Toggle block-out-from

[phisch]

I absolutely love the block-out-from feature, but sometimes I deliberately want to take a screenshot or recording of something that should be blocked by default.

So it would be great, if there was some way to for example globally toggle block-out-from. If this becomes a thing, I'd like to have some visual indicator. For that, an event in the event stream would be good. That would be enough to display something in a bar for example.

What are your thoughts on this?

[phisch]

If you want a super generalized approach, you could introduce toggle containers.

Imagine this:

toggle-block "block-out" {
    window-rule {
        match title=r#"(?i)gmail"#
        match title="Signal"
    
        block-out-from "screen-capture"
    }
}

toggle-block "terminal-bind" {
    binds {
        Mod+Return { spawn "alacritty"; }
    }
}

binds {
    Mod+B { toggle "block-out"; }
    Mod+T { toggle "terminal-bind"; }
}

This would allow you to put parts of your config into blocks that you can toggle. You could also introduce a cycle-block that can cycle between n parts of config.

And you could get the toggle state on or off for all defined toggle-blocks in the event stream.

[YaLTeR]

Hmm. I feel like this is overcomplicating it a little bit.

Suppose there's a global toggle block out from. What could be the indication on niri itself? Since this is potentially a sensitive operation, we better indicate it properly

[phisch]

I don't think there needs to be an indicator on niri for this. Not all state must be visible. For some of these blocks the user might want an indicator, and for others they don't. And I think as long as the toggle states are in the event stream, the user can build their own indicators for the states they want to know and fit into their desktop.

[Faervan]

I agree with @phisch that niri itself wouldn't need an own indication for such toggles; the user deliberately adds a toggle bind to their config or sends a toggle action through the ipc, so maybe a comment on the wiki that this could potentially mess things up if not used with care should be enough... maybe add a reminder that they can switch ttys with ctrl+alt+Fn :)