i3wm Adapter

The i3wm adapter connects enwiro to the i3 window manager.

Installation

cargo install enwiro-adapter-i3wm

Configuration

If this is your only installed adapter, enwiro auto-selects it. Otherwise, set it in your enwiro configuration (~/.config/enwiro/enwiro.toml):

adapter = "i3wm"

Browser for gear URLs

When an environment has gear with web URLs, the adapter opens them automatically on activation. By default it uses Chromium in app mode (chromium --app=<url>), which opens each URL as a chromeless window.

To use a different browser, create ~/.config/enwiro/adapter-i3wm.toml:

web_open_command = ["firefox", "--new-window", "{url}"]

The {url} placeholder is replaced with the actual URL. The first element is the browser command; remaining elements are arguments.

Features

Workspace activation

enw activate <name> creates a new i3 workspace for the environment or switches to it if one already exists. On first activation, gear URLs and GUI applications are opened automatically. Re-activating an existing workspace only switches focus (no duplicate windows).

Workspace rebalancing

The adapter automatically rebalances workspace numbers based on each environment’s slot score. This keeps frequently used environments on lower-numbered (more accessible) workspaces. The rebalancing algorithm minimizes the number of workspace moves, so your keyboard shortcuts stay stable as much as possible. Rebalancing runs on workspace switch events, rate-limited by a configurable debounce interval.

Running commands

enw run <command> opens a new terminal window (via i3-sensible-terminal) with the command running inside it. If the command exits with a non-zero status, the terminal stays open and shows the exit code so you can read any error output.

GUI application auto-open

Environments with linux-gui gear entries (e.g., Obsidian, Zotero) are spawned automatically on first activation. The adapter checks that each binary exists on PATH before spawning, so partially installed setups work without errors.