Is there a way to assign a window its geometry and preferred monitor?

[Durhammer3111]

I had no need for NeoVim (didn't work anyway because Ghostty wouldn't start), so I assigned SUPER+N to a Brave browser window for its Brave News feature. Works great, but I want it to show up on my 22" Dell Monitor (VGA-1) that sits ABOVE my laptop monitor (LVDS-1) and is rotated left (transform, 1) for a "portrait mode" reading function.

I'd like for the new Brave News "web app" to open in the VGA-1 (top) monitor and give it a geometry setting that nearly fills up the monitor. How is this accomplished?

FWIW, the new keybinding looks like this:

bind = $mod, N, exec, $browser --app="about:blank" # Brave News??? -- YESS!!!

I might be really sad if you do indeed move to cromite! No doubt it doesn't have such a built-in news feed. (The Brave News feed feature ALSO lets you add some of your OWN RSS sources, which is really cool. Almost impossible or actually impossible with Google News.)

[surtarso]

You need to do this as you would manually.

"change to workspace you want" - "open the app" - "set size and position".

simple example:

windowrule = workspace 4, match:title = Playfield
windowrule = fullscreen on, match:title = Playfield

comple example:

APPS_LIST=(
    "kitty --title clock-rs -o font_size=18 -o background_opacity=0.0 -e --class clock-rs clock-rs -c bright-blue|1|DVI-D-1"
    "kitty --title rmpc -e --class mpd-player rmpc|2|HDMI-A-3"
    "${webapp}="https://bsky.app"|2|HDMI-A-3"
    "${browser}|3|HDMI-A-1"
    "${webapp}="https://web.whatsapp.com"|4|DP-1"
    "ghostty --class=com.mitchellh.ghostty-floating|4|DP-1"
)

for APP in "${APPS_LIST[@]}"; do
    IFS="|" read -r CMD WS MON <<< "$APP"
    hyprctl dispatch focusmonitor "$MON"      # dispatch (the mouse) to monitor
    hyprctl dispatch workspace "$WS"               # dispatch (the mouse) to workspace
    sleep 0.2
    eval "$CMD" & disown                                    # open app with already set window rules where mouse is
    sleep 1
done

that's my 'open session' script. it opens 6 windows on 4 different monitors... you can adapt to a single brave instance easily.

[Durhammer3111]

I hadn't seen that ${webapp}="..." stuff before. Will look into it.

But yeah, I'm a bit of a Luddite, my usual workspace count is 1. :)

Okay, @surtarso -- can you explain the above notation a bit? I can't find anything on it anywhere other than your examples. I'm especially confused about the quotes usage. I sorta see that there are three elements separated by the v-bars, but the quotes are killing my mind. I know it's all scripting (bash? sh? what?) but I guess I would expect the inner quotes to be different, and they don't LOOK different. Yeah, I got old eyes.

[surtarso]

yeah thats a bash script and it was just a snippet. the idea is there tho. For a single app it would be [pseudo]:

myapp =  "my_app_command | workspace_number | monitor"

IFS="|" read -r my_app_command workspace number monitor <<< "$myapp"
hyprctl dispatch focusmonitor "monitor"      # dispatch (the mouse) to monitor
hyprctl dispatch workspace "workspace_number"               # dispatch (the mouse) to workspace
sleep 0.2
eval "my_app_command" & disown                                    # open app with already set window rules where mouse is
sleep 1

For the window size it needs to be set in windowrules, thats the only place to do this on all hyprland windows. And pointing out the you will NOT mess with hyprland.conf (overwritten), but instead on userspace windowrules.conf (not overwritten).

on a side note, I too dislike multiple workspaces, I have 4 monitors, 4 workspaces, so 1 per monitor which pretty much means no workspaces philosophically speaking.

So if you only have 1 monitor/1 workspace you dont need this script at all, just a windowrule so the app open where and how you would like.

as an example, this is my Whatsapp PWA rules for each monitor (so depending on which monitor I open it it will react accordingly)

# ---------- WhatsApp PWA window rules
# always float (not tiled)
windowrule = float on, match:class = ^(brave-web\.whatsapp\.com__-Default)$
# always semi transparent
windowrule = opacity 0.95 0.95, match:class = ^(brave-web\.whatsapp\.com__-Default)$
# on workspace 2, use this size and position
windowrule = size 98% 67%, match:class = ^(brave-web\.whatsapp\.com__-Default)$, workspace = 2 # Portrait left
windowrule = move 1% 32%, match:class = ^(brave-web\.whatsapp\.com__-Default)$, workspace = 2
# on workspace 4, use this size and position
windowrule = size 98% 69%, match:class = ^(brave-web\.whatsapp\.com__-Default)$, workspace = 4 # Portrait right
windowrule = move 1%, match:class = ^(brave-web\.whatsapp\.com__-Default)$, workspace = 4