Note

I am looking for a new maintainer of this extension. I will archive this at the end of the year if no one takes it.

Forge

Forge is a GNOME Shell extension that provides tiling/window management.

Features

• Tree-based tiling with vertical and horizontal split containers similar to i3-wm
• Vim-like keybindings for navigation/swapping windows/moving windows in the containers
• Drag and drop tiling
• Support for floating windows, smart gaps and focus hint
• Customizable shortcuts in extension preferences
• Some support for multi-display
• Tiling support per workspace
• Update hint color scheme from Preferences
• Stacked tiling layout
• Works on GNOME 3.36+ (feature-freeze) and 40. X11 and Wayland
• Swap current window with the last active window
• Auto Split or Quarter Tiling
• Show/hide tab decoration via keybinding forge-ext#180
• Window resize using keyboard shortcuts

Installation

• Extensions GNOME site: https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/4481/forge/
• Download/clone the source and make install, restart gnome-shell after or make dev.
• AUR Package: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/gnome-shell-extension-forge - thanks to @Radeox
• Fedora Package: https://packages.fedoraproject.org/pkgs/gnome-shell-extension-forge/gnome-shell-extension-forge/ - thanks to @carlwgeorge

Forge Keybinding Defaults

See the acceptable key combinations on the wiki

Action	Shortcut
Increase active window size left	<Ctrl> + <Super> + y
Decrease active window size left	<Ctrl> + <Shift> + <Super> + o
Increase active window size bottom	<Ctrl> + <Super> + u
Decrease active window size bottom	<Ctrl> + <Shift> + <Super> + i
Increase active window size top	<Ctrl> + <Super> + i
Decrease active window size top	<Ctrl> + <Shift> + <Super> + u
Increase active window size right	<Ctrl> + <Super> + o
Decrease active window size right	<Ctrl> + <Shift> + <Super> + y
Open preferences	<Super> + period
Toggle tiling mode	<Super> + w
Focus left	<Super> + h
Focus right	<Super> + l
Focus up	<Super> + k
Focus down	<Super> + j
Swap current window with last active	<Super> + Return
Swap active window left	<Ctrl> + <Super> + h
Swap active window right	<Ctrl> + <Super> + l
Swap active window up	<Ctrl> + <Super> + k
Swap active window down	<Ctrl> + <Super> + j
Move active window left	<Shift> + <Super> + h
Move active window right	<Shift> + <Super> + l
Move active window up	<Shift> + <Super> + k
Move active window down	<Shift> + <Super> + j
Split container horizontally	<Super> + z
Split container vertically	<Super> + v
Toggle split container	<Super> + g
Gap increase	<Ctrl> + <Super> + Plus
Gap decrease	<Ctrl> + <Super> + Minus
Toggle focus hint	<Super> + x
Toggle active workspace tiling	<Shift> + <Super> + w
Toggle stacked layout	<Shift> + <Super> + s
Toggle tabbed layout	<Shift> + <Super> + t
Show/hide tab decoration	<Ctrl> + <Alt> + y
Activate tile drag-drop	Start dragging - Mod key configuration in prefs
Snap active window left two thirds	<Ctrl> + <Alt> + e
Snap active window right two thirds	<Ctrl> + <Alt> + t
Snap active window left third	<Ctrl> + <Alt> + d
Snap active window right third	<Ctrl> + <Alt> + g
Persist toggle floating for active window	<Super> + c
Persist toggle floating for active window and its window class	<Super><Shift> + c

For any shortcut conflicts, the user has to manually configure those for now from the GNOME Control Center > Keyboard > Customize Shortcuts. forge-ext#37

Forge Override Paths

• Window Overrides: $HOME/.config/forge/config/windows.json
• Stylesheet Overrides: $HOME/.config/forge/stylesheet/forge/stylesheet.css

GNOME Defaults

GNOME Shell has built in support for workspace management and seems to work well - so Forge will not touch those.

User is encouraged to bind the following:

• Switching/moving windows to different workspaces
• Switching to numbered, previous or next workspace

Development

• The main branch contains gnome-4x code.
• The legacy and gnome-3-36 are the same and is now the source for gnome-3x.

Local Development Setup

• Install NodeJS 16+
• Install gettext
• Run npm install
• Commands:

# X11
make test-x

# Wayland
make test-wayland

# Formatting, when you do npm install, 
# husky gets installed should force prettier formatting during commit

npm run format

Contributing

• Please be nice, friendly and welcoming on discussions/tickets.
• See existing issues or file a new ticket with title bug: short description if it doesn't exist.

Credits

Thank you to:

• Forge extension contributors
• Michael Stapelberg/contributors for i3
• System76/contributors for pop-shell
• ReworkCSS/contributors for css-parse/css-stringify