Question

As described in this and this issue, my floating windows are sometimes rendered behind other windows when using xmonad together with compton. One possible workaround I want to try is to make xmonad move new floating windows slightly, which should render them above other windows. However, being new to xmonad and Haskell, I have no idea how to achieve this.

How do I tell xmonad “When a new floating window is created, move it one pixel to the right”?

(xmonad-0.10 and xmonad-contrib-0.10)

Answer 1

For people coming here who really want to shift a window, here is how you do it:

In your $HOME/.xmonad.xmonad.hs:

Add some imports (you can skip existing, note the qualified import of Xmonad.StackSet and the “W.shift” below, you will have to adjust the name if you imported it under another name)

import XMonad.Hooks.XPropManage
import qualified XMonad.StackSet as W
import XMonad.Actions.TagWindows
import Data.List

And add

manageHook = xPropManageHook xPropMatches

xPropMatches :: [XPropMatch]
xPropMatches = [ ( [(wM_CLASS, any (const True))], (return (W.shift "2"))) ]

that should work for all windows. If you want to control the matching,

(const True)

can be replaced with anything that has the type

String -> Bool

e.g.

("Vimperator" `isInfixOf`)

etc

Source:
XPropManage