wmctrl - focus most recent window of an app

Question

I've created some shortcuts mimicking the Unity's Mod4 + num behavior.

wmctrl -xa Sublime || subl

What I don't like, is that once sublime is running, it always focuses the first opened window. I'd like to focus the last "focused" window. Same as in Unity. Is there a flag for that?

Answer 1

This script does what you want:

#!/bin/bash

app=$1
workspace=$(wmctrl -d | grep '\*' | cut -d ' ' -f1)
win_list=$(wmctrl -lx | grep $app | grep " $workspace " | awk '{print $1}')

IDs=$(xprop -root|grep "^_NET_CLIENT_LIST_STACKING" | tr "," " ")
IDs=(${IDs##*#})

for (( idx=${#IDs[@]}-1 ; idx>=0 ; idx-- )) ; do
    for i in $win_list; do
        if [ $((i)) = $((IDs[idx])) ]; then
            wmctrl -ia $i
            exit 0
        fi
    done
done

exit 1

EDIT: This script always focuses on the last focused window, as opposed to cycling through the windows in the order they were opened.

EDIT 2: I modified the script (turns out wmctrl and xprop use slightly different formats for displaying hexadecimal numbers).

EDIT 3: app name should be taken from the 3rd column of wmctrl -lx to avoid certain conflicts.

Answer 2

I've made a very robust app switcher using wmctrl. Check my Ubuntu Forums post and my askubuntu answer.

This is the script to launch:

#!/bin/bash
app_name=$1
workspace_number=`wmctrl -d | grep '\*' | cut -d' ' -f 1`
win_list=`wmctrl -lx | grep $app_name | grep " $workspace_number " | awk '{print $1}'`


active_win_id=`xprop -root | grep '^_NET_ACTIVE_W' | awk -F'# 0x' '{print $2}' | awk -F', ' '{print $1}'`
if [ "$active_win_id" == "0" ]; then
    active_win_id=""
fi


# get next window to focus on, removing id active
switch_to=`echo $win_list | sed s/.*$active_win_id// | awk '{print $1}'`
# if the current window is the last in the list ... take the first one
if [ "$switch_to" == "" ];then
    switch_to=`echo $win_list | awk '{print $1}'`
fi


if [[ -n "${switch_to}" ]]
    then
        (wmctrl -ia "$switch_to") &
    else
        if [[ -n "$2" ]]
            then
                ($2) &
        fi
fi


exit 0

Answer 3

I made a combination of both previous answers which I find quite convenient. It enables to:

• set the focus to the most recently focused window of the app (answer of Raul Laasner) if that window does not already have the focus;
• otherwise, cycle to the next window of the app (answer of mreq);
• if there is no window of the app, open one (there is now an optional second argument which specifies the command to run in that case).

Here is the script:

#!/bin/bash
if [ $# -lt 1 ] ; then
  echo "Usage : $0 <window name> [<command to run if there is no window with that name>]"
  exit 1
fi

app_name=$1

workspace_number=`wmctrl -d | grep '\*' | cut -d' ' -f 1`
win_list=`wmctrl -lx | grep $app_name | grep " $workspace_number " | awk '{print $1}'`

# Get the id of the active window (i.e., window which has the focus)
active_win_id=`xprop -root | grep '^_NET_ACTIVE_W' | awk -F'# 0x' '{print $2}' | awk -F', ' '{print $1}'`
if [ "$active_win_id" == "0" ]; then
    active_win_id=""
fi

# If the window currently focused matches the first argument, seek the id of the next window in win_list which matches it
if [[ "$win_list" == *"$active_win_id"* ]]; then

    # Get next window to focus on 
    # (sed removes the focused window and the previous windows from the list)
    switch_to=`echo $win_list | sed s/.*$active_win_id// | awk '{print $1}'`

    # If the focused window is the last in the list, take the first one
    if [ "$switch_to" == "" ];then
        switch_to=`echo $win_list | awk '{print $1}'`
    fi

# If the currently focused window does not match the first argument
else

    # Get the list of all the windows which do
    win_list=$(wmctrl -lx | grep $app_name | awk '{print $1}')

    IDs=$(xprop -root|grep "^_NET_CLIENT_LIST_STACKING" | tr "," " ")
    IDs=(${IDs##*#})

   # For each window in focus order
    for (( idx=${#IDs[@]}-1 ; idx>=0 ; idx-- )) ; do
        for i in $win_list; do

           # If the window matches the first argument, focus on it
            if [ $((i)) = $((IDs[idx])) ]; then
                wmctrl -ia $i
                exit 0
            fi
        done
    done
fi

# If a window to focus on has been found, focus on it
if [[ -n "${switch_to}" ]]
then
    (wmctrl -ia "$switch_to") &

# If there is no window which matches the first argument
else

    # If there is a second argument which specifies a command to run, run it
    if [[ -n "$2" ]]
    then
        ($2) &
    fi
fi

exit 0

Example of usages:

focus_window.sh vlc vlc
focus_window.sh gnome-control-center gnome-control-center
focus_window.sh gnome-terminal gnome-terminal

Answer 4

Late for the answer, but managed to do it work gracefully, in my case, using Firefox:

/usr/lib/firefox/firefox && sleep 0.5 && wmctrl -ia $(wmctrl -l Firefox | grep "Mozilla Firefox" | sort -r | head -n 1 | cut -d " " -f 1)

Explanation:

/usr/lib/firefox/firefox - Opens firefox

sleep 0.5 - Gives some time for the window to open

wmctrl -ia - Focus on a specific window ID

$(wmctrl -l Firefox | grep "Mozilla Firefox" | sort -r | head -n 1 | cut -d " " -f 1) - Gets the last window ID, which in my case, is open on the homepage, so its name is "Mozilla Firefox".