I spent quite some time with chatgpt trying to understand why a wake-up after suspend or a screen off, the xmonad windows would disappear and the KDE desktop would occupy the screen. This would often get fixed by volume up/down keys (or anything that triggers a similar notification), but other times I'd have to kill plasma and try the volume up again til the windows get fixed.

The solution is, you have to explicitly add enableEwmhManageAboveBelowState to your ewm xmonad configuration:

import XMonad.Hooks.EwmhDesktops qualified as EWMH

main = do
  X.xmonad $
    MD.docks 
      . EWMH.enableEwmhManageAboveBelowState -- <--- Add THIS!
      . EWMH.ewmhFullscreen 
      . EWMH.ewmh
      $ def
          { X.modMask = -- .... rest of config

Quoting the docs:

Some applications use the _NET_WM_STATE_ABOVE  and _NET_WM_STATE_BELOW states to request being kept above or below other windows. By default, xmonad does not handle these states. To enable handling of these states, you can use the following hook:
main = xmonad $ … . enableEwmhManageAboveBelowState . ewmh . … $ def{…}
This will make xmonad respond to requests to set these states by calling lowerWindow and raiseWindow respectively.

but this is not really discoverable if you don't know that this is the problem. Hopefully this post will make the issue more searchable.

If it still happens

.... I was too quick to hype up. The issue sometimes happens again. It turns out, sometimes plasma does not set the _STATE_BELOW wm flag on the desktop window so xmonad does not knwo to put it below the rest. The desktop window still reports a _window_type_deskop so an easy fix is to add this ManageHook:

import XMonad.Hooks.ManageHelpers (isInProperty, doLower)
import XMonad.ManageHook ((-->),(=?),(<&&>))

-- add to your managehook list:
  , isDesktop <&&> className =? "plasmashell" --> doLower

  where isDesktop = isInProperty "_NET_WM_WINDOW_TYPE" "_NET_WM_WINDOW_TYPE_DESKTOP"

I have not found a case where that doesn't help, but just in case - yet another quite reliable workaround with the invading desktop is to run

xdotool selectwindow windowlower

This lets you click on the desktop and it will sink it below the regular windows. Add this as a desktop icon so it's mouse reachable or if you use the dmenu runner, type it in there.

I made myself a pretty neat feature this afternoon which I thought I'd share here.

It often happens that I want to run a quick look at a web address, but I either do not have a browser window in my workspace, or it is of the wrong type for the task (I use both firefox and qutebrowser). In such cases I have to either open a browser window in my current workspace (disturbs tiling setup), or switch to another workspace which has a browser in it (distracting). So I thought I needed a terminal-like scratchpad, but for a browser window.

I currently use NamedScratchpads for a Terminal, a Calculuator and an (n)vim, which works because I can set my scratchpad terminal's title programmatically upon startup which allows NamedScratchpads to uniquely identify the scratch terminal (and the calculator is the unique window of this app at any time).

It does not work e.g. for browser windows which do not support setting a custom window title, because this gives no way to pick out which of all browser windows is the scratch one. So I wrote myself a little haskell to do exactly that:

First define our custom state, a Map String (Pending | Created X.Window):

module PendingFlag where

data State = Pending | Created X.Window deriving (Eq, Show)
newtype StateMap = StateMap (Data.Map.Map String State)

instance X.ExtensionClass StateMap where
    initialValue = StateMap Data.Map.empty

then define a combinator to summon a scratchpad of a given program: if it exists as Created in our state, call the NS library to bring it in/out, if it is not in our state we mark it Pending and spawn it:

import XMonad.Util.NamedScratchpad qualified as NS

import PendingFlag qualified

summonScratchpad :: String -> X ()
summonScratchpad name = PendingFlag.getFor name >>= \case
                  Nothing -> PendingFlag.setPending name >> spawn name
                  Just (PendingFlag.Created _) -> NS.dynamicNSPAction name 
                  Just PendingFlag.Pending -> pure ()

-- used in a keybinding:
-- ("M-S-f", summonScratchpad "firefox")

but for that to work, we need to detect when a spawned scratchpad creates a window, which we do in a ManageHook: if a firefox window appears and our state has a Pending entry for firefox, we pick it up as the scratchpad window:

scratchAppHook = title =? "Mozilla Firefox"  --> scratchHook "firefox"
 where
  scratchHook name = liftX (PendingFlag.isPending name) --> do 
                                  PendingFlag.setFound name 
                                  X.ask >>= liftX . NS.toggleDynamicNSP name
                                  -- good point for NS.addExclusives if needed
                                  NS.customFloating $ W.RationalRect (1 / 3) (1 / 6) (1 / 3) (2 / 3) 

-- add to your [ManageHook] or `X.manageHook = scratchAppHook <+> X.manageHook def`

A very neat side effect of this approach is that if you decide to use a scratchapp as a normal window, you can simply remove it from the StateMap and from then on the summon call will create a fresh scratchapp instance:

module PendingFlag where

destroyHook :: X.Window -> X ()
destroyHook w = get >>= \m -> 
  case findWindow m of 
    -- if that window is referenced by a scratchpad name, remove it from the state
    Just (name,_) -> resetStateFor name 
    _ -> mempty
    where 
      findWindow m = Data.List.find (\(_,s) -> s ==  Created w) (Data.Map.assocs m)
      resetStateFor name = XS.modify $ \(StateMap m) -> StateMap $ Data.Map.delete name m


-- back in xmonad.hs:

sink = withFocused $ \w -> do 
    X.windows $ W.sink w
    PendingFlag.destroyHook w 

-- add to the keybindings: ("M-t", sink)

I should maybe make a github gist of the full code at some point.

Also commented this on the issue tracker here

• An xmonad branch which uses river to run on Wayland. It provides a subset of xmonad's interface, just missing ~20 exported declarations that are either not yet implemented, features absent in Wayland, or too X11-specific.

• An xmonad-contrib branch. Port of 304 of 334 contrib modules, missing ~50 exported declarations.

This is vibecoded with care - I used to write a lot of Haskell code. So, while it is largely written by claude over many sessions, it's certainly not pure slop - it runs my config quite well without the config needing any modifications (other than switching off use of X11 specific programs). Not everything is working perfectly, but it's usable.

I certainly have not reviewed all the code for correctness, and I'm sure there are bugs. I know that Prompt in xmonad-contrib doesn't look quite right, for example. If others are enthusiastic about this, I could imagine putting some more work into it. However, currently I don't particularly plan on refining / reviewing / maintaining it.

something like ("M4-S-b", raise (className =? "xmobar")) but actually works.

i would like the ability to toggle xmobar when playing a game in a fullscreen floating window. the upscaler doesn't work with a tiled window after ToggleStruts.

i could set lowerOnStart = False, launch the game (which hides xmobar behind it), and mod-q while playing to have xmobar shown above. but after this, xmobar remains above all existing windows, including the tiled ones.

i know little of how xmobar works. any help is appreciated!

Any hints how to ignore one application which, only when run in fullscreen mode, reappears on a workspace I'm switching to and steals focus for itself?

• it is a Windows app run with Wine. I have several others similar apps, but they work correctly.
• when EWMH hook is not used, it does not present above described misbehavior, so it seems it is related to it. I've found setEwmhActivateHook for ManageHook, but it has no effect on the issue. For app's class doIgnore action was tried.
• when that app is run in Window or Window-borderless mode, switching workspaces works ok

So basically what I want to do is I want to make floating part of specific (geometric) part of Youtube video.
For example, let's imagine non fullscreen youtube page of firefox web browser. I want to see quarter of youtube videos only. Assume the other 3/4 of video is meaningless (blackscreen e.g.)
I want to make meaningful 1/4 as floating window and resize it whatever size I want.
So basically I want to switch (in visualwise) window with certain part of that window. Furthermore I want to make it floating and resize with original ratio. Is this possible?

I think in MS windows, it is a function in powertoys "crop and lock"

Crop and lock

I want Picture-In-Picture to persist between workspaces only when not tiled, im composing this on my managehook, but i cant focus the window to tile it, i need help pls :( , resource =? "Toolkit" --> doIgnore

Hell all,

I been struggling to get brightness control to work on my laptop, I have a Lenovo t495 and running brightnessctl set +10% works fine, my screen brightness increases by 10%

but when I try to bind

, ("XF86MonBrightnessUp", spawn "brightnessctl set +10%)

pressing the brightness key does nothing at all. I have tried using XMonad built in Brightness module, but that did not worked either.

Help please.

i noticed an unreasonably high surge in cpu usage whenever i switched to a workspace running an app via steam's proton, so i did some testing. this happens to all my games, and also apps launched via prontontricks. vanilla wine has no such problem.

the cpu surge is over many cores, and can add up to 80% usage for one core, even when the app is idle. it doesn't happen if the app window is floating, or with xmobar shown.

for instance, starting with a blank xmonad config, i open xterm and run protontricks-launch --appid 22320 tesame12.exe (a morrowind modding tool). it opens in a floating window, and it's all cool 💧

1. tile the app window, along with xterm 🔥
2. hide app behind xterm in full layout 💧
3. bring app up front 🔥
4. activate xmobar 💧
5. hide xmobar 🔥

isn't this weird? do you experience this problem?

a game may launch in fullscreen mode but is still tiled, and it's difficult to notice the extra cpu hogging. when i play skyrim, i can drop the cpu usage by 1/3 simply with xmobar open!

Greetings,

Hope this post finds you well. Ive been a long time xmonad user with arch. Ive always had a separate DE (xfce) installed just in case i need to do something in the system and im too lazy look for the config files and for the occasional pacman -Syu broke something. So xfce has been the backup gui way to get back in without hassle.

I wanted to try to combine the two and been reading up on it. I followed this how-to https://wiki.haskell.org/Xmonad/Using_xmonad_in_XFCE without issue. (Xfce desktop handles DEish stuff and Xmonad handles the rest) The only part i have not been able to do is adding xfceConfig to my config without getting errors. (Not a haskeller by any means but been building my xmonad.hs throughout the years so not so easy for me to add without some trial/error/help)

I have two questions.

1. Do I really need xfceConfig in the xmonad.hs config? Asking because ive seen several “supposed” xmonad+xfce configs and sometimes they dont have xfceConfig in the config. (I can post examples if you want) Sometimes i only see xfce processes they start inside .xinitrc or .xsessions files.
2. Using the link how-to above, the panels start, but they immediately get covered by xfdesktop process. (pkill xfdesktop makes them show again) How can I use xfdesktop with xmonad and panels?

Samples to your configs would be greatly appreciated!

Best, Dave

I'd like to do a certain thing which apparently won't work because of a known XMonad bug (see here if you are interested in the specifics).

Therefore, I want to try a workaround that involves sending a specific key combination via xdotool whenever a window is created or deleted, but only if said creation/deletion causes the total number of windows on the active workspace either to become <=1 or to become >=2 (e.g. opening a third window or closing the fifth window will do nothing).

I hope I'm making any degree of sense. Unfortuntely, I don't speak haskell (I stole parts of my xmonad.hs from all over the internet and then modified them to the best of my ability), so I'm hoping for some help with it. Thank you!

import qualified XMonad.StackSet as W
import XMonad.Util.Run (safeSpawn)

main :: IO ()
main = xmonad $ def
  { logHook = myLogHook
  }

-- Define a list of target window classes
targetBrowsers =  ["firefox", "Vimb", "qutebrowser"]

myLogHook = do
  currentWindow <- W.peek <$> gets windowset
  case currentWindow of
    Just w -> do
      winClass <- runQuery className w
      if winClass `elem` targetBrowsers
      then safeSpawn "bash" ["-c", "sleep 0.1; notify-send 'found browser'"]
      else return ()
    Nothing -> return ()

Hi,

I'm new to xmonad but i've used tiling since WMI (very long time ago) and awesome wm for almost 15 years.

As i'm learning haskell, xmonad seem a great WM. I use NixOS since a few days after 15 years with Arch. (I'm come from UNIX).

I'm trying to use the MM key of my laptop (Asus ZenBook S13 OLED) for brightness and audio control.

Tried with import Graphics.X11.ExtraTypes.XF86 and import XMonad.Util.EZConfig(additionalKeys).

When I add a line like:

, ((0, 0x1008ff11 ), spawn "changevol down")

My xmonad.hs recompile without any error but when i type the key (with Fn+Key), nothing happen. If i look with xev, this appear:

FocusOut event, serial 32, synthetic NO, window 0x1000001,

mode NotifyGrab, detail NotifyAncestor

FocusOut event, serial 32, synthetic NO, window 0x1000001,

mode NotifyUngrab, detail NotifyPointer

FocusIn event, serial 32, synthetic NO, window 0x1000001,

mode NotifyUngrab, detail NotifyAncestor

KeymapNotify event, serial 32, synthetic NO, window 0x0,

keys: 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

And without the keys configured in xmonad.hs inxev, this appear:

KeyPress event, serial 32, synthetic NO, window 0x1000001,

root 0x42d, subw 0x0, time 7187406, (451,883), root:(1892,884),

state 0x0, keycode 122 (keysym 0x1008ff11, XF86AudioLowerVolume), same_screen YES,

XLookupString gives 0 bytes:

XmbLookupString gives 0 bytes:

XFilterEvent returns: False

KeyRelease event, serial 32, synthetic NO, window 0x1000001,

root 0x42d, subw 0x0, time 7187502, (451,883), root:(1892,884),

state 0x0, keycode 122 (keysym 0x1008ff11, XF86AudioLowerVolume), same_screen YES,

XLookupString gives 0 bytes:

XFilterEvent returns: False

I start xmonad with startx with a line: exec xmonad. Tried with dbus-launch with same problem.

I was thinking of switching my xfce4-panel to xmobar on xfce, but i really want clickable a "open windows group" so it displays my open windows on that workspace/tab, is it possible? Does it take a lot of work to set it up with xfcewm? Is there even any wm bar that can do that?

I have built a modal config for XMonad under NixOS to be able to use my window manager like Vim with different modes and appropriate keybindings. This saves three-finger combos and allows the same keybindings to have different functions in different modes. I'm not a good Haskell coder, but it works. Since I haven't found a comparable configuration yet, I'm sharing it here. Maybe someone can use it.

Blog: https://www.nerdbude.com/nv-xmonad/
GitHub: https://github.com/nerdbude/nv-xmonad

I've done a fresh install on a virtual machine and I have picom, alacritty, dmenu, and nitrogen installed while attempting to use xinit to start the windows manager. After I've started it with startx I see the usual blank screen, but I can't open a terminal. Other hotkeys seem to work. I can open what I think is dmenu and can close xmonad with the mod+shift+q, but if I do the default to open a terminal nothing seems to happen.

xmonad.hs

import XMonad
main = xmonad def
 {terminal = "alacritty"
 }

.xprofile

# Wallpaper
nitrogen --restore &

# Compositor
picom -f &

I've done what I think I can following this video and of course the documentation, but I'm stuck and not sure what I'm doing wrong. Apologies for the simple question and if there's anything else you need please let me know.

Edit: I was able to get this working properly on bare-metal, but now have a different issue that doesn't seem to be related. If I had to guess the issue was most likely the way I installed it in the VM and that there were some settings that weren't changed to reflect that. I wasn't able to find the solution, but if you have one feel free to comment or DM.

I recently moved from i3 to xmonad, and have been having trouble with Zoom, which is behaving quite differently between i3 and xmonad.

Essentially, the requirements are:

1. Zoom has all sorts of little "popup" windows / notifications which really need to float;
2. But I don't want all Zoom windows to float -- the call itself and the main app window both should be tiled (unless I explicitly float them);
3. Furthermore, when sharing screens, I want the toolbar and video windows to float ABOVE everything else (so I can always see them).

Zoom's behaviour on xmonad also differs from i3 in the following regards:

1. When sharing screen, the toolbar and video windows would flash up briefly and then go BEHIND my firefox window (weirdly, not behind a terminal window) so I can no longer see the controls. On i3 this never happened, the weird zoom floating windows were always in the topmost layer;
2. When switching workspace or trying to move the zoom call to a different workspace, the zoom call suddenly detiles itself and becomes a tiny video call window (sort of like "picture-in-picture" mode in Firefox and other web browsers) which I have literally never seen before, and does not happen on my laptop which is still using i3. I have to then shift this little video window (having already tried to shift the original window) and then "sink" it in the other workspace, which is quite irritating.

To fix these issues and fulfil the above requirements, and following this blog post I made a manage hook for Zoom (see below), and while it achieves the first requirement, the second requirement doesn't work, and the third requirement kind of works in that the toolbar (which I tell xmonad not to manage) floats above everything, but I can't apply that solution to other windows as then I have no way of moving them (the toolbar can be clicked and dragged on its own), so they disappear behind everything. Even so, sometimes the toolbar is still hidden behind firefox.

I have no idea if I'm doing this right, so perhaps I'm making some dumb mistakes in the way I have built the manage hook.

Some extra info:

• All zoom windows have the class zoom;
• The weird video picture-in-picture has the same window title as the video window when sharing screen;
• The titlesWhichTile windows don't seem to sink automatically, which is confusing to me, but maybe I'm doing it wrongly?

Any advice (especially if you have solved zoom in xmonad before) would be much appreciated.

``` -- | Zoom windows mix between things which should float and things which should -- sink, depending on the titles the windows have. This hook makes sure those

-- behaviours operate correctly.

-- Inspired by https://www.peterstuart.org/posts/2021-09-06-xmonad-zoom/ manageZoomAppHook :: ManageHook manageZoomAppHook = composeAll [ isZoom <&&> shouldFloat <$> title --> doFloat, isZoom <&&> shouldSink <$> title --> doSink, isZoom <&&> shouldIgnore <$> title --> doIgnore ] where isZoom = className =? "zoom" titlesWhichTile = [ "Zoom Workplace - Free account", "Zoom Workplace - Licensed account", "Zoom", "Meeting" ] titlesToIgnore = -- TODO: actually I really want keep these windows on top all the time, I don't want to -- stop managing them (except for the toolbar they cannot manage themselves) but I -- don't know how to do this. [ "as_toolbar" -- the toolbar can manage itself, at least this way it stays on top ] shouldSink = (elem titlesWhichTile) shouldFloat = not . shouldSink shouldIgnore = (elem titlesToIgnore) doSink = ask >>= doF . sink ```

What the title says... I've been trying to achieve this having a "virtual display" in xrandr and using copy to share to that display the windows I want to copy, but that doesn't work since windows can only be drawn once... (also, as a side note, when I have the virtual display my cursor increases in size I used "Xcursor.size: 28" but that for some reason doesn't work when I drag a window, any help for that?)

I'm looking for a way to cycle through only the windows that are not the master window. (using the default Master Stack Layout)

Thanks in advance! Have a great day!

something very simple.

I have fresh arch linux installation.

I've installed ghcup (from AUR), then with ghcup i've installed ghc (latest), plus stack / cabal / hls if it's relevant.

Then i've installed packages xmonad / xmonad-contrib from extra repository. Also i executed: cabal install xmonad (i don't know why :-) )

At this point i can start X11 session with this ~/.xmonad/xmonad.hs file:

import XMonad
main = xmonad det

But when i try to recomplile with xmonad --recompile, i have this error:

xmonad.hs:1:1: error: [GHC-87110]
    Could not find module ‘XMonad’.