Having trouble moving windows between screens via the terminal

Ed C.

4/26/24, 8:57 PM

I'm running 22.04.2 LTS. I'm trying to write a script that will organize open windows. Unfortunately, wmctrl -l returns an incomplete list.

PS /home/edward/Documents/rclone> wmctrl -l
0x0260003d 1 Lenovo-11e Having trouble moving windows between screens via the terminal. - Ask Ubuntu — Mozilla Firefox

I have more windows open than that. xdotools runs into the same limitation. I've read that this is a problem with Wayland as the window manager. Regardless, is there another utility I might try that can move windows around in the Gnome UI?

102

1 + 0

command-line

wayland

xdotool

wmctrl

22.04

Score:1

Ubuntu

vanadium

4/27/24, 7:41 AM

You hit the nail. This happens indeed because you run Wayland. The only windows that are listed by wmctrl -l are those that run on Xorg through Xwayland.

Wayland has caused fragmentation. Methods to manipulate windows now depend on the wayland compositor, so differ between Gnome Shell, KDE desktop and Sway window manager, for example.

dbus calls in Gnome Shell to manipulate windows have now been made private to Gnome Shell only. However, Gnome Shell extensions can expose dbus functionality so it can be accessed through a script.

Such an extension is Window Calls by domandoman. It allows to list windows and manipulate them (resizing, moving, mazimizing, minimizing, activating, closing). Another extension, Window Calls Extended by hseliger expands on this extension by allowing to obtain information on the currently focused window.

This is in my opinion not the ideal world: we depend on extensions. A Gnome Shell extension may become unmaintained and break in future versions of Gnome Shell.

So it will be a matter of starting again from scratch: the old ways do not work on Wayland. Alternatively, you still can decide not to use Wayland and switch to an Xorg session. This is still fully supported.

+ 2

Ed C.

4/27/24, 3:05 PM

I have considered switching away from Wayland. I'll have to do some reading about the differences. Thank you for your help. I am about to give Window Calls a go.

vanadium

4/28/24, 7:22 AM

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