Priority of assign statements in i3 configuration

Question

I want to assign a specific app to a workspace in i3. That app is ranger and I want to launch it via alacritty

I've already chosen to launch alacritty in ws_term workspace and I want to launch ranger in ws_fm.

Running xprop returns two classes for ranger -> "Ranger", "Alacritty"

In my i3/config file I have the following directives (in this exact order):

assign [class="Alacritty"] $ws_term
...
assign [instance="Ranger"] $ws_fm

The problem is that even though I'm explicitly specifying Ranger as last, it always picks the "Alacritty" class and places the app in the wrong workspace. Same issue if I use title= or class= instead of instance.

How can I set the priority in the assign statements in case there are multiple matches for an app?

Answer 1

This is described in the userguide:

Assignments are processed by i3 in the order in which they appear in the config file. The first one which matches the window wins and later assignments are not considered.

The ranger assignment must be before the alacritty assignment.