Gnome Alacritty Toggle

Simple gnome-shell extension to toggle Alacritty window.

Works under both Wayland and X11

By default this extension will :

• Register the Alt+z hotkey to toggle Alacritty's shown/hidden state
• If no terminal is open, it tries to execute /usr/bin/alacritty.
• When opening Gnome's overview (<Super> key), Alacritty's window will be hidden.

You can configure this behavior by changing settings through gsettings

Requirements

• Gnome 45+: use master branch
• Gnome 3.38..44: use Gnome 44 release
• Alacritty

Installation

Through gnome extensions

Manually

Install the extension

$ git clone https://github.com/axxapy/gnome-alacritty-toggle ~/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions/toggle-alacritty@itstime.tech

On Wayland, logout and login so gnome-extensions picks up the newly installed extension.
On X11, press Alt+F2, type r, and press enter to reload Gnome.

Then enable the extension :

$ gnome-extensions enable toggle-alacritty@itstime.tech

Configuration

Show alacritty's window on overview screen:

$ gsettings --schemadir ~/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions/toggle-alacritty@itstime.tech/schemas set org.gnome.shell.extensions.toggle-alacritty hide-on-overview false

Hide alacritty's window on overview screen (default behavior):

$ gsettings --schemadir ~/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions/toggle-alacritty@itstime.tech/schemas set org.gnome.shell.extensions.toggle-alacritty hide-on-overview true

Redefine hotkey

$ gsettings --schemadir ~/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions/toggle-alacritty@itstime.tech/schemas set org.gnome.shell.extensions.toggle-alacritty toggle-key "['<Alt>Z']"

Change alacritty command path

$ gsettings --schemadir ~/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions/toggle-alacritty@itstime.tech/schemas set org.gnome.shell.extensions.toggle-alacritty command "$HOME/.local/bin/alacritty"

Troubleshooting

To test if it works, you can launch Alacritty manualy and use this command:

$ dbus-send --print-reply=literal --type=method_call --dest=org.gnome.Shell /org/gnome/Shell org.gnome.Shell.Eval string:"$(cat <<EOL
  global.get_window_actors().filter(actor => {
      return actor.metaWindow.get_wm_class() === 'Alacritty';
  })
EOL
)"

It should output something like the following:

[{"_windowType":0,"_notifyWindowTypeSignalId":57783}]