i3-alternating-layout VS i3-auto-layout

i3 has manual tiling by choice and it isn't necessary to port automatic tiling to i3 itself. You can make a service that utilizes i3's IPC that does that. And of course people have done so[1][2].

[1]: https://github.com/olemartinorg/i3-alternating-layout

I prefer i3 to any other twm, but the lack of any automatic layout drives me nuts, so I use https://github.com/olemartinorg/i3-alternating-layout in my autostarts

The original concept comes from https://github.com/olemartinorg/i3-alternating-layout. I only wrote a script capable of working on both i3 and sway.

The problem with this fairly complex solution is that the easier path by far is simpler window arrangements, multiple monitors, and many workspaces. Once you have more windows than fit on a workspace its easier just to have more workspaces and 1-3 windows is what basically universally fits on most monitors.

If you organize more things in the same space you probably need indivdual apps that themselves have tabs like browsers, editors, IDEs rather than more windows.

Personally I use https://github.com/chmln/i3-auto-layout to make slightly better layouts automatically be automatically alternating between v and h splits and find this fits my needs 95% of the time.

Shit work under i3 is already very small but if you wanted to reduce it further I think you could probably go a long way with a very simple feature.

Add a save button that saves current layout to a list like so

Browser, calculator

Browser, pdf reader

terminal terminal terminal

ide terminal terminal

Then have a restore function that simply walks the list finds the entry that matches the kind and number of window and shoves existing windows into that layout. You can at creation time use something like i3-save-tree, edit the json, yada yada but its all fairly manual and I think for the use case it would be relatively simpler. The few non standard all match for me a simple pattern eg there really isn't 2 different ways I want IDE terminal terminal

i3-auto-layout is faster and less resource usage