Hacker News Reader

> If you look at the setup that's exactly what is happening. On a single screen there is browser with documentation (presumably), and there is four (!) IDE/editor/terminal windows.

Just to clarify: there are two i3 containers side by side (each using 50%). The left one’s active window is a browser, the right one’s active window is Emacs, in which I have two buffers side by side at the top, and compilation mode and magit status side by side at the bottom.

I have three monitors, but I only use one (a 24" one, the second is for when I want to watch some show or movie while doing stuff on the main one, and the third I basically never use). I have my apps always maximized/fullscreen in the main monitor and I alt-tab between them. I never could get into having multiple apps on-screen at the same time, since I can only focus on one.

Writing this comment, though, I realize that a better alt-tab switcher would be a godsend. I keep getting confused with window order sometimes and I'm not sure why, maybe I should write a better switcher.

A better alt+tab switcher would be great! Why isn't that a thing? I'm imagining something where you could use alt+f1, alt+f2, alt+f3, etc. to switch to specific windows rather than just rotating between everything.

Yes, exactly! Or just a saner way of sorting the tab order would be nice. I'll look and see if there's one for Linux, there must be something...

On Windows, you can effectively use Win+1-9 for that by pinning the applications to the taskbar. I use that all the time.

Long time ago I made a python script to manage my 2-monitor i3 setup.

The idea was to be able to quickly select things to be made visible on both monitors.

The two monitors are named primary and secondary.

To select something to be visible on primary you would press the combination (for example alt+f1) and the selected desktop would be placed on primary. Whatever was on primary would be pushed to secondary.

To select both primary and secondary you would first press what you want on secondary and then what you want on primary.

The idea is that people typically have what I call "scenes". Scene is particular arrangement of windows on both monitors.

This means that you can quickly learn your "scenes" and get them to be visible very quickly, in a fraction of a second, without having to hard-code the scene in your config file.

If you can live with switching between different applications rather than windows, this is the default behavior on Windows 10 and Gnome 3 using win+1, win+2, ….

On Win10 you can use win+1, win+2, ... to select the apps pinned to the application bar, it launches them if they're not launched; if they are launched it switches between active windows. That sounds like what you're after.

Sorry if this is really well known I'm new to MS Windows as a user.

I use dual monitor, but have two virtual desktops giving me 4 "screens" to layout windows in. I keep the same window in the same place, but often have to use 3 docs at once and so would love a 3rd screen. Then I'd have reference material on 1), doc I'm responding to on 2), doc I'm writing in also on 2), citations on 3).

This is what you do in Linux with i3.

On Linux, I use jumpapp: https://github.com/mkropat/jumpapp

On Mac, Quicksilver with Triggers: https://qsapp.com/

If you’re on macOS https://contexts.co/

Thank you! That looks very nice, unfortunately I'm on Linux, but something like that is bound to exist.

Try i3 as a Window manager. Put every app in a separate single window, and instead of alt-tab you use, e.g: alt+1 terminal, alt+2 browser, etc... You can have as much workspaces as you need and assign applications to specific workspace. This way I always know where every app or category of app exists. And this mostly works on default i3 config, no learning curve.

That sounds interesting, I'll try that, thanks!

I started off using Alt F1-F12 (like the console), but I've found zero problems using bare F1-F12 with no modifier.

Does this compliment an application like Alfred?

Yes! I use both together. I love that you can configure it to not show minimized apps when switching.

Same here. I full window everything. And use my second monitor basically only for YouTube/Spotify. It’s really useful when I need to keep some reference up too.

Oh you're going to love this: There's an extension that launches custom programs with the current page as an argument, and I use it to launch mpv, which is then configured to open full-screen on the second screen with a high-quality stream of the YouTube video I'm on.

I have also configured the window to always stay on top and to resize to a small window on the bottom right, so if I press escape while the window is focused, I get picture-in-picture.

Also, mpv exits when it's done, so it's a great way of watching a video in full screen on the second monitor at the press of a button.

link to said extension? :)

I don't remember the name right now and I'm not at the computer, but anything that will launch a program will work, the extension itself does very little.

I just checked, the extension is called "Open With":

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/open-with/

I work the same way and having a keyboard shortcut set for each one of my Apps has been game changing for me. Worth trying out to see if it fits your flow:

http://macnotes.com/how-i-work-on-my-mac/

That's a great idea, especially with my programmable keyboard, thank you. I'll have to see if KDE supports this, but I think it's likely.

EDIT: Turns out it's trivial, I love Linux:

http://xahlee.info/linux/linux_add_keyboard_shortcuts_to_swi...

KDE's window manager, Kwin, supports this functionality built it.

Just right click on any title bar on a window, go to "Special Application Settings" -> "Arrangement and access" -> "Shortcut". You can manually type "F8" in the shortcut and it'll work just fine.

You can also go to "System Settings" -> "Window Rules" to manage all rules you've defined.

That settings dialog is a lifesaver, thank you. I've been using devilspie2 to do the same, but now I can do it natively.

For me, it's not about having more monitors. It simply about having enough real state to be productive.

It doesn't matter if I use 2 27" 1440 monitors or a 32" inch 4K monitor.

Personally, a single 27" 1440 monitor is the bare minimum I am comfortable with in a desktop.

The main issue for me is finding in which monitor the focus/mouse is

So yes, while in some situations (like debugging a complicated app, or for some "standby" information) multiple monitors are a must, for general use it ends up being too distracting.

"Except you have huge monitor and you lay stuff in multiple side by side windows which makes the whole argument very moot."

Not my case. I don't lay my stuff around. My apps are in the menu, running ones on dock (Mac or Linux) and when I do need to have few windows open at the same time (second one either being terminal or mobile emulator or whatever) I arrange them to fit the same screen. My smallest screen is 15" on my Thinkpad, 17" on MBP and an external is Dell 23". Had no issues so far with my workflow.