How I turned Unity into a tiling window manager

After a long and loving battle experience using i3 as my workhorse window manager on my old laptop, I’ve decided to mainly use Unity on my new laptop instead. I’m a huge fan of tiling window managers as a result of my i3 experience, however, the time it took to configure everything is longer than I wanted to spend getting set up before getting to work with my new laptop. (Read: just can’t resist spending hours ricing.) I got really hooked on i3’s functionality though and needed to find ways to replicate it in Unity. Thankfully it only really took a few small adjustments. For anyone looking to use a full-featured desktop environment that comes pretty close to the functionality of a tiling window manager, I hope these tweaks are useful for you. Workspaces You can create workspaces in Unity that resemble workspaces in i3. Set up workspaces Unity Tweak Tool > Workspace Settings Where to find it: Set “Horizontal workspaces” to as many as you’d like, and “Vertical workspaces” to 1. This will allow you to access spaces by moving right and left. Keyboard Shortcuts System Settings > Keyboard Where to find it: Switch workspaces System Settings > Keyboard > Navigation Where to find it: You can set keyboard shortcuts that assign numbers to your workspaces, and that let you move left and right between them. Move windows around (snap) System Settings > Keyboard > Windows Where to find it: You can maximize and restore windows using shortcut keys. In my case I have them set to “Ctrl+Super+Up” and “Ctrl+Super+Down” respectively. I discovered this by accident, and I’m not sure if it’s listed somewhere I can’t find. If I press “Ctrl+Super” and a left or right arrow key, I can snap a window to the left or right half of the screen. Custom shortcuts System Settings > Keyboard > Custom Shortcuts Where to find it: “Custom Shortcuts” allows you to set any keybinds you’re missing from i3. The most important ones for me were the shortcuts to launch a terminal and to use rofi. Lose the Launcher Unity Tweak Tool > Launcher Where to find it: Turn on “Auto-hide” and set “Reveal sensitivity” to zero. Start programs automatically at logon Startup Applications Where to find it: Similar to using with Cron. @reboot Ricing C’mon, of course I wasn’t just going to leave it stock… Unity Tweak Tool You can do a fair bit with Unity Tweak Tool. Here’s my setup: : Numix : Numix-circle : Paper : Noto Sans CJK JP Light 10 : Ubuntu Mono Regular : Sans Regular 11 : Noto Sans CJK JP Light 10 Theme Icons Cursor Default font Monospace font Document font Window title font Remove Panel (top status bar) shadow Rename or delete this file: Where to find it: /usr/share/unity/icons/panel_shadow.png Log out and in again to restart Unity. Panel opacity Unity Tweak Tool > Panel > Transparency level Where to find it: Misc other settings Unity Tweak Tool > Web Apps > Integration prompts OFF, uncheck Preauthorized domains Where to find it: Autostart Open VPN Not strictly a Unity thing, but useful. Download required packages: openvpn network-manager-openvpn network-manager-openvpn-gnome Download your file from your console page and rename it with . Create a file with your username on line 1 and your password on line 2. (Yeah, it’s plain text. Ubuntu’s encrypted folder is a good place to store it.) client.ovpn client.conf keys.txt .Private In the file: - replace instances of “openvpn” with your actual IP address - add the file name directly after , just like this: client.conf keys.txt auth-user-pass auth-user-pass keys.txt Add both and to client.conf keys.txt /etc/openvpn Finally, in , uncomment /etc/default/openvpn AUTOSTART="all" Display IP address in the Panel Uses a light little utility called . indicator-ip From the terminal, run . sudo apt install indicator-ip Add it to Startup Applications to run it automatically. If you have a cat Maybe uncheck this System Settings > Keyboard box: Hope that was helpful! Check back for more tips later — I’ll continue to update this post as I discover them! Have one to share? Let me know! Originally published at vickylai.io .