TLDR: I want to be able to set specific window sizes and positions of the current window with hotkeys, as well as focus on specific apps with hotkeys, but I’m overwhelmed.
I’ve been trying to switch to Asahi Linux Fedora, and trying Gnome as my desktop environment since it can be customized with CSS, and with Wayland. I tried looking up how to change window layouts with hotkeys and it’s confusing on what solution(s) I would end up wanting to use. Would I want to use a window manager?
Ultimate I want an alternative to Rectangle Pro app on Mac, which let’s you set many hotketys for changing the current window’s size & position: like use up the left or right halves or thirds of the screen, or corners and taking up a quarter of the screen. You can also make custom window layouts and bind those to keys.
I didn’t find many results while looking up how to focus on specifc apps with hotkeys. For instance, I’d want to press CTRL Shift Z to switch specifically to Zen Browser or open it if it isn’t opened, and CTRL Shift O to open or switch to Obsidian. I looked this up and didn’t find options other than wmctrl or wlrctl. I tried the later: wlrctl window focus firefox, but got the error Foreign Toplevel Management interface not found!. on macOS there are many apps for this like BetterTouchTool & Hammerspoon.
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Try GNOME extension. Awesome Tile. Number pad arrangement becomes window placement. In settings you can choose gap between window and screen edge. Hitting same key repeatedly resizes that window in its current location.
Wayland makes it complicated, at least until the tools mature. In X11 one could do a lot, using wmctrl and xdotool. For Wayland Gnome, you might want to look at “Run or raise” and “Window calls” extensions. “Grand theft focus” might be handy too if you are switching apps across workspaces.
In general it sounds like you want ‘tiling’. There are multiple window managers that does this, e.g. AwesomeWM, i3, Sway, River etc.
Additionally you typically have ‘tiling scripts’ that work on top of Gnome and Kwin (Plasma), however unsure what the capabilities are there.
I can atleast speak for Sway:
Here you can can move/select the current focused window relative to whatever key strokes you prefer, the defaults are using Vim-bindings, but arrow keys are also pretty common.
For grabbing a specific window (like in an ordered manner) is probably something that you would need to extend through scripting if the ‘basic’ movement isn’t enough.
Note: A tiling window manager is quite different (in usage) from a stacking one (which is what one is mostly used to) tiling capabilities/scripts
No I don’t want tiling, I want windows that can overlap, I just want to control them with hotkeys.
Sway let’s you float and overlap windows. Also for both tiled and floating windows you can set the size, position, workspace and monitor by the app id (e.g., firefox) or part of the title (e.g., lemmy).
I still think tiling is ultimately the feature you’re looking for, even if it’s on a floating DE. Most tiling WMs (Sway included) have the ability to float windows, and can even do so by default while still giving you the keyboard-based workflow that you’re after.
Tiling isn’t an all or nothing thing, Plasma for example is a floating DE that is capable of tiling in exactly the way you’re describing by default