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marathon

marathon is a minimal shell-based launcher for Linux/X that tries to be smart about running or focusing apps. When calling marathon application,

  • If application is not running, marathon will run it.
  • Else marathon will just focus application

That way, after binding your favorite apps to a few easily-accessible OS global keyboard shortcuts, you can access them with a single keypress and forget about alt-tabbing or clicking app icons in your dock / window list.

Flags:

  • --toggle will emulate the Quake terminal-like behavior of minimizing already-focused windows. (By default, marathon leaves them untouched.)

  • --ignore-args-on-focus will ignore command arguments when focusing (e.g. --incognito in marathon google-chrome --incognito) while still passing them on initial run.

    • This is useful for applications who use a runner or spawn other processes, making ineffective post-exec searching for the fully-qualified command.
    • This is not what you want if the process you want to focus needs arguments to be uniquely identified (e.g. gvim -S work).

  • --launch-closed will use the active window list to determine if the requested program is running. By default, marathon looks in the process list. Useful to focus well-behaved single-instance programs closed to tray that respond to a re-launch by activating the window (e.g. Slack).

Installation

  • macOS is not supported, sorry (due to depending on Xorg utilities). But rejoice, you'll be well served with Automator or Alfred, see for example this guide

  • Linux:

    1. X is required, as there is (at time of writing) no equivalent to wmctrl / xdotool under Wayland. You'll have to disable Wayland. Suggestions welcome in issue #5 - Support Wayland.
    2. Install wmctrl and xdotool from your package manager.
    3. Drop marathon somewhere in your $PATH.
    4. Bind marathon command (optionally adding flags) to a keyboard shortcut, courtesy of your Desktop Environment / Window Manager:
      • GNOME → Settings → Devices → Keyboard → section Custom Shortcuts. Mine look like:
        GNOME Keyboard Settings screenshot
      • LXDE → your lxde-rc.xml

Nit: ensure the app process name (or window class if using --launch-closed) matches the executable filename. If not, a symlink will do the trick.

Support, license, contact

Bug Reports and Pull Requests are welcome.

Licensed under the MIT license, 2012-2018, Ronan Jouchet / @ronjouch