Linux @lemmy.ml Moonstar @lemmy.fmhy.ml 1y ago

Scripting Question - xdotool and ratbagctl

One of my biggest gripes while using Piper has always been the lack of automatic profile switching on profile switch. I wanted to implement a band-aid to try and solve this issue, but have been having too many issues to sink more time into this:

Method 1:

Using a while loop that triggers every couple seconds that gets the active window id and fetches its name for a function that checks it against various regexs.
Problem? Well, it is rather laggy. I find my mouse stuttering every once in a while, even when using an if statement to only run code when the IDs don't match.

Method 2:

Using xdotool search . behave %@ focus ... to add event listeners to windows.
This method was WAY better in terms of performance, but doesn't apply it to windows created after script launch, which is an issue since the script would launch at session startup.

It's about time I came to the collective hive-mind for ideas, or even a complete solution that someone may have.

Here is my neofetch for system info, since I know that can impact your answers.

OS: EndeavourOS Linux x86_64 
Kernel: 6.3.8-arch1-1 
Uptime: 1 hour, 5 mins 
Packages: 1400 (pacman), 8 (flatpak) 
Shell: zsh 5.9 
Resolution: 1080x1920, 1920x1080, 1920x1080 
DE: Xfce 4.18 
WM: Xfwm4 
WM Theme: Matcha-dark-sea 
Theme: Flat-Remix-GTK-MORALES-Dark [GTK2], Arc-Darker [GTK3] 
Icons: Flat-Remix-Red-Dark [GTK2], Qogir [GTK3] 
Terminal: xfce4-terminal 
Terminal Font: Fira Code 10 
CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 5950X (32) @ 3.400GHz 
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Lite Hash Rate 
Memory: 6675MiB / 32006MiB

You're viewing a single thread.

4 comments

I don't have a ready-to-run solution for you, but I see you already dug quite into that rabbit hole. Google-fu turned up this and this - maybe those are good starting points to have.

The results have made me realize that the bash way of doing this is just not worth attempting, and a Python script is much more simple. At the end of the day, I ended up using this GIST with a custom handler function:

https://gist.github.com/dperelman/c1d3c966d397ff884abb8b3baf7990db

class MouseProfile(Enum):
    DEFAULT = 0
    BLOONS = 1
    GAMING_COMMON = 2
    CALL_OF_DUTY = 3
    REALM_GRINDER = 4

def handle_change(new_state: dict):
    """
    Using `libratbag`, switch the profile of the mouse based on the active window title.
    """
    # Get the title of the active window
    title: str = new_state['title']
    profile: MouseProfile = MouseProfile.DEFAULT
    match title:
        case "BloonsTD6":
            profile = MouseProfile.BLOONS
        case "Realm Grinder":
            profile = MouseProfile.REALM_GRINDER
        case _:
            if title:
              if search(r"^Call of Duty.*", title):
                  profile = MouseProfile.CALL_OF_DUTY
              elif search(r"^Deep Rock Galactic.*", title):
                  profile = MouseProfile.GAMING_COMMON
    # Send the ratbag command to switch the profile
    run(["ratbagctl", "Logitech", "profile", "active", "set", str(profile.value)], stdout=PIPE, stderr=PIPE)