Frequently Asked Questions¶
Why the name Qtile?¶
Users often wonder, why the Q? Does it have something to do with Qt? No. Below is an IRC excerpt where cortesi explains the great trial that ultimately brought Qtile into existence, thanks to the benevolence of the Open Source Gods. Praise be to the OSG!
ramnes: what does Qtile mean?
ramnes: what's the Q?
@tych0: ramnes: it doesn't :)
@tych0: cortesi was just looking for the first letter that wasn't registered
in a domain name with "tile" as a suffix
@tych0: qtile it was :)
cortesi: tych0, dx: we really should have something more compelling to
explain the name. one day i was swimming at manly beach in sydney,
where i lived at the time. suddenly, i saw an enormous great white
right beside me. it went for my leg with massive, gaping jaws, but
quick as a flash, i thumb-punched it in both eyes. when it reared
back in agony, i saw that it had a jagged, gnarly scar on its
stomach... a scar shaped like the letter "Q".
cortesi: while it was distracted, i surfed a wave to shore. i knew that i
had to dedicate my next open source project to the ocean gods, in
thanks for my lucky escape. and thus, qtile got its name...
When I first start xterm/urxvt/rxvt containing an instance of Vim, I see text and layout corruption. What gives?¶
Vim is not handling terminal resizes correctly. You can fix the problem by starting your xterm with the "-wf" option, like so:
xterm -wf -e vim
Alternatively, you can just cycle through your layouts a few times, which usually seems to fix it.
How do I know which modifier specification maps to which key?¶
To see a list of modifier names and their matching keys, use the xmodmap
command. On my system, the output looks like this:
$ xmodmap
xmodmap: up to 3 keys per modifier, (keycodes in parentheses):
shift Shift_L (0x32), Shift_R (0x3e)
lock Caps_Lock (0x9)
control Control_L (0x25), Control_R (0x69)
mod1 Alt_L (0x40), Alt_R (0x6c), Meta_L (0xcd)
mod2 Num_Lock (0x4d)
mod3
mod4 Super_L (0xce), Hyper_L (0xcf)
mod5 ISO_Level3_Shift (0x5c), Mode_switch (0xcb)
My "pointer mouse cursor" isn't the one I expect it to be!¶
Qtile should set the default cursor to left_ptr, you must install xcb-util-cursor if you want support for themed cursors.
How can I get my groups to stick to screens?¶
This behaviour can be replicated by configuring your keybindings to not move
groups between screens. For example if you want groups "1"
, "2"
and
"3"
on one screen and "q"
, "w"
, and "e"
on the other, instead
of binding keys to lazy.group[name].toscreen()
, use this:
def go_to_group(name: str) -> Callable:
def _inner(qtile: Qtile) -> None:
if len(qtile.screens) == 1:
qtile.groups_map[name].cmd_toscreen()
return
if name in '123':
qtile.focus_screen(0)
qtile.groups_map[name].cmd_toscreen()
else:
qtile.focus_screen(1)
qtile.groups_map[name].cmd_toscreen()
return _inner
for i in groups:
keys.append(Key([mod], i.name, lazy.function(go_to_group(i.name))))
If you use the GroupBox
widget you can make it reflect this behaviour:
groupbox1 = widget.GroupBox(visible_groups=['1', '2', '3'])
groupbox2 = widget.GroupBox(visible_groups=['q', 'w', 'e'])
And if you jump between having single and double screens then modifying the visible groups on the fly may be useful:
@hook.subscribe.screens_reconfigured
async def _():
if len(qtile.screens) > 1:
groupbox1.visible_groups = ['1', '2', '3']
else:
groupbox1.visible_groups = ['1', '2', '3', 'q', 'w', 'e']
if hasattr(groupbox1, 'bar'):
groupbox1.bar.draw()
Where can I find example configurations and other scripts?¶
Please visit our qtile-examples repo which contains examples of users' configurations, scripts and other useful links.
Where are the log files for Qtile?¶
The log files for qtile are at ~/.local/share/qtile/qtile.log
.
Why do I get an AttributeError
when building Qtile?¶
If you see this message:
AttributeError: cffi library 'libcairo.so.2' has no function, constant or global variable named 'cairo_xcb_surface_create'
when building Qtile then your Cairo version lacks XCB support.
See Cairo Error for further information.
How can I match the bar with picom?¶
You can use "QTILE_INTERNAL:32c = 1"
in your picom.conf to match the bar.
This will match all internal Qtile windows, so if you want to avoid that or to
target bars individually, you can set a custom property and match that:
mybar = Bar(...)
@hook.subscribe.startup
def _():
mybar.window.window.set_property("QTILE_BAR", 1, "CARDINAL", 32)
This would enable matching on mybar
's window using "QTILE_BAR:32c = 1"
.
See 2526 and 1515 for more discussion.