i3-orphan

Detect and reparent orphan tabbed/stacked containers in i3.

An orphan container is a tabbed or stacked container with only one child window.

AI-generated and unreviewed.

Installation

pipx install i3-orphan

Usage

# Check if focused window's parent is an orphan
i3-orphan is

# List all orphan containers
i3-orphan list

# Reparent focused window to grandparent (removes orphan)
i3-orphan reparent

# Reparent all orphans recursively
i3-orphan reparent-all

Examples

# Check and reparent if orphan
if i3-orphan is; then
    i3-orphan reparent
fi

# Clean up all orphans in your workspace
i3-orphan reparent-all

How it works

This tool uses i3ipc directly:

• i3-orphan is checks if focused.parent is tabbed/stacked with only 1 child
• i3-orphan reparent moves focused to its grandparent using marks
• i3-orphan reparent-all recursively processes all orphans until none remain