i3-input(1)

Michael Stapelberg
<michael+i3@stapelberg.de>
version 4.1.2, April 2012
Table of Contents

1. NAME

i3-input - interactively take a command for i3 window manager

2. SYNOPSIS

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

3. 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.

4. 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.

5. 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: '

6. ENVIRONMENT

6.1. 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.

7. SEE ALSO

i3(1)

8. AUTHOR

Michael Stapelberg and contributors