i3-input - Man Page

interactively take a command for i3 window manager

Synopsis

i3-input [-s <socket>] [-F <format>] [-l <limit>] [-P <prompt>] [-f <font>] [-v]

Description

i3-input is a tool to take commands (or parts of a command) composed by the user, and send it/them to i3. This is useful, for example, for the mark/goto command.

You can press Escape to close i3-input without sending any commands.

Options

-s <socket>: Specify the path to the i3 IPC socket (it should not be necessary to use this option, i3-input will figure out the path on its own).
-F <format>: Every occurrence of "%s" in the <format> string is replaced by the user input, and the result is sent to i3 as a command. Default value is "%s".
-l <limit>: Set the maximum allowed length of the user input to <limit> characters. i3-input will automatically issue the command when the user input reaches that length.
-P <prompt>: Display the <prompt> string in front of user input text field. The prompt string is not included in the user input/command.
-f <font>: Use the specified X11 core font (use xfontsel to choose a font).
-v: Show version and exit.

Examples

Mark a container with a single character:

i3-input -F 'mark %s' -l 1 -P 'Mark: '

Go to the container marked with above example:

i3-input -F '[con_mark="%s"] focus' -l 1 -P 'Go to: '

Environment

I3sock

i3-input handles the different sources of socket paths in the following order:

I3SOCK environment variable
I3SOCK gets overwritten by the -s parameter, if specified
if neither are available, i3-input reads the socket path from the X11 property, which is the recommended way
if everything fails, i3-input tries /tmp/i3-ipc.sock

The socket path is necessary to connect to i3 and actually issue the command.