Hello everyone!

I would like certain windows to remain in full screen even if another tiled/floating window is opened on the same workspace. I would also like the tiled/floating windows to remain above the full screen window so that they don’t disappear if I click on the full screen window.

The primary use case for this is games such as Eve Online, where I use a number of external tools which may or may not spawn new windows over the game window (e.g. the Rift Intel tool, which spawns a new small floating window whenever someone writes in one of the intel channels you set Rift to monitor). I dont want it to exit full screen mode. If a tiled or floating window is opened on the same window then Eve also goes into tiled mode.

Reading up a little about this I came across the concept of layers in bspwm, but I’m not entirely sure if they fit for this use case. Here’s an example of what I don’t want to happen:

(The Hostile Reported popup window is from Rift and spawns wherever focus is)

Normally I have it be entirely fullscreen. I’d like to be able to interact with these and other popup windows in tiled/floating mode without pulling Eve out of fullscreen.

How can I begin to work on this? Of course if you would like more info please ask and I’ll provide it.

Thanks in advance!

[SOLUTION (I think)] I had to add this rule for my Eve client:

bspc rule -a "steam_app_8500" state=fullscreen layer=below border=off focus=on

but also had to add this rule for the Rift Intel tool:

bspc rule -a "dev-nohus-rift-MainKt" state=floating layer=above

I guess this is the way to do it for any set of programs where you want one to keep its fullscreen status but have others above it

NOTE: This also applied the same behaviour to the eve launcher since the way steam proton works both the launcher and the clients have the same WM_CLASS. If anyone knows any way to distinguish them in bspwm please let me know. Here is what I get for each when running xprop:

$ xprop | grep -E 'CLASS|NAME'
_NET_WM_NAME(UTF8_STRING) = "EVE Launcher" WM_ICON_NAME(STRING) = "EVE Launcher" WM_NAME(STRING) = "EVE Launcher" WM_LOCALE_NAME(STRING) = "en_US.UTF-8" WM_CLASS(STRING) = "steam_app_8500", "steam_app_8500"
# Click on launcher

$ xprop | grep -E 'CLASS|NAME'
_NET_WM_NAME(UTF8_STRING) = "EVE" WM_ICON_NAME(STRING) = "EVE" WM_NAME(STRING) = "EVE" WM_LOCALE_NAME(STRING) = "en_US.UTF-8" WM_CLASS(STRING) = "steam_app_8500", "steam_app_8500"
# Click on client

Ive tried rewriting the rule as such:

bspc rule -a "steam_app_8500:steam_app_8500:EVE" state=fullscreen layer=below

and also adding a rule for the launcher specifically (before the client rule):

bspc rule -a "steam_app_8500:steam_app_8500:EVE Launcher" state=tiled layer=normal

But the launcher still opens in fullscreen. The client however seems to be fine - it opens in fullscreen on the ‘below’ layer so when a new window is opened on the same workspace it isn’t forced into tiled mode.