hideIt.sh

hideIt.sh will move windows out of your screen and show them again
when you mouse over a predefined region or the window itself.

Initially I wrote this script to imitate gnome-shells systray in combination with polybar.
This sript however was very much bound to my environment.

Eventually I decided it would be a great idea to share it with the unix community
and re-wrote the whole thing, making it more generic and (hopefully) userfriendly.

Table of Contents

• Requirements
• Installation
  • Manual
  • Arch Linux
• Usage
• Examples
  • Polybar systray
  • Polybar (my main bar)
  • Nautilus?
  • By keyboard (SIGUSR1)
• Q&A

Requirements

1. xdotool
2. xwininfo
3. xev

Installation

Manual

First, make sure all requirements are installed.
Than, simply download hideIt.sh to a location of your choice and use it.

# Using wget
wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Tadly/hideIt.sh/master/hideIt.sh

# Using curl
curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Tadly/hideIt.sh/master/hideIt.sh -o hideIt.sh

Arch Linux

hideIt.sh can be found in the aur

# Using pacaur
pacaur -S hideit.sh-git

Usage

You can read some help text right?

./hideIt.sh --help

Examples

Polybar systray

A standalone systray configuration could look something like this:

[bar/systray]
# As small as possible, polybar will resize it when items get added
width = 1

# Whatever fits your needs
height = 40

# Bottom left to imitate gnome-shells systray
bottom = true

# REQUIRED for us to be able to move the window
override-redirect = true

modules-right = placeholder

tray-position = left
tray-maxsize = 16
tray-padding = 8
tray-transparent = false
tray-background = #282C34

[module/placeholder]
# Just a dummy module as polybar always requires at least one amodule
type = custom/script
width = 1

Now lets hide it:

# Find the windows name
$ xprop | grep WM_NAME
WM_NAME(STRING) = "Polybar tray window"

# Hide it
$ ./hideIt.sh --name '^Polybar tray window$' --region 0x1080+10+-40

Wallpaper

Polybar (my main bar)

You don't need my whole polybar config right? Right!

I only did this for the purpose of testing while working on this script but... I think I like it! :)

Wallpaper

Nautilus?

Heck... why stop at the statusbar amiright?

Wallpaper

Disclaimer: Yes, I know, this is getting silly but I gotta demonstrate how versatile this is ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

By keyboard (SIGUSR1)

Instead of using your mouse to trigger the show/hide event, you can also send a SIGUSR1 to the process.
For this to work, the process needs to be started using the -S, --signal argument.

This will than ignore the mouse completely and only listen for SIGUSR1 at which it will either show or hide the window.

For example:

$ ./hideIt.sh --name drop-down-terminal --signal

To send a SIGUSR1-signal you can use hideIt.sh itself:

$ ./hideIt.sh --name drop-down-terminal --toggle

or use plain old kill itself:

$ kill -SIGUSR1 <pid>

Q&A

How does the script determine when to trigger?

Depends on whether you use --region, --hover or --signal.

• --region does do polling and the interval can be change via --interval
• --hover uses xev to monitor the window and is therefor event based
• --signal waits for a SIGUSR1

My system tray goes nuts when using --hover! What the heck?

This is because each systray element (the icon) is its own window resulting
in entry -> leave -> entry -> ... events due to the window underneath your
cursor constantly changing.
To work around this, use --region or --signal instead.