screenful VS awesome-sharedtags

You can either: - use awesome signals: screen.connect_signal("property::geometry", yourfunc) screen.connect_signal("list", yourfunc) ( https://awesomewm.org/doc/api/classes/screen.html#screen.list, https://awesomewm.org/doc/api/classes/screen.html#screen.geometry ) and poke s.outputs from function yourfunc(s) (along with parsing io.popen("xrandr -q --current") if needed), but that will only catch "connected & active" displays (i.e. not in xrandr --output XXX --off* state) - parse output (also with lua) of *xev -root -event randr -1 (that should catch everything) - use something along the lines of udev hook + /sys parsing if you use drm enabled driver (something along the lines of https://github.com/dluksza/screenful ) - use hybrid of above

If you use any tiling layout, they will adjust to a screen size change. However some additional actions should be taken to move your tag structure from one screen to another. I use shared tags to move my tags.

Make Xorg believe that window is visible. For example you can add a fake screen which will show all offscreen windows or at least ones you'd like to capture. On this way you'll face another problem: you can't show the same window twice. Moreover the window may be tagged with tags only on the same screen. It is possible to partially overcome these limitations (see sharedtags for example).

After you figure out your power and screens configuration you'll need to move the tags to other screen once their screen disappeared. It's already implemented in sharedtags module. Even if you're going to implement it yourself you can use the module as a reference.

I have an issue with using charitable / sharedtags and rules, The issue is that when I spawn an application/client that has rules, while the workspace/tag it is supposed to spawn on is visible on another screen but not focused, awesome freezes/crashes.

You can't show the same window on the both screens simultaneously (that's an Xorg limitation). Look at shared tags. This module allows you to move a tag with all clients between screens.

JFYI did you try https://github.com/Drauthius/awesome-sharedtags?

You can have a look at the shared tags modules that implement a way to share tags across multiple screen : https://github.com/Drauthius/awesome-sharedtags