autostart application in new workspace in gnome-shell

Question

I'd like to autostart firefox and thunderbird on e.g. 2 and 3-rd workspaces when login. If I add them to autostart in gnome-shell they both open on the first workspace. Is there a way to autostart application on the certain workspace, or at least on the "next" workspace(similar to dash middle-click). I'd like to avoid using auto-move-windows extension.

Answer 1

The following is a program that will start another application and move it to a specified work space.

You should copy this into a file named move-at-start.sh, mark it executable, and put it somewhere in your home directory (i would suggest putting it in the ~/.local folder, but you can put it in your ~/bin or some other place if you prefer, just remember where you put it and what you named it). (pastebin link)

#!/bin/bash

# invocation 
# move-at-start.sh <desktop> <prog> <prog args>

if [ $# -lt 2 ]; then
    echo "invocation: move-at-start.sh <desktop> <prog> <prog args>"
    exit 1
fi

desk=$1
prog=$2
args=""
shift
shift

while (( "$#" )); do
    args="$args ""$1"
    shift
done

$prog $args

windows=$(wmctrl -lp | grep -E "($(echo $(ps -C "$prog" -o pid,user | grep "`whoami`" | sed -E "s/^\ *//" | cut -d\  -f 1) | sed "s/\ /|/g"))" | cut -d\  -f 1)

for w in $windows; do
    wmctrl -i -r $w -t $desk
done

exit 0

Once you have done that go to ~/.config/autostart in either your shell or Nautilus.

In this folder you will find some files with names like app-name.desktop find the ones corresponding to the applications you want to launch (most likely <name>.desktop) and open them in your favorite text editor.

For each file find the line that starts exec=<some command and args> and change it to exec=</path/to/above/script>/move-at-start.sh <desktop number> <some command and args>.

The next time you log in the app should be started and moved to the specified desktop.

Notes: Desktops are numbered starting from 0 so the first desktop is 0, the third is 2, etc.

Notes: If the desktop specified does not exist the window will remain in the original desktop.