Making an app open on a single workspace?

laky

I am investigating this as I am making a short break to try and get some help on the forums. Thing is the app that I use crashes sometimes so I've made an script which makes it relaunch itself every time it crashes so I don't need to do it manually. But here is the kick, the app relaunches and makes all my current process irrelevant for few seconds; basically it interrupts my process that I am doing at the moment. (If it is gaming, writing or doing anything ) .
How could I make this app run completely on a different workspace so It does not interrupt my main screen? Do I need an app to download for this or is there a cmd that would help me here?! Any help is much appreciated.
P.s I use only 1 monitor.
Edit : Gnome system.

johano

laky, devilspie2 can do what you want. It's in the Solus repo.

You autostart it so it runs in the background. You then can put simple scripts in ~/.config/devilspie2/

Here is an example that will put Firefox on workspace 5 every time it's opened.. You can edit it to suit your own needs.

Create
~/.config/devilspie2/firefox.lua, the name doesn't matter but it must end with .lua

The contents of the file at it's simplest would be:

if (get_application_name()=="Firefox") then
    set_window_workspace(5)
end

That's it, now Firefox will always open on workspace 5 (as long as devilespie2 is running). I've used it for a long time and found it to be totally dependable.

laky

johano First I wanna thank you for replying,
now does it creates workspace 5 window for you and launches firefox there? Because once i typed devilespie2 in terminal it just leaves me with blank space like it is going to load something but it doesn't. I changed firefox to discord for me.
Edit: Atleast now I have something to work with, appreciate this and will try to make it working for me there must be something I am not seeing here...

laky

So I've made a script in ~/.config/devilspie2/ I go to terminal type devilspie2 it does nothing. Then I open discord manually and in the terminal it gives me this

** (devilspie2:797113): WARNING **: 23:31:52.809: Workspace number 5 does not exist!

(devilspie2:797113): Wnck-CRITICAL **: 23:31:52.809: wnck_window_move_to_workspace: assertion 'WNCK_IS_WORKSPACE (space)' failed

johano

laky, You seem to making some progress. The workspaces must exist. I'm using Budgie and in the Budgie settings I can set up to 8 workspaces to start on login. Is there a similar setting in Gnome where you can say how many Virtual Desktops you want available each time you log in?

If not you can probably set it manually using dconf-editor

Try changing this key to number of virtual desktops you want:

/org/gnome/desktop/wm/preferences/num-workspaces

laky

johano Before I do that, I finaly made it to work to open in workspace(2) but I can't make this : while true; do Discord; done to work and open discord I need to manually open it which makes the script, to auto relaunch once it crashes, a bit useless. But this must be my fault since i am a beginner at this scripts

laky

johano
So this took me a while , lost 2 hours to try every logical command that is used in devilspie2 to make it to work. Finally it strikes me!
I made the game that I play to be above everything else there is outside it. So :

if (get_application_name() == "Game") then

set_window_below(false)
set_window_above(true);
end

So now nothing comes in front of my game if it relaunches like discord did when it crashes. But the problem with this is that i can't alt+tab to anything until I close the "game" , this is kinda sad actually! But it is only thing that worked for me.

laky

Did you mean this?
Edit: Guess this is not it, it is not working. But with workspace(2) it is working, still when i launch it manually it shows launching process on my workspace(1) and after that it opens in workspace(2) . That is not what I want ,because if it crashes I think it will do the same as it did before.

laky

Gnome actually creates a thrid workspace manually once the 2nd one gets to be in use. But I have only 2 of them as default

laky

To make this easier to understand , I was just testing it with

if (get_application_name() == "Discord") then

set_window_workspace(2);

and I have made devilspie2 active. But it always bring the launching animation that "discord" as an app does before it fully launches, on my main workspace(1) . Too bad i can't figure out how to fix it so it dosen't show anything on my main workspace when i launch.
Sry to bother you with this I am pretty frustrated myself just wanted to make it easier to understand.

viyoriya

you can give a try PaperWM gnome extension (Its a window manager)

https://github.com/paperwm/PaperWM

all keybinding you can find in
https://github.com/paperwm/PaperWM/blob/develop/schemas/org.gnome.shell.extensions.org-scrollwm.gschema.xml

laky

viyoriya Thanks I am looking it up as we speak. 🙂

viyoriya

laky

Just found that in budgie (-> budgie-desktop-settings -> desktops ) by default only 2 workspaces are created on startup. I guess it will be same in gnome too ( you may find in settings/tweaks)

you can create workspaces statically or dynamically

dynamically
dconf write /org/gnome/mutter/dynamic-workspaces true
or
gsettings set org.gnome.mutter dynamic-workspaces true

and try your devilspie2 custom code else

statically (you need to disable dynamic-workspaces to false then set the number of workspaces)

dconf write /org/gnome/mutter/dynamic-workspaces false
dconf write /org/gnome/desktop/wm/preferences/num-workspaces 5

gsettings set org.gnome.mutter dynamic-workspaces false
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.preferences num-workspaces 5

and try your devilspie2 custom code

you can access the workspace with Super+<number>
by default you can set upto 11 workspaces
(its like i3 or any window managers)

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.keybindings switch-to-workspace-1 "['<Super>Home', '<Super>1']"
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.keybindings switch-to-workspace-2 "['<Super>2']"
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.keybindings switch-to-workspace-3 "['<Super>3']"
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.keybindings switch-to-workspace-4 "['<Super>4']"
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.keybindings switch-to-workspace-5 "['<Super>5']"

dconf write /org/gnome/desktop/wm/keybindings/switch-to-workspace-1 "['<Super>Home', '<Super>1']"
dconf write /org/gnome/desktop/wm/keybindings/switch-to-workspace-2 "['<Super>2']"
dconf write /org/gnome/desktop/wm/keybindings/switch-to-workspace-3 "['<Super>3']"
dconf write /org/gnome/desktop/wm/keybindings/switch-to-workspace-4 "['<Super>4']"
dconf write /org/gnome/desktop/wm/keybindings/switch-to-workspace-5 "['<Super>5']"

just ignore the PaperWM 🙂

laky

viyoriya
The workspaces are now showing as intended! Thank you , also the visual workspaces that you could see in gnome was 2 but the dconf-ediotor says default value is 4 .

Once I disabled /org/gnome/mutter/dynamic-workspaces false they appeared!
Going to mess with devilspie2 some more after changing this settings maybe it will work.
Edit: Quick test was made, It is all still pretty much the same.

viyoriya

laky

Its working for me I dont know why it didnt work for you

Installed the devilspie2
Set the static workspaces

    gsettings set org.gnome.mutter dynamic-workspaces false
    gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.preferences num-workspaces 6

created these 2 files in ~/.config/devilspie2/
firefox.lua

if (get_application_name()=="Firefox") then
    set_window_workspace(5)
end

st.lua

if (get_application_name()=="st") then
    set_window_workspace(3)
end

for testing added Workspace Switcher applet in budgie panel
run devilspie2 in terminal
opened st terminal and firefox
Its opened in workspace 3 and 5 perfectly.
(Image attached in the first line)

laky

viyoriya You did explain this perfectly and I am not saying this didn't work for me there is just something seriously wrong with discord devs. If you have a free disk space (about 200mb) you can install the discord app from the repo. After that you will see there is a small logo in middle of the screen like a "popup" that comes before app launches fully. That popup is something i want to be cast on workspace(2) but it just doesn't work for this app.
I have found something new in dconf-editor/org/gnome/shell/extensions/auto-move-windows/application-list/ this might come in handy, I was just looking for example how to write the custom value for specifis app i want.

viyoriya

laky cool don't worry seems its a splash screen 🙂 this may be helpful

laky

viyoriya Nah it's cool, It is just a splashscreen that I can't disable, which makes me go nuts for a bit but it is ok. Just tried app called "lutris" works perfectly as it should without splasing my main screen with anything and interrupting the work that I am doing atm. Damn you discord app !!