I3 Guide.md

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A friendly guide to Vicente’s i3 rice (based in
Luke’s)
Use vim keys (h/j/k/l) to navigate this document. Pressing W will fit it to
window width. + and - zoom in and out. f to toggle fullscreen. q to quit, i for
Night Mode. (These are general mupdf shortcuts.)
• Mod+F1 will show this document at any time.
• By “Mod” I mean the Super Key, usually known as “the Windows Key.”

General
• Capslock is an alternative escape. Makes vim-craft much more efficient.
• Super and Alt keys are switched
• The rice uses the US International keyboard by default. Of course you
have the Spanish layout available. Hold both Shift keys to switch layout.

The Polybar Status Bar
If you’re new to i3, notice the status bar on the top and bottom of the screen.

Shortcut keys
Window basics
Notice the case sensitivity of the shortcuts.
Be sure you play around with these. Be flexible with the basic commands and
the rice will grow on you quick.
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Mod+Enter – Spawn terminal
Mod+q or Q – Close window
Mod+d – rofi (For running commands or programs without shortcuts)
Mod+t – Toggle between spawning vertically and horizontally
Mod+f or F11 – Fullscreen
Mod+h/j/k/l – Move to different windows
Mod+H/J/K/L – Move a window around
Mod+Y/U/I/O – Resize windows
Mod+/ – Spawn vertical terminal
Mod+’ – Spawn horizonal terminal
Mod+s/S – Increase/decrease inner gaps
Mod+z/Z – Increase/decrease outer gaps
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• Mod+D – Reduce gaps to 0 pixels
• Mod+T – Restore gaps to default (15 pixels)
• Mod+Shift+Space – Make a window float (you can still resize and move
floating windows with the same keys above)
• Mod+Space – Switch from a floating window to a non-floating one (or vice
versa)

Basic Programs
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Mod+r – ranger (file browser/manager)
Mod+m – spotify
Mod+a – R calculator (close with Mod+a for reusability)
Mod+i – htop (system info)
Mod+y – calcurse (calendar and schedule)
Mod+u or Ctrl+; – “Dropdown” terminal (close with Mod+u or Ctrl+;
for reusability)
• Mod+Shift+Enter – new tmux window

Larger programs
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Mod+A – Pavucontrol (audio system control)
Mod+w – Google Chrome
Mod+B – Inkscape
Mod+G – GIMP

System
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Mod+R – Restart/refresh i3 (renews configs, does not close any programs)
Mod+x – i3lock (Enter password to return)
Mod+X – shutdown now (Be careful with this one!)*
Mod+Shift+Backspace – reboot (And this one!)
Mod+Shift+Escape – exit i3 (And this one as well!)
Mod+F1 – Shows this document
Mod+F2 – Recreate dynamic config files - shortcuts (see below)
Mod+F3 – arandr (For adding screens/HDMI/VGA connections)
Mod+F4 – Hibernate
Mod+F5 – Reset Network Manager*
Mod+F7 – Increase window transparency
Mod+F8 – Decrease window transparency
Mod+F10 – Switch to laptop screen
Mod+F11 – Switch to VGA display (if available)
Mod+F12 – Switch to dual VGA/laptop display (if available)

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Audio
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Mod+m – spotify
Mod+. – Next track
Mod+, – Previous track
Mod+< – Restart track
Mod+p – Pause
Mod+M – Mute all audio
Mod+v – visualizer
Mod+- – Decrease volume (holding shift increases amount)
Mod++ – Increase volume (holding shift increases amount)
Mod+[ – Back 10 seconds (holding shift increases amount)
Mod+] – Forward 10 seconds (holding shift increases amount)
Mod+A – Pavucontrol (volume control)

Workspaces
There are ten workspaces. They work just like those in vanilla i3 with some
additions.
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Mod+(Number) – Go to that number workspace
Mod+Shift+(Number) – Send window to that workspace
Mod+Tab – Go to previous workspace
Mod+g or escape – Go to left workspace
Mod+; – Go to right workspace
Mod+Shift+Delete – “Porno Emergency!” Press this key sequence if you
want to hide what you have on your screen. Moves to a totally new
workspace, mutes sound, pauses music and brings up distraction windows.

Recording
I use scrot and ffmpeg to make different recordings of the desktop and audio.
All of these recording shortcuts will output into ~/Pictures or ~/Videos, and
will not overwrite previous recordings.
• Print Screen – Take a scrot screenshot
• Shift+Print Screen – Take a scrot screenshot of only selected window
• Ctrl+Shift+Print Screen – Take a scrot screenshot by selecting a window
or rectangle with the mouse.
• Mod+Insert – Begin screencast.
• Mod+ScrollLock – Begin audio recording.
• Mod+Pause – Begin screen recording without audio.
• Mod+Print Screen – Start screenkey
• Mod+Delete – kills ffmpeg, thus ending recordings and screen

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Each of the recording scripts are located in ~/.dotfiles/scripts/. You can
check them out or modify them if needed.

Other buttons
I’ve mapped those extra buttons that some keyboards have (play and pause
buttons, email, webbrowsing buttons, etc.) to what you would expect.

Special traits of my rice
Easy config access
Open a terminal and type cfc. This will open a file where you will see customizable pairs of key shortcuts and config files. Enter any of these shortcuts in zsh
or ranger to immediately open the file in vim.
You may add new entries here and they will be refreshed when you refresh i3
(Mod+R) or simply press Mod+F2,

Folder and config shortcuts
Open a terminal and type cff. This opens a file when you can keep and create
folder shortcuts. There are only a few here now, because I don’t know what your
folder structure is going to look like, but on my machine, I have 81 and growing.
Each line has a shortcut key/keys and its target. These can be used in serveral
applications. In bash, simply press d, the shortcut for ~/Documents and you
will cd there (and automatically ls -a).
ranger works similarly. When in ranger, just press g then the shortcut of the
folder you want to go to. You may also press t plus the shortcut to open a new
tab there. m plus the shortcut moves the selected files to the folder and Y copies
them there. Get good at this. It will make management of even the
most complex file system easy.

Dynamically constructed configs
To keep these different shortcuts in sync, my rice will dynamically reconstruct
the shortcuts config file for zsh and ranger each time you refresh i3 (Mod+R) or
run the refresh configs script (Mod+F2).

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Each time i3 starts or restarts, it will run ~/dotfile/config/scripts/shortcuts,
which reads the entries in the folder shortcut and config shortcut files and then
translate them into the approriate syntax of all two programs.
It then takes that output and appends it to shortcuts config file of each program
(~/.config/zsh/.zshortcuts, ~/.config/ranger/shortcuts.conf) and puts
the output in the proper places for each program.

Explore and customize
Don’t like something about the rice? Change it. If you have a problem, try
figuring it out yourself, but if you can’t, ask on my YouTube or by my email.

I thanks Luke for his rice!
http://lukesmith.xyz

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