Alacritty Dropdown

This program provides drop-down functionality to Alacritty terminal emulator on X Window System.

Features

• Single instance - Only one application will be run per user
• Independent - A separate Alacritty configuration file is used, so it doesn't interfere with non-Dropdown Alacritty instances
• Secure - Source code is small and simple so it can be read and verified before installing

Usage

Requirements

This program requires external executables to be available on the system. Ensure the following commands are available before running the program: alacritty, wmctrl, xdotool, xprop, flock, grep.

# Install dependencies on Debian based systems
apt install alacritty wmctrl xdotool x11-utils util-linux grep

Installation

Copy alacritty-dropdown manually, or install it using make.

# Install to default location
make install

Configuration

There is an example configuration file provided, which should be adjusted to your preferences. As the program is limited to a single instance, the provided configuration uses a dedicated tmux session to add support for tabs. The program assumes the configuration file is located at $HOME/.alacritty-dropdown.yml. If you want to store the configuration in a different location, you should make a change to the source code.

# Use the example configuration file
cp example.alacritty-dropdown.yml ~/.alacritty-dropdown.yml

Depending on your desktop resolution and font's size and aspect-ratio, you might want to adjust the size of the terminal emulator window. The example file assumes an aspect-ratio of 0.75 and a 1080p resolution.

Example calculation for columns dimension:

columns = width / font.size / ratio
160 = 1080 / 9 / 0.75

Finally, bind your preferred key in your desktop environment settings to Alacritty Dropdown.

Notes

This program is not intended to be used in an environment running a Wayland compositor.