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 https://github.com/forge-ext/forge/issues/180
Window resize using keyboard shortcuts

Known Issues / Limitations

Does not support dynamic workspaces
Does not support vertical monitor setup

Installation

Build it yourself via make install or make dev.
Download from GNOME extensions website.
AUR Package - thanks to @Radeox
Fedora Package - 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. https://github.com/forge-ext/forge/issues/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:

# Compile and override the gnome-shell update repo
make dev

# Or run below, and restart the shell manually
make build && make debug && make install

# X11 - build from source and restarts gnome-shell
make test-x

# Wayland - build from source and starts a wayland instance (no restart)
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

forge-ext / forge

readme