Switch to application if it's already running

[achmiral]

When i've opened terminal in ubuntu and i couldn't switch to that terminal again using albert, it just reopen a new terminal.

Any plans to add this feature?

[ManuelSchneid3r]

I don't know about bullet-proof; but if there is no other immediate option, you could just store the pid of a launched app, and switch to that in future (after checking if it is still valid).

Way to hacky. What if the user closes and restarts the app. The behaviour would be inconsistant and get annoying.

Futher philosophing about it introduces some questions. Does one really always want to bring the window of a running instance to the front? I just tried alfred and got annoyed by the behaviour (funny since I use it for years now).

A minor problematic case: If I run nemo (filebrowser) I want a new window to be opened. If I run a terminal I want a new terminal. This is a minor problem since I could get usesd to hit Ctrl+N

A bigger problem are "subapplications" which can be started by desktop actions. E.g. thunderbirds adressbook or whatschrome chromium extension. I want those to be opened and not the main application to be brought to front. OSX has no problems with this since it simply does not support jumplists.

An implementation problem: When there are multiple x clients of the same application, which one to choose?

It think mostly the tabbed applications like browsers would profit of this behaviour other applications rather not.

What do you think?

[georgejecook]

yes. On mac, I use iterm, so I don't want more than one instance, I use slack, intelliJ , chrome, apple mail, finder.

In all cases, I don't want a new instance. As it goes, I might want a new window in that instance (i.e. folders open up new finder windows; but finder only has one instance on mac).

Perhaps a preference setting for now (re-use instances?), then later on, have it as a per app setting?

That way everyone will be happy. One thing I do notice though, is that even if the app opens up a new instance, it still does not bring it to front (i.e. do a google search, launch slacl). It's a real shame, as it breaks the illusion (I have to go back to the default dock/launcher).

One idea would be to use a modifier key to distinguish between opening a new instance or switching to the current instance. The shift key comes to mind for me. For example enter would switch to the current instance, and shift + enter would open a new instance. Browsers have the shift+enter behavior when focused on buttons/links etc, they open the link in a new window rather than in the current instance.

Regarding the question of which open instance to switch to in the case of multiple instances, I would say the most recent.

[pawandubey]

Regarding the issue of multiple open instances, all of them (or the 3 most recent, for example) could be listed in the dropdown as well. ( I am not sure if this is how spotlight does it - but it makes sense in my head ).

I also like the modifier key scenario, but if we list the instances already open, adding an entry to open a new instance should also make sense.

[ManuelSchneid3r]

One idea would be to use a modifier key to distinguish between opening a new instance or switching to the current instance.

Alternative actions are already supported. They can be shown by pressing Tab. Modifiers were dropped temporary in one of the recent versions while I was implementing the alternative actions architecture. They are on the TODO list since then 😄. But they will get in again in one of the next releases.

Well thats core stuff and will come. The actual work related to this issue the proper implementation of the detection of running application instances. Well parsing the output of application, which may or may not be available, is not an option if we really want to keep integrity.

I found some things that might point in the right direction:

• XGetWindowProperty can query informations especially of the root window
• Querying _NET_CLIENT_LIST will list all windows (ordered by usage, yieh)
• XFetchName gives their names.

However programming X is ugly. In an hour I could not achieve any results. If somebody is willing he can continue :D This is what my nerves could handle so far and actually I wanted to implement multithreaded queries, well actully I wanted to improve the indexing and really actually I wanted to reimplement the modifiers and really really actually ... 😄

Still there are some things to investigate:

• Get the desktop where the application lives.
• What if it is hidden?
• Change the desktop.
• Activate the application.

EWMH and ICCCM are the major keywords.

[georgejecook]

this might be of interest?

http://superuser.com/questions/422722/bind-shortcut-switch-to-a-specific-application