---
title: "pi3-smart-workspace"
description: "A small i3 helper that makes $mod+1 the first workspace on the screen your mouse is on, instead of workspace 1 somewhere else entirely."
date: 2020-09-04
updated: 2026-09-30
extra:
  lang: en
  repo: pi3-smart-workspace
  sprog: Python
  licens: Apache-2.0
  platforme: [Linux (i3)]
  aur: [pi3-smart-workspace]
  tags: [i3, linux, python]
  alternates: [{lang: da, path: /projekter/pi3-smart-workspace}, {lang: en, path: /en/projects/pi3-smart-workspace}]
---

With several monitors in i3, workspaces are numbered globally. Press `$mod+1` and you jump to workspace 1, even if it lives on the left screen and you're working on the right one. `pi3-smart-workspace` turns that around: the key picks the N-th workspace on the screen your mouse is on. `$mod+1` is always the first workspace wherever the mouse is, and a multi-monitor setup feels a lot more coherent.

It reads your running i3 config and uses three things from it: output names (`set $<var> <output>`), workspace names, and the lines that bind a workspace to an output. The order of those lines decides which workspace is number 1, 2 and 3 on each screen. It can also move the focused window there, and follow it if you like.

The first version is from 2020.

## Install

From the AUR or PyPI:

```bash
yay -S pi3-smart-workspace
pip install pi3-smart-workspace
```

It needs Python 3.14 and a running i3 session.

## Setup

The easy way is to let it write the config itself:

```bash
pi3-smart-workspace init
```

It finds every active monitor through i3 and writes a folder with a `workspaces.conf` per output and a `bindings.conf` with `$mod+N`, `$mod+Shift+N` and `$mod+Ctrl+N`. Each output gets its own contiguous range of global numbers, and the index after the colon (for example `9:1`) means "first workspace on this monitor". Add the include lines `init` prints to your i3 config and reload with `$mod+Shift+r`.

If you'd rather bind the keys yourself, it looks like this:

```
bindsym $mod+1 exec --no-startup-id pi3-smart-workspace -i 1
bindsym $mod+Shift+1 exec --no-startup-id pi3-smart-workspace -i 1 -s
bindsym $mod+Ctrl+1 exec --no-startup-id pi3-smart-workspace -i 1 -s -k
```