How do I find the window dimensions and position accurately including decorations?

Question

I've been trying to figure out the size of a window for use in a small script. My current technique is using wmctrl -lG to find out the dimensions. However, the problem is this:

The x and y figures it gives are for the top left of the window decorations, while the height and width are for just the content area. This means that if the window decorations add 20px of height and 2px of width, wmctrl will report a window as being 640x480, even if it takes up 660x482 on screen. This is a problem because my script's next step would be to use that area to tell ffmpeg to record the screen. I would like to avoid hardcoding in the size of the window decorations from my current setup.

What would suit is either a method to get the size of the window decorations so I can use them to figure out the position of the 640x480 content area, or a way to get the position of the content area directly, not that of the window decorations.

Answer 1

The following script will give you the top-left screen co-ords and size of the window (without any decoration). . . . xwininfo -id $(xdotool getactivewindow) contains enough information for you.

---

#!/bin/bash
# Get the coordinates of the active window's
#    top-left corner, and the window's size.
#    This excludes the window decoration.
  unset x y w h
  eval $(xwininfo -id $(xdotool getactivewindow) |
    sed -n -e "s/^ \+Absolute upper-left X: \+\([0-9]\+\).*/x=\1/p" \
           -e "s/^ \+Absolute upper-left Y: \+\([0-9]\+\).*/y=\1/p" \
           -e "s/^ \+Width: \+\([0-9]\+\).*/w=\1/p" \
           -e "s/^ \+Height: \+\([0-9]\+\).*/h=\1/p" )
  echo -n "$x $y $w $h"
#

Answer 2

Much simpler way to get current window size and position:

xdotool getwindowfocus getwindowgeometry

and to get selected window size and position:

xdotool selectwindow getwindowgeometry

Answer 3

The accepted answer can be extended to get the entire window:

entire=false
x=0
y=0
w=0
h=0
b=0  # b for border
t=0  # t for title (or top)

# ... find out what user wants then 

eval $(xwininfo -id $(xdotool getactivewindow) |
  sed -n -e "s/^ \+Absolute upper-left X: \+\([0-9]\+\).*/x=\1/p" \
         -e "s/^ \+Absolute upper-left Y: \+\([0-9]\+\).*/y=\1/p" \
         -e "s/^ \+Width: \+\([0-9]\+\).*/w=\1/p" \
         -e "s/^ \+Height: \+\([0-9]\+\).*/h=\1/p" \
         -e "s/^ \+Relative upper-left X: \+\([0-9]\+\).*/b=\1/p" \
         -e "s/^ \+Relative upper-left Y: \+\([0-9]\+\).*/t=\1/p" )
if [ "$entire" = true ]
then                     # if user wanted entire window, adjust x,y,w and h
    let x=$x-$b
    let y=$y-$t
    let w=$w+2*$b
    let h=$h+$t+$b
fi
echo "$w"x"$h" $x,$y

Although easy, it turns out not to work on Unity in Ubuntu 14.04 because the Relative info is all 0. I asked Get the full window dimensions (including decorations) in Unity and got a good answer. Here is how I used that answer:

aw=$(xdotool getactivewindow)
eval $(xwininfo -id "$aw" |
      sed -n -e "s/^ \+Absolute upper-left X: \+\([0-9]\+\).*/x=\1/p" \
             -e "s/^ \+Absolute upper-left Y: \+\([0-9]\+\).*/y=\1/p" \
             -e "s/^ \+Width: \+\([0-9]\+\).*/w=\1/p" \
             -e "s/^ \+Height: \+\([0-9]\+\).*/h=\1/p" )
if [ "$entire" = true ]
then
    extents=$(xprop _NET_FRAME_EXTENTS -id "$aw" | grep "NET_FRAME_EXTENTS" | cut -d '=' -f 2 | tr -d ' ')
    bl=$(echo $extents | cut -d ',' -f 1) # width of left border
    br=$(echo $extents | cut -d ',' -f 2) # width of right border
    t=$(echo $extents | cut -d ',' -f 3)  # height of title bar
    bb=$(echo $extents | cut -d ',' -f 4) # height of bottom border

    let x=$x-$bl
    let y=$y-$t
    let w=$w+$bl+$br
    let h=$h+$t+$bb
fi

This second method works in both Unity and Xfce, and should work in Gnome too.

Answer 4

If you'd like to pick the window with the mouse, just run

$ xwininfo

And click the window you'd like. It gives a lot of info, and geometry that includes the decorations in a format which can just be copy-pasted to other programs such as xterm. eg.

xwininfo: Please select the window about which you
          would like information by clicking the
          mouse in that window.
xwininfo: Window id: 0x160000d "watch"
Absolute upper-left X:  1184
  Absolute upper-left Y:  215
  Relative upper-left X:  0
  Relative upper-left Y:  0
  Width: 484
  Height: 615
  Depth: 24
  Visual: 0x21
  Visual Class: TrueColor
  Border width: 0
  Class: InputOutput
  Colormap: 0x20 (installed)
  Bit Gravity State: NorthWestGravity
  Window Gravity State: NorthWestGravity
  Backing Store State: NotUseful
  Save Under State: no
  Map State: IsViewable
  Override Redirect State: no
  Corners:  +1184+215  -2812+215  -2812-1150  +1184-1150
  -geometry 80x47+1178+188

Then you can put the following in your .xinitrc or equivalent:

xterm -geometry 80x47+1178+188 -bg black -fg white -T sensors -e watch -n10 -d "sensors;"

The -geometry option is interpreted by almost every X application.

If you're not getting accurate geometry it's because the window in question is drawing its own decorations that the windowing system doesn't know about, so you'll have to check the settings for the app in question, and adjust accordingly.

On Debian this is from:

$ dpkg -S xwininfo
x11-utils: /usr/bin/xwininfo
x11-utils: /usr/share/man/man1/xwininfo.1.gz

So just

$ apt install x11-utils

If you don't have it.

Answer 5

Using xdotool:

• First you need to get window id:

sleep 3s && xdotool getactivewindow, you have 3 sec to open your window

• Then you need to use :
  1. to get info in output use this: xdotool getwindowgeometry $WINDOW_ID
  2. or if you want shell parameter use this: xdotool getwindowgeometry -shell $WINDOW_ID

Answer 6

The accepted answer explicitly does not include window decoration. For those still looking for how to get the geometry including all decorations, as per this question's title, you can use wmiface as per this other question https://superuser.com/questions/164047/how-to-get-accurate-window-information-dimensions-etc-in-linux-x. Example:

wmiface frameGeometry `wmiface activeWindow`

This returns geometry and position relative to top left like so:

650x437+0+1003

wmiface does not seem to come with all linux distros (I didn't find a package providing it on Mint or Ubuntu) but I was able to install it from the packages here: http://kde-apps.org/content/show.php?content=40425

And it comes with no docs nor even --help, but the README is here:

https://gitorious.org/wmiface/wmiface/source/ea941eeb2076124734f6a3d3079326c826b462d7:README

Answer 7

Try this code. Save as xgeometry.c and compile with gcc -o xgeometry xgeometry.c -lX11 -lXt. The program takes one or more window IDs (in decimal, hexadecimal, or octal) as arguments, and outputs, space separated, the window ID (in hexadecimal), X position, Y position, width, height and border width (usually zero – this is not what the window manager puts on the window). The X, Y, width and height include the window manager's decorations, at least in the case where wmctrl is using these numbers for positioning.

Interestingly, wmctrl -e, at least when used with xfwm, requires the X and Y positions from this program, and the width and height returned by wmctrl -l -G, in order for wmctrl -e not to move the window. I have not tested other window managers, so results may vary.

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <X11/Xlib.h>
#include <X11/Intrinsic.h>
int
main(int argc, char *argv)
{
    XtAppContext app;
    Display display;
    int status = 0;
app = XtCreateApplicationContext();
display = XtOpenDisplay(app, 0, argv[0], &quot;xgeometry&quot;, 0, 0, &amp;argc, argv);

if (display)
{
    while (--argc)
    {
        char const *idstring = *++argv;
        char *endptr = 0;
        unsigned long id;

        if (idstring[0] != '0')
            id = strtoul(idstring, &amp;endptr, 10);
        else if (idstring[1] == 'x' || idstring[1] == 'X')
            id = strtoul(idstring + 2, &amp;endptr, 16);
        else
            id = strtoul(idstring + 1, &amp;endptr, 8);
        if (*endptr)
        {
            fprintf(stderr, &quot;Invalid window id: %s\n&quot;, idstring);
            status = 1;
        }
        else
        {
            Window win = (Window) id;

            while (1)
            {
                Window parent;
                Window  root;
                Window *children;
                int nchildren;


                if (!XQueryTree(display, win, &amp;root, &amp;parent, &amp;children, &amp;nchildren))
                {
                    fprintf(stderr, &quot;Error finding top level window for %08lx&quot;, id);
                    status = 1;
                    break;
                }
                XFree(children);
                if (parent == root)
                {
                    int x, y;
                    unsigned w, h;
                    unsigned border;
                    unsigned depth;

                    if (XGetGeometry(display, win, &amp;root, &amp;x, &amp;y, &amp;w, &amp;h, &amp;border, &amp;depth))
                    {
                        printf(&quot;0x%08lx %d %d %u %u %u\n&quot;, id, x, y, w, h, border);
                    }
                    else
                    {
                        fprintf(stderr, &quot;Could not get location of window 0x%08lx\n&quot;, id);
                        status = 1;
                    }
                    break;
                }
                win = parent;
            }
        }

    }
    XtCloseDisplay(display);
}
else
{
    fprintf(stderr, &quot;Cannot open display\n&quot;);
    status = 1;
}

XtDestroyApplicationContext(app);

return status;

}

Answer 8

Combining answers on this page I used this:

$ sleep 3 && xdotool getwindowfocus getwindowgeometry

Window 88080400
  Position: 4565,2345 (screen: 0)
  Geometry: 1186x885

Run the one-liner and then within 3 seconds click on the window you want the position and geometry for.