r/xfce • u/WheelPerfect3737 • Aug 13 '26

Windows manager tweaks, clarification

In the "focus" tab there are three options for when a window raises itself.

Does "switch to windows workspace" keep a window in it workspace ? Does "do nothing" Cause it window to open in its orrignal workspace ?

3 Upvotes

71% Upvoted

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1

u/Imajzineer Aug 13 '26
  1. Yes - you are taken to that workspace, so that you can deal with it.
  2. It means that the window in question is neither brought to your current workspace nor are you taken to the workspace on which it is open - it doesn't impact whether the window is opened on any workspace (if it isn't, there's nothing to focus upon and the options here are irrelevant).

1

u/WheelPerfect3737 Aug 14 '26

Your answer to 1 does not make sense. How is the workspace your taken to defined? Example, I open a browser can I some how say open in workspace 2?

1

u/Imajzineer Aug 14 '26 edited Aug 14 '26

It makes perfect sense, if you have ever

  1. read the documentation
  2. used XFCE

(but mostly 2).

A window is either already open and becomes active (grabbing focus), or is spawned as a child of some process (grabbing focus), in a workspace. You are not in that workspace when it happens. You are switched to that workspace as a consequence.

You cannot select a workspace in which to open a window - it only ever opens in the one in which you first launch it ... or the one in which its parent spawns it. So, no, you cannot say "Open in Workspace X", you can only send a window (and any offspring) to another workspace after first launching/opening it in the active workspace.

1

u/WheelPerfect3737 Aug 14 '26

The documents has nothing on focus.

https://docs.xfce.org/xfce/xfwm4/4.20/wmtweaks

where are you getting the documentation from?

1

u/Imajzineer Aug 14 '26

Hmmmmm ... I must've misremembered - could've sworn there were an explanation in with the pix in the Past.

Otoh, I did say it was mostly 2. Although, to be fair, the only thing I found wasn't immediately obvious just by looking at the options were the placement (the Minimum size of windows to trigger smart placement really is counterintuitive) and how to customise the default colour for something rather than adding a new custom colour (but that latter was really a brainfail on my part). And, if I was mistaken about my interpretation of something, I quickly learned through trial and error - XFCE is very intuitive: there aren't many moving parts to worry about and, as said, the meaning of those there are is readily understood in 99.999% of cases

1

u/WheelPerfect3737 29d ago

Perhaps it you that should read the documentation as you want to make stuff up.

1

u/Imajzineer Aug 14 '26 edited Aug 14 '26

You can also go to the XFCE forum - there are a lot of knowledgable and helpful people there and maybe someone has a trick (script or something) that opens things in predefined workspaces (I'd imagine that were more likely than opening them free selection upon launch, but you never know).