7

I'm using Gnome. In vim, I want to map a key to switch to Firefox. I know that I should use bash commands (a command in form of !...). Is it possible to switch to an application using its PID?

Improve this question
2
  • So, in X terms, you want to raise and focus a window from a shell?
    – bahamat
    Commented Aug 9, 2012 at 16:56
  • 1
    You probably need to get the x window id from the pid and send a _NET_ACTIVE_WINDOW message afterwards
    – Ulrich Dangel
    Commented Aug 9, 2012 at 17:33

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
16

The first two examples will activate the first listed Firefox window, based on its Title. Firefox always ends its Title-bar with "Mozilla Firefox"... "listed" means: as listed by wmctrl querying X. The first example uses a fuzzy match for the title. 

wmctrl -a "Mozilla Firefox"

Or, to get the title more specifically: 

wmctrl -Fa "$(wmctrl -l | sed -rn 's/^([^ ]+ +){3}(.*Mozilla Firefox)$/\2/p')"

If you know the PID of the process behind a window, you can use this command: 

wmctrl -ia $(wmctrl -lp | awk -vpid=$PID '$3==pid {print $1; exit}')
Improve this answer

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .