Mission control in GNU Emacs

 


Mission control or desktop/window overview in GNU Emacs. This is an Emacs buffer showing some images in a fullscreen frame. The first line shows images of workspaces. The rest are images of active windows in current workspace. It uses the following external tools:

  • wmctrl - For switching applications and workspaces
  • xdotool - For getting id of active window
  • xwd - For taking screenshots in XWD format
  • ffmpeg - For scaling and converting XWD to PNG format

Install these essential tools in your system.

 $ sudo apt install wmctrl xdotool xwd ffmpeg

Load library task.el

 (require 'task)

Run M-x task-view or M-x task-view-fullscreen . Use mouse to select, g to group, G to ungroup, m to start a move operation and ESC to cancel. Use double click to activate a window or desktop. Press q or RET to exit. Pro Tip: You can select multiple windows.

 

Code:

https://gitlab.com/atamariya/emacs/-/blob/dev/lisp/svg.el
https://gitlab.com/atamariya/emacs/-/blob/dev/lisp/task.el

 

Note: xfdashboard can also serve the purpose as an external application. Additionally, it provides live preview of running applications.

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