intro

Sometimes I want to make an arbitrary window to be “picture-in-picture”, ie for that window to be above all others, without affecting their layout.

And most importantly, I also want that behaviour to be consistent across workspaces.

A prime example of that is zoom calls, where I may jump between workspaces while we are talking about different subjects.

meat

Luckily i3 supports that well quite easily by using sticky floating windows.

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bindsym $mod+c exec "i3-msg 'floating toggle; sticky toggle;'"

This is triggered by $mod+c.

Now if the program already supports picture in picture (eg firefox), you can make the picture-in-picture window sticky:

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for_window [title="Picture-in-Picture"] sticky enable

Here’s an example me watching Rocket league while writing this post:

source

Picture-in-Picture in i3 (Tyler Menezes) Make Picture In Picture Browser Window Visible On All Workspaces in i3 - Subin’s Blog i3: i3 User’s Guide