jbriales
commented
2 months ago Following up on this, I found there is a special type of window (hacked) in Electron to behave as similarly as possible to those "panel" apps like Spotlight or Alfred: https://github.com/electron/electron/pull/34388
I dove a bit with debug_output on on what's happening on Yabai behind the scenes here for different "panel-like" windows and found some interesting stuff:
- For Spotlight and Alfred, which behave seamlessly UI-wise, there is no event or message ever triggered within yabai's out.log
- E.g. for ChatGPT, which has a panel-like window via shortcut, it is detected by yabai but it didn't trigger any window-related event (created or destroyed). This app however sometimes stops showing up when I invoke it via shortcut and I need to restart it. Not sure if that's related to yabai or not, but worth noticing it's not seamless.
- For my Electron-based panel-like window, it's visually and behaviorally good, but it triggers (undesired) window-related events in yabai (logs below).
Example log for ChatGPT panel creation/destruction.
``` window_manager_create_and_add_window:61893 ChatGPT - (AXWindow:AXSystemDialog:1) window_manager_create_and_add_window ignoring incorrectly marked window ChatGPT 61893 window info: { "id":61893, "pid":5894, "app":"ChatGPT", "title":"", "scratchpad":"", "frame":{ "x":1078.0000, "y":1328.0000, "w":404.0000, "h":48.0000 }, "role":"AXWindow", "subrole":"AXSystemDialog", "root-window":true, "display":1, "space":8, "level":3, "sub-level":0, "layer":"above", "sub-layer":"normal", "opacity":1.0000, "split-type":"none", "split-child":"none", "stack-index":0, "can-move":true, "can-resize":false, "has-focus":false, "has-shadow":true, "has-parent-zoom":false, "has-fullscreen-zoom":false, "has-ax-reference":true, "is-native-fullscreen":false, "is-visible":true, "is-minimized":false, "is-hidden":false, "is-floating":true, "is-sticky":true, "is-grabbed":false } EVENT_HANDLER_WINDOW_DESTROYED: ChatGPT 61893 ```
Electron's panel-window logs
``` window_manager_create_and_add_window:104425 Electron - Launcher (AXWindow:AXStandardWindow:1) event_signal_flush: transmitting window_created to 2 subscriber(s) EVENT_HANDLER_MOUSE_DOWN: 1367.31, 1020.96 EVENT_HANDLER_MOUSE_UP: 1367.31, 1020.96 window_manager_create_and_add_window:104425 Electron - Launcher (AXWindow:AXStandardWindow:1) EVENT_HANDLER_DAEMON_MESSAGE: query --windows scratchpad,is-visible,is-floating,id EVENT_HANDLER_DAEMON_MESSAGE: query --windows id,pid,app,title,has-focus,stack-index,scratchpad,is-floating,is-visible,is-sticky --space EVENT_HANDLER_WINDOW_DESTROYED: Electron 104425 event_signal_flush: transmitting window_destroyed to 2 subscriber(s) EVENT_HANDLER_WINDOW_DESTROYED: Electron 104425 ```
Window data for Electron's launcher window (looks like a completely normal window :/)
``` { "id":109120, "pid":29983, "app":"Electron", "title":"Launcher", "scratchpad":"", "frame":{ "x":1080.0000, "y":542.0000, "w":400.0000, "h":300.0000 }, "role":"AXWindow", "subrole":"AXStandardWindow", "root-window":true, "display":1, "space":8, "level":3, "sub-level":0, "layer":"above", "sub-layer":"normal", "opacity":1.0000, "split-type":"none", "split-child":"none", "stack-index":0, "can-move":true, "can-resize":false, "has-focus":false, "has-shadow":true, "has-parent-zoom":false, "has-fullscreen-zoom":false, "has-ax-reference":true, "is-native-fullscreen":false, "is-visible":true, "is-minimized":false, "is-hidden":false, "is-floating":true, "is-sticky":true, "is-grabbed":false } ```
Any ideas based on this on how to make the Electron's panel fully transparent to yabai?
(This may be out of scope but worth asking for any potential hints or tricks)
I'm trying to create a minimal launcher, similar to Spotlight or Alfred, that's written in Electron: https://gist.github.com/jbriales/c8b451973dfc2a60749b904f78a588f4
It seems those launcher windows are fully "transparent" to yabai (they don't get listed as windows at all), but the window created by Electron is listed:
Window query details
``` { "id":55513, "pid":25538, "app":"ylauncher", "title":"Launcher", "scratchpad":"", "frame":{ "x":1080.0000, "y":650.0000, "w":400.0000, "h":300.0000 }, "role":"AXWindow", "subrole":"AXStandardWindow", "root-window":true, "display":1, "space":3, "level":0, "sub-level":0, "layer":"normal", "sub-layer":"normal", "opacity":1.0000, "split-type":"none", "split-child":"none", "stack-index":0, "can-move":true, "can-resize":false, "has-focus":true, "has-shadow":true, "has-parent-zoom":false, "has-fullscreen-zoom":false, "has-ax-reference":true, "is-native-fullscreen":false, "is-visible":true, "is-minimized":false, "is-hidden":false, "is-floating":true, "is-sticky":false, "is-grabbed":false } ```
Is there any special setup in yabai so that those launcher windows get fully ignored? Or is it potentially sth missing on my launcher-app side?
This is important e.g. to avoid noisy signals about focus/front-app changes when opening this quick launcher.