third-party
programs to get information from i3, such as the current workspaces
(to display a workspace bar), and to control i3.
The IPC socket is enabled by default and will be created in
/tmp/i3-%u.XXXXXX/ipc-socket.%p where %u is your UNIX username, %p is
the PID of i3 and XXXXXX is a string of random characters from the portable
filename character set (see mkdtemp(3)).
You can override the default path through the environment-variable I3SOCK or
by specifying the ipc-socket directive. This is discouraged, though, since i3
does the right thing by default. If you decide to change it, it is strongly
recommended to set this to a location in your home directory so that no other
user can create that directory.
ipc-socket ~/.i3/i3-ipc.sock
You can then use the i3-msg application to perform any command listed in
the next section.
4.21. Focus follows mouse
By default, window focus follows your mouse movements as the mouse crosses
window borders. However, if you have a setup where your mouse usually is in your
way (like a touchpad on your laptop which you do not want to disable
completely), you might want to disable focus follows mouse and control focus
only by using your keyboard.
The mouse will still be useful inside the
currently active window (for example to click on links in your browser window).
focus_follows_mouse yes|no
focus_follows_mouse no
4.22. Mouse warping
By default, when switching focus to a window on a different output (e.g.
focusing a window on workspace 3 on output VGA-1, coming from workspace 2 on
LVDS-1), the mouse cursor is warped to the center of that window.
With the mouse_warping option, you can control when the mouse cursor should
be warped. none disables warping entirely, whereas output is the default
behavior described above.
mouse_warping output|none
mouse_warping none
4.23. Popups during fullscreen mode
When you are in fullscreen mode, some applications still open popup windows
(take Xpdf for example). This is because these applications may not be aware
that they are in fullscreen mode (they do not check the corresponding hint).
There are three things which are possible to do in this situation:
Display the popup if it belongs to the fullscreen application only. This is
the default and should be reasonable behavior for most users.
Just ignore the popup (don’t map it). This won’t interrupt you while you are
in fullscreen. However, some apps might react badly to this (deadlock until
you go out of fullscreen).
Leave fullscreen mode.
popup_during_fullscreen smart|ignore|leave_fullscreen
popup_during_fullscreen smart
4.24. Focus wrapping
By default, when in a container with several windows or child containers, the
opposite window will be focused when trying to move the focus over the edge of
a container (and there are no other containers in that direction) — the focus
If desired, you can disable this behavior by setting the focus_wrapping
configuration directive to the value no.
When enabled, focus wrapping does not occur by default if there is another
window or container in the specified direction, and focus will instead be set
on that window or container. This is the default behavior so you can navigate
to all your windows without having to use focus parent.
If you want the focus to always wrap and you are aware of using focus
parent to switch to different containers, you can instead set focus_wrapping
to the value force.
focus_wrapping yes|no|force
# Legacy syntax, equivalent to "focus_wrapping force"
force_focus_wrapping yes
# Disable focus wrapping
focus_wrapping no
# Force focus wrapping
focus_wrapping force
4.25. Forcing Xinerama
As explained in-depth in , some X11
video drivers (especially the nVidia binary driver) only provide support for
Xinerama instead of RandR. In such a situation, i3 must be told to use the
inferior Xinerama API explicitly and therefore don’t provide support for
reconfiguring your screens on the fly (they are read only once on startup and
that’s it).
For people who cannot modify their ~/.xsession to add the
--force-xinerama commandline parameter, a configuration option is provided:
force_xinerama yes|no
force_xinerama yes
Also note that your output names are not descriptive (like HDMI1) when using
Xinerama, instead they are counted up, starting at 0: xinerama-0, xinerama-1, …
4.26. Automatic back-and-forth when switching to the current workspace
This configuration directive enables automatic workspace back_and_forth (see
) when switching to the workspace that is currently focused.
For instance: Assume you are on workspace "1: www" and switch to "2: IM" using
mod+2 because somebody sent you a message. You don’t need to remember where you
came from now, you can just press $mod+2 again to switch back to "1: www".
workspace_auto_back_and_forth yes|no
workspace_auto_back_and_forth yes
4.27. Delaying urgency hint reset on workspace change
If an application on another workspace sets an urgency hint, switching to this
workspace may lead to immediate focus of the application, which also means the
window decoration color would be immediately reset to client.focused. This
may make it unnecessarily hard to tell which window originally raised the
In order to prevent this, you can tell i3 to delay resetting the urgency state
by a certain time using the force_display_urgency_hint directive. Setting the
value to 0 disables this feature.
The default is 500ms.
force_display_urgency_hint &timeout& ms
force_display_urgency_hint 500 ms
4.28. Focus on window activation
If a window is activated, e.g., via google-chrome www.google.com, it may request
to take focus. Since this may not preferable, different reactions can be configured.
Note that this may not affect windows that are being opened. To prevent new windows
from being focused, see .
focus_on_window_activation smart|urgent|focus|none
The different modes will act as follows:
This is the default behavior. If the window requesting focus is on an active
workspace, it will receive the focus. Otherwise, the urgency hint will be set.
The window will always be marked urgent, but the focus will not be stolen.
The window will always be focused and not be marked urgent.
The window will neither be focused, nor be marked urgent.
4.29. Drawing marks on window decoration
If activated, marks (see ) on windows are drawn in their window
decoration. However, any mark starting with an underscore in its name (_) will
not be drawn even if this option is activated.
The default for this option is yes.
show_marks yes|no
show_marks yes
4.30. Line continuation
Config files support line continuation, meaning when you end a line in a
backslash character (\), the line-break will be ignored by the parser. This
feature can be used to create more readable configuration files.
Commented lines are not continued.
bindsym Mod1+f \
fullscreen toggle
# this line is not continued \
bindsym Mod1+F fullscreen toggle
5. Configuring i3bar
The bar at the bottom of your monitor is drawn by a separate process called
i3bar. Having this part of "the i3 user interface" in a separate process has
several advantages:
It is a modular approach. If you don’t need a workspace bar at all, or if
you prefer a different one (dzen2, xmobar, maybe even gnome-panel?), you can
just remove the i3bar configuration and start your favorite bar instead.
It follows the UNIX philosophy of "Make each program do one thing well".
While i3 manages your windows well, i3bar is good at displaying a bar on
each monitor (unless you configure it otherwise).
It leads to two separate, clean codebases. If you want to understand i3, you
don’t need to bother with the details of i3bar and vice versa.
That said, i3bar is configured in the same configuration file as i3. This is
because it is tightly coupled with i3 (in contrary to i3lock or i3status which
are useful for people using other window managers). Therefore, it makes no
sense to use a different configuration place when we already have a good
configuration infrastructure in place.
Configuring your workspace bar starts with opening a bar block. You can have
multiple bar blocks to use different settings for different outputs (monitors):
status_command i3status
5.1. i3bar command
By default i3 will just pass i3bar and let your shell handle the execution,
searching your $PATH for a correct version.
If you have a different i3bar somewhere or the binary is not in your $PATH you can
tell i3 what to execute.
The specified command will be passed to sh -c, so you can use globbing and
have to have correct quoting etc.
i3bar_command &command&
i3bar_command /home/user/bin/i3bar
5.2. Statusline command
i3bar can run a program and display every line of its stdout output on the
right hand side of the bar. This is useful to display system information like
your current IP address, battery status or date/time.
The specified command will be passed to sh -c, so you can use globbing and
have to have correct quoting etc. Note that for signal handling, depending on
your shell (users of dash(1) are known to be affected), you have to use the
shell’s exec command so that signals are passed to your program, not to the
status_command &command&
status_command i3status --config ~/.i3status.conf
# For dash(1) users who want signal handling to work:
status_command exec ~/.bin/my_status_command
5.3. Display mode
You can either have i3bar be visible permanently at one edge of the screen
(dock mode) or make it show up when you press your modifier key (hide mode).
It is also possible to force i3bar to always stay hidden (invisible
mode). The modifier key can be configured using the modifier option.
The mode option can be changed during runtime through the bar mode command.
On reload the mode will be reverted to its configured value.
The hide mode maximizes screen space that can be used for actual windows. Also,
i3bar sends the SIGSTOP and SIGCONT signals to the statusline process to
save battery power.
Invisible mode allows to permanently maximize screen space, as the bar is never
shown. Thus, you can configure i3bar to not disturb you by popping up because
of an urgency hint or because the modifier key is pressed.
In order to control whether i3bar is hidden or shown in hide mode, there exists
the hidden_state option, which has no effect in dock mode or invisible mode. It
indicates the current hidden_state of the bar: (1) The bar acts like in normal
hide mode, it is hidden and is only unhidden in case of urgency hints or by
pressing the modifier key (hide state), or (2) it is drawn on top of the
currently visible workspace (show state).
Like the mode, the hidden_state can also be controlled through i3, this can be
done by using the bar hidden_state command.
The defau in hide mode, the default modifier is Mod4 (usually
the windows key). The default value for the hidden_state is hide.
mode dock|hide|invisible
hidden_state hide|show
modifier &Modifier&|none
hidden_state hide
modifier Mod1
Available modifiers are Mod1-Mod5, Shift, Control (see xmodmap(1)). You can
also use "none" if you don’t want any modifier to trigger this behavior.
5.4. Mouse button commands
Specifies a command to run when a button was pressed on i3bar to override the
default behavior. This is useful, e.g., for disabling the scroll wheel action
or running scripts that implement custom behavior for these buttons.
A button is always named button&n&, where 1 to 5 are default buttons as follows and higher
numbers can be special buttons on devices offering more buttons:
Left mouse button.
Middle mouse button.
Right mouse button.
Scroll wheel up.
Scroll wheel down.
Please note that the old wheel_up_cmd and wheel_down_cmd commands are deprecated
and will be removed in a future release. We strongly recommend using the more general
bindsym with button4 and button5 instead.
bindsym [--release] button&n& &command&
# disable clicking on workspace buttons
bindsym button1 nop
# Take a screenshot by right clicking on the bar
bindsym --release button3 exec --no-startup-id import /tmp/latest-screenshot.png
# execute custom script when scrolling downwards
bindsym button5 exec ~/.i3/scripts/custom_wheel_down
5.5. Bar ID
Specifies the bar ID for the configured bar instance. If this option is missing,
the ID is set to bar-x, where x corresponds to the position of the embedding
bar block in the config file (bar-0, bar-1, …).
id &bar_id&
5.6. Position
This option determines in which edge of the screen i3bar should show up.
The default is bottom.
position top|bottom
position top
5.7. Output(s)
You can restrict i3bar to one or more outputs (monitors). The default is to
handle all outputs. Restricting the outputs is useful for using different
options for different outputs by using multiple bar blocks.
To make a particular i3bar instance handle multiple outputs, specify the output
directive multiple times.
output primary|&output&
# big monitor: everything
# The display is connected either via HDMI or via DisplayPort
output HDMI2
output DP2
status_command i3status
# laptop monitor: bright colors and i3status with less modules.
output LVDS1
status_command i3status --config ~/.i3status-small.conf
background #000000
statusline #ffffff
# show bar on the primary monitor and on HDMI2
output primary
output HDMI2
status_command i3status
Note that you might not have a primary output configured yet. To do so, run:
xrandr --output &output& --primary
5.8. Tray output
i3bar by default provides a system tray area where programs such as
NetworkManager, VLC, Pidgin, etc. can place little icons.
You can configure on which output (monitor) the icons should be displayed or
you can turn off the functionality entirely.
You can use multiple tray_output directives in your config to specify a list
of outputs on which you want the tray to appear. The first available output in
that list as defined by the order of the directives will be used for the tray
tray_output none|primary|&output&
# disable system tray
tray_output none
# show tray icons on the primary monitor
tray_output primary
# show tray icons on the big mon