Quickstart

You have installed skippy-xd! Simply run skippy-xd to activate:

skippy-xd

You will see that the windows fly out until they do not overlap. This is the "expose" mode. You can then select the window of choice with mouse and/or keyboard.

Gray boxes and Daemon mode

You might see gray boxes perhaps with icons, rather than window previews. That is because these windows are "unmapped": your window might be minimized, shaded, or on a different virtual desktop, and your window manager throws away the window graphics as optimization. As compensation, skippy-xd draws a box, and its icon if available, as marker for each of these windows.

By invoking skippy-xd in daemon mode, we can do something better: when skippy-xd is in daemon mode, it keeps track of all windows, and even if the window manager unmaps a window, skippy-xd would keep the latest snapshot of that window, and display that instead of a gray box. To invoke daemon mode, do

skippy-xd --start-daemon

The window needs to be mapped (unminimized or otherwise shown graphically) while skippy-xd is running in daemon mode to be able to show its latest snapshot. Thus, one good strategy is to start skippy-xd as daemon when you start your X session.

On each activation of skippy-xd, connect to the daemon by doing

skippy-xd --expose

Different metaphors of skippy-xd

Skippy-xd is kind of a 3 in 1, in that it allows 3 different "metaphors": switch, expose, paging.

skippy-xd --switch --next
skippy-xd --expose
skippy-xd --paging

Switch is the good-old alt-tab, allowing live-preview of windows, arranged based on window last-used ordering.

Expose arranges the windows so that they do not overlap, and gives the user a quick visual overview of their windows, which allow quick window selection.

Paging shows all virtual desktops and their windows in an overview mode, and the user selects the virtual desktop with mouse and/or keyboard.

In addition, the 3 metaphors has these hard-coded behaviour:

behaviour	switch	expose	paging
layout	always XD	user config	always grid
prev/next ordering	always row-row	always column-column	always row-row
animation	never animation	user config	user config
virtual desktop filtering	user config	user config	all desktops

Set up

Now that you have tried the awesome features of skippy-xd, time to set up for real for daily usage!

For simplest set up, simply use your favourite hot key app for these bindings:

hot key	metaphor	command
Alt Tab	switch	skippy-xd --switch --next
Shift Alt Tab	switch	skippy-xd --switch --prev
F11	expose	skippy-xd --expose
F12	paging	skippy-xd --paging

For full set up and customization tips and tricks, see https://github.com/felixfung/skippy-xd/wiki/Advanced-Uses-and-Special-Set-Ups

skippy-xd --help

Usage: skippy-xd [command]

The available commands are:

  [no command]        - activate expose once without daemon.

  --help              - show this message.
  --debug-log         - enable debugging logs.

  --config            - load/reload configuration file from specified path.
  --config-reload     - reload configuration file without changing path.

  --start-daemon      - runs as daemon mode.
  --stop-daemon       - terminates skippy-xd daemon.

  --switch            - connects to daemon and activate switch.
  --expose            - connects to daemon and activate expose.
  --paging            - connects to daemon and activate paging.

  --wm-class          - displays only windows of specific class.

  --toggle            - activates via toggle mode.
  --pivot             - activates via pivot mode with specified pivot key.

  --prev              - focus on the previous window.
  --next              - focus on the next window.