The problem#

Previously, I wrote a script for opening and immediately focusing xfce4-appfinder. But xfce4-appfinder will notice if it's already open and just assume you want to use the existing window. Even if it's on a different desktop. And therefore attempting to focus it will either do nothing or switch to that desktop, neither of which is desirable.

The solution#

The actual solution I settled on is more of a workaround than a solution: having xfce4-appfinder on a different desktop doesn't really make sense, so I just set it to be on all desktops (specified as the non-existent desktop -1), so it would never be on the wrong desktop:

xdotool set_desktop_for_window "$winid" -1

To actually move the window to the current desktop, replace xdotool windowactivate "$winid" with

desktop="$(xdotool get_desktop)"
win_desktop="$(xdotool get_desktop_for_window "$winid")"
if [[ "$desktop" == "$win_desktop" ]]
then
  xdotool windowactivate "$winid"
else
  xdotool set_desktop_for_window "$winid" -1
  xdotool set_desktop_for_window "$winid" "$desktop" \
          windowactivate "$winid"
fi

Although this assumes that you know the $winid of the window you want to move. If you have just the title it works just as well to use

wmctrl -R "Application Finder"

The details#

The problem#

I have my window manager set to not focus new windows because I dislike having a new window pop up while typing and having the keystrokes surprisingly sent to the new window instead of the one I thought I was typing in. While this is usually what I want, this does mean extra clicks when I did mean to open the new window.

This is particularly bad for xfce4-appfinder (or any other application launcher), since the purpose to be able to set a global keyboard shortcut like Super+Space so you can press that combination and quickly type in the application or action you want (or, even better, type just the first few characters of its name). And since it's being intentionally launched by a keyboard shortcut, there's no real concern of it grabbing keyboard focus unexpectedly.

The solution#

Put the following script in a file appfinder-and-focus.sh and set the keyboard shortcut to run it instead of just running xfce4-appfinder directly:

#!/usr/bin/bash
(xprop -spy -root _NET_CLIENT_LIST | stdbuf -oL tail -n +2 |
  while read -r line
  do
    winid="${line/#*, /}"
    if [[ $(xdotool getwindowname "$winid") == \
        "Application Finder" ]]
    then
      xdotool windowactivate "$winid"
    fi
  done) 2>/dev/null &
xfce4-appfinder &

# Wait for window to appear, then kill xprop.
xdotool search --sync --name "Application Finder" >/dev/null
pkill -P "$(jobs -p %1)"

The details#

The problem#

Which window I have focused is a signal to the computer for the state I want it to be in. For instance, I normally leave my speaker muted so, for example, I don't accidentally play sound from a website with unexpected videos. But this means that when I do want sound, I need to manually unmute the sound, even though I've already told the computer that I want to watch Netflix, which always involves turning on the sound.

Of course, for the particular problem of unmuting the sound, adding a keyboard shortcut and rereading xkcd 1205: Is It Worth the Time? probably would have been a more appropriate solution. But I wanted a general solution to the problem.

The solution#

Download x11_watch_active_window.py. Then the following script will unmute the speakers if Netflix is focused:

#!/bin/sh
x11_watch_active_window.py | while read -r FocusApp
do
    if [ "Netflix - Google Chrome" = "$FocusApp" ]
    then
        echo Netflix is focused, unmuting.
        pactl set-sink-mute 0 0
    fi
done

The details#