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External Window Tracking

Starting from this version, Solaar provides an alternative method for window tracking that allows external services to notify Solaar about active windows and windows under the pointer.

Background

Previously, Solaar could only track windows in two ways:

Using X11 APIs (when running under X11)
Using the Solaar GNOME Shell extension (when running under Wayland with GNOME)

This limitation made it difficult to use window-based rules in other desktop environments like KDE Plasma on Wayland.

New DBus Methods

Solaar now exposes two DBus methods that external services can call to provide window information:

UpdateActiveWindow

Updates the active window information.

Interface: io.github.pwr_solaar.solaar
Object Path: /io/github/pwr_solaar/solaar
Method: UpdateActiveWindow(s wm_class)
Parameters:

wm_class (string): The WM_CLASS or application identifier of the active window

UpdatePointerOverWindow

Updates the window under the pointer.

Interface: io.github.pwr_solaar.solaar
Object Path: /io/github/pwr_solaar/solaar
Method: UpdatePointerOverWindow(s wm_class)
Parameters:

wm_class (string): The WM_CLASS or application identifier of the window under the pointer

Usage Examples

From Command Line

You can test the functionality using dbus-send:

# Update active window
dbus-send --session --dest=io.github.pwr_solaar.solaar \
  --type=method_call \
  /io/github/pwr_solaar/solaar \
  io.github.pwr_solaar.solaar.UpdateActiveWindow \
  string:"firefox"

# Update pointer-over window
dbus-send --session --dest=io.github.pwr_solaar.solaar \
  --type=method_call \
  /io/github/pwr_solaar/solaar \
  io.github.pwr_solaar.solaar.UpdatePointerOverWindow \
  string:"konsole"

From KDE/KWin Script

You can create a KWin script to automatically notify Solaar about window changes:

// KWin Script to notify Solaar about active window changes
workspace.clientActivated.connect(function(client) {
    if (client) {
        // Get the window class
        var wmClass = client.resourceClass.toString();
        
        // Call Solaar's DBus method
        callDBus(
            "io.github.pwr_solaar.solaar",
            "/io/github/pwr_solaar/solaar",
            "io.github.pwr_solaar.solaar",
            "UpdateActiveWindow",
            wmClass
        );
    }
});

From Python Script

import dbus

# Connect to session bus
bus = dbus.SessionBus()

# Get Solaar service
solaar = bus.get_object(
    'io.github.pwr_solaar.solaar',
    '/io/github/pwr_solaar/solaar'
)

# Update active window
solaar.UpdateActiveWindow('firefox', dbus_interface='io.github.pwr_solaar.solaar')

# Update pointer-over window
solaar.UpdatePointerOverWindow('konsole', dbus_interface='io.github.pwr_solaar.solaar')

How It Works

When you call UpdateActiveWindow or UpdatePointerOverWindow, Solaar caches the provided window information. When rules with Process or MouseProcess conditions are evaluated, Solaar checks for cached values first before trying other methods (X11 or GNOME Shell extension).

This means:

External services have priority - if they provide window information, Solaar uses it
If no cached value is available, Solaar falls back to X11 (if not on Wayland)
As a last resort, Solaar tries the GNOME Shell extension (if on Wayland)

Notes

The cached window information persists until it's updated again or Solaar is restarted
External services should update the window information whenever the active window or pointer position changes
The wm_class parameter should match the application identifier used in your Solaar rules

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