gnome-shell-extension-another-window-session-manager
Close open windows gracefully and save them as a session. And you can restore them when necessary manually or automatically at startup.
Most importantly, it supports both X11 and Wayland!
This extension is based on several Gnome technologies and APIs including Meta, Shell and St(Shell Toolkit).
Screenshot
Overview
Close open windows
Click item to close open windows:
After confirm to close:
Save open windows
Click item to save open windows as a session:
After confirm to save:
Activate the current session to be restored at startup
Preferences
Restore sessions
Close windows
Main features
- Restore the previous session at startup. disabled by default, to enable it please activate
Restore previous apps and windows at startup under Restore sessions. (See also: Restore previous apps and windows at startup).
- Save running apps and windows automatically when necessary, this will be used to restore the previous session at startup.
- Close running apps and windows automatically before
Log Out, Restart, Power Off. disabled by default, to enable it please activate Auto close session under Close windows. (See also: Auto close session).
- Close running windows gracefully
- Close apps with multiple windows gracefully via
ydotool so you don’t lose sessions of this app (See also: How to make Close by rules work)
- Save running apps and windows manually
- Restore a selected session at startup (See also: #9). disabled by default.
- Restore a saved session manually
- Restore window state, including
Always on Top, Always on Visible Workspace and maximization
- Restore window workspace, size and position
- Restore 2 column window tiling
- Stash all supported window states so that those states will be restored after gnome shell restarts via
Alt+F2 -> r or killall -3 gnome-shell.
- Move windows to their own workspace according to a saved session
- Support multi-monitor
- Remove saved session to trash
- Search saved session by the session name fuzzily
- …
Close windows
Auto close session
Enable this feature through Auto close session under Close windows:
After you click the Log Out/Restart/Power Off button:
If the second button on the above dialog has via AWSM, it means this feature is enabled.
After you click Log Out(via AWSM), all apps and windows will be closed automatically by AWSM. But some apps might be still opening, you have to close them yourself; then if there are no running apps, this extension logs out the current user immediately.
You can move it around in case it covers other windows.
Please note that currently if this option is enabled, it modifies the Gnome Shell endSessionDialog globally, which means running gnome-session-quit --logout will also popup the new modified dialog.
How to make Close by rules work
To make this feature work, you need to install ydotool:
# 1. Install `ydotool` using the package manager and make sure the version is greater than v1.0.0
sudo dnf install ydotool
#Or install it from the source code: https://github.com/ReimuNotMoe/ydotool
#Check the permission of `/dev/uinput`, if it's `crw-rw----+`, you can skip step 2
# 2. Get permission to access to `/dev/uinput` as the normal user
sudo touch /etc/udev/rules.d/60-awsm-ydotool-uinput.rules
# Here we use `tee`, not redirect(>), to avoid `warning: An error occurred while redirecting file '/etc/udev/rules.d/60-awsm-ydotool-uinput.rules' open: Permission denied`
# See: https://www.shellhacks.com/sudo-echo-to-file-permission-denied/
echo '# See:
# https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-devices/blob/master/60-steam-input.rules
# https://github.com/ReimuNotMoe/ydotool/issues/25
# ydotool udev write access
KERNEL=="uinput", SUBSYSTEM=="misc", TAG+="uaccess", OPTIONS+="static_node=uinput"' | sudo tee --append /etc/udev/rules.d/60-awsm-ydotool-uinput.rules
cat /etc/udev/rules.d/60-awsm-ydotool-uinput.rules
#Remove executable permission (a.k.a. x)
sudo chmod 644 /etc/udev/rules.d/60-awsm-ydotool-uinput.rules
# 3. Copy ydotool.service to /usr/lib/systemd/user, so `systemctl --user enable ydotool.service` can work
sudo cp /usr/lib/systemd/system/ydotool.service /usr/lib/systemd/user
# 4. Start ydotool.service at startup automatically for the current normal user
systemctl --user enable ydotool.service
# 5. Note that you may have to restart the system if the following commands are not working
# 6. Start the ydotoold service for the current normal user
systemctl --user start ydotool.service
# 7. Check if ydotoold service is working. The word `hello` should print on the terminal, if not you might need to reboot the system or try to relogin your account.
ydotool type 'hello'
## misc. ##
# Check if the ydotoold service is running, if not you may have to restart the system or start ydotool.service
systemctl --user status ydotool.service
Note that it’s no necessary to run systemctl --user enable ydotool.service, because this extension starts ydotool.service every time while you use it to close windows.
Feel free to fill an issue if ydotool does not work under normal user, you may also want to do that in its git issue area
Restore sessions
Restore previous apps and windows at startup
Activate Restore previous apps and windows at startup to enable this feature. This option and Restore selected session at startup are exclusive. And this option works for shutting down the system normally (via Log Out/Restart/Power Off buttons) and other ways (like pressing the physical power-off button).
Then while startup, AWSM will launch and restore apps and states from the previous saved session configs.
The session configs are saved in the path ~/.config/another-window-session-manager/sessions/currentSession.
You can use the below command to test it.
gdbus call --session --dest org.gnome.Shell.Extensions.awsm --object-path /org/gnome/Shell/Extensions/awsm --method org.gnome.Shell.Extensions.awsm.Autostart.RestorePreviousSession "{'removeAfterRestore': <false>}"
How to Restore a session at startup?
To make it work, you must enable it through Restore sessions -> Restore at startup in the Preferences AND active a session by clicking 
in the popup menu.
While you enable it through Restore sessions -> Restore at startup, it creates a _gnome-shell-extension-another-window-session-manager.desktop under the folder ~/.config/autostart/.
Test the settings in command line via:
gdbus call --session --dest org.gnome.Shell.Extensions.awsm --object-path /org/gnome/Shell/Extensions/awsm --method org.gnome.Shell.Extensions.awsm.Autostart.RestoreSession
Please do not modify _gnome-shell-extension-another-window-session-manager.desktop, all changes by yourself could be overidden or deleted.
Icons description
| Icon |
Description |
 |
Save open windows as a session, which name is the item’s name |
 |
Restore the saved session using the item’s name |
 |
Move the open windows using the item’s name |
 |
Close the current open windows |
 |
Activate the current session to be restored at startup |
|
Inactivate the current session to be restored at startup |
 |
Indicate the autorestore button |
Dependencies
Use ps and pwdx to get some information from a process, install it via dnf install procps-ng if you don’t have.
Use gdbus to call the remote method, which is provided by this exension, to implement the restore at start feature. gdbus is part of glib2.
Send keys to close the application gracefully with multiple windows.
As of version 34, AWSM also uses libgtop2 to query process information, just like ps. The cost of calling ps is very high, so I’m planing to remove this entirely.
To install it:
-
Fedora and derivatives:
dnf install libgtop2
-
Debian, Ubuntu, Pop!_OS, and derivatives:
apt install gir1.2-gtop-2.0 libgtop2-dev
-
Arch and derivatives:
pacman -S libgtop
Known issues
- On both X11 and Wayland, if click restore button () continually during the process of restoring, the window size and position may can’t be restored, and it may restore many instances of an application. As a workaround, click the restore button () only once until all apps are restored.
Support applications launched via a command line or applications that don’t have a proper .desktop file
If the .desktop is missing from a session file, restoring an application relies on the command line completely.
In this case this extension will generate a .desktop in the journalctl when you click the save button (). Search Generated a .desktop file in journalctl /usr/bin/gnome-shell -r to find it: journalctl /usr/bin/gnome-shell -b -o cat --no-pager | grep 'Generated a .desktop file'. To make it work, You need to copy it to ~/.local/share/applications, and relaunch the app and save the session again. This extension should be able to restore the workspace, state, size and position of this application.
The generated .desktop might not work sometimes, it’s better to check whether the value of Exec is correct or not. If you restore an app using a bad .desktop, this extension will give you a notification and log error level logs in the journalctl.
I tested on Anki, VirtualBox machine and two .AppImage apps, they all have no .desktop and are launched in the terminal. By using the generated .desktop, Anki, VirtualBox machine works. One .AppImage app works. Another .AppImage app is Wire_x86_64.AppImage and doesn’t work, because the command line returned is something like /tmp/.mount_Wire-3xxxxx/wire-desktop, you can use it to launch Wire but files in the /tmp will be deleted during the OS shutdown and start.
It’s impossible / hard to query the command line from a process, the pid of a window might not be right too and I don’t find a standard way for this.
How can I know whether a .desktop of an application is proper or not?
One of the following should be enough to prove the .desktop is not proper:
- Right click on the icon in the panel or dash, if there is no
Add to Favorites in the menu
- This extension can launch an application, but can’t move the window to its workspace. (But it might suggest there is a bug in this extension, LOL :))
Most existing applications should have a proper .desktop. I’m just handling the special case. Someone like myself might want this feature.
Where are the saved sessions?
They are all in ~/.config/another-window-session-manager/sessions. When use an existing name to save the current open windows, the previous file will be copied to ~/.config/another-window-session-manager/sessions/backups as a new name, which is the-old-session-name**.backup-current-timestamp**.
Note that I’ve marked backups as a reserved word, so you can’t use it as a session name when saving a session. But you do have the freedom to manually create a file named backups in ~/.config/another-window-session-manager/sessions. But this extension will only backup the session file that you are clicking the save button and you will receive an error log in the journalctl and an error notification every time you save an existing session.
TODO
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- Restore saved open windows
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