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#653 - Quake Mode.md

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Mike Griese @zadjii-msft
2021-02-23
2021-05-13

Quake Mode

Abstract

Many existing terminals support a feature whereby a user can press a keybinding anywhere in the OS, and summon their terminal application. Oftentimes the act of summoning this window is accompanied by a "dropdown" animation, where the window slides in to view from the top of the screen. This global summon action is often referred to as "quake mode", a reference to the video game Quake, who's console slid in from the top.

This spec addresses both of the following two issues:

  • "Quake Mode" (#653)
  • "Minimize to tray" (#5727)

Readers should make sure to have read the Process Model 2.0 Spec, for background on Monarch and Peasant processes.

Background

Inspiration

For an example of the original Quake console in action, take a look at the following video (noisy video warning): Quake 3 sample. Additionally, plenty of existing terminal emulators support similar functionality:

  • Tilda allows the user to specify different keys to summon the window on different monitors.
  • Guake alternatively allows the user to either summon the terminal window to a specific monitor, or whichever monitor the mouse is on. Guake only allows one single instance, so pressing the global hotkey always summons the same instance.

User Stories

The original quake mode thread (#653) is absolutely filled with variations on how users want to be able to summon their terminal windows. These include, but are not limited to:

  • Story A Press a hotkey anywhere to activate the single Terminal window wherever it was
  • Story B Press a hotkey anywhere to activate the single Terminal window on the current monitor. If it wasn't previously on that monitor, move it there.
  • Story C When the Terminal is summoned using the hotkey, have it "slide in" from the top. Similarly, slide out on deactivate.
  • Story D Ctrl+1 to activate the terminal on monitor 1, Ctrl+2 to activate the terminal on monitor 2.
  • Story E Variable dropdown speed
  • Story F Minimize to tray, press a hotkey to activate the terminal window (#5727)
  • Story G Terminal doesn't appear in alt+tab view, press a hotkey to activate the single terminal window / the nearest terminal window (I'm not sure this is distinct from the above)

Solution Design

To implement this feature, we'll add the following settings:

  • a new action, named globalSummon.
  • a new global, app setting named minimizeToTray
  • a new global, app setting named alwaysShowTrayIcon
  • a new action, named quakeMode, and a specially named _quake window.

globalSummon Action

The globalSummon action will be a keybinding the user can use to summon a Terminal window from anywhere in the OS. Various arguments to the action will specify which window is summoned, to where, and how the window should behave on summon.

From a technical perspective, the action will work by using the RegisterHotKey function. This API allows us to bind a particular hotkey with the OS. Whenever that hotkey is pressed, our window message loop will receive a WM_HOTKEY. We'll use the payload of that window message to lookup the action arguments for that hotkey. Then we'll use those arguments to control which window is invoked, where, and how the window behaves.

Since RegisterHotKey can only be used to register a hotkey once with the OS, we'll need to make sure it's only ever set up by the Monarch process. We know that there will only ever be one Monarch for the Terminal at a time, so it's the perfect process to have the responsibility of managing the global hotkey.

The Monarch will be responsible for calling RegisterHotKey, and processing the WM_HOTKEY messages. It will then dispatch method calls to the appropriate window to summon it. When a Monarch dies and a new process becomes the Monarch, the new Monarch will re-register for the hotkeys.

Where in the settings?

Since users may want to bind multiple keys to summon different windows, we'll need to allow the user to specify multiple keybindings simultaneously, each with their own set of args.

We stick all the globalSummons in the actions array, like they're any other keybinding.

However, these are not keys that are handled by the TerminalApp layer itself. These are keys that need to be registered with the OS. So while they will be in the normal KeyMap, they will need to be retrieved from that object and manually passed to the window layer.

A previous iteration of this spec considered placing the globalSummon actions in their own top-level array of the settings file, separate from the keybindings. This is no longer being considered, because it would not work for the case where the user has something like:

{ "keys": "ctrl+c", "command": { "action": "globalSummon", "monitor": 1 } },
{ "keys": "ctrl+v", "command": { "action": "copy" } },

Which window, and where?

When looking at the list of requested scenarios, there are lots of different ways people would like to use the global summon action. Some want the most recent window activated, always. Others want to have one window per monitor. Some would like to move the window to where the user is currently interacting with the PC, and others want to activate the window where it already exists. Trying to properly express all these possible configurations is complex. The settings should be unambiguous as to what will happen when you press the keybinding.

I believe that in order to accurately support all the variations that people might want, we'll need two properties in the globalSummon action. These properties will specify which window we're summoning, and where to summon the window. To try and satisfy all these scenarios, I'm proposing the following two arguments to the globalSummon action:

"monitor": "any"|"toCurrent"|"toMouse"|"onCurrent"|int,
"desktop": "any"|"toCurrent"|"onCurrent"

The way these settings can be combined is in a table below. As an overview:

  • monitor: This controls the monitor that the window will be summoned from/to

    • "any": Summon the MRU window, regardless of which monitor it's currently on.
    • "toCurrent"/omitted: (default): Summon the MRU window TO the monitor with the current foreground window.
    • "toMouse": Summon the MRU window TO the monitor where the mouse cursor is.
    • "onCurrent": Summon the MRU window ALREADY ON the current monitor.
    • int: Summon the MRU window for the given monitor (as identified by the "Identify" displays feature in the OS settings)

  • desktop: This controls how the terminal should interact with virtual desktops.

    • "any": Leave the window on whatever desktop it's already on - we'll switch to that desktop as we activate the window.

      • NOTE: A previous version of this spec had this enum value as null. This was changed to "any" for parity with the monitor property.

    • "toCurrent"/omitted: (default): Move the window to the current virtual desktop
    • "onCurrent": Only summon the window if it's already on the current virtual desktop

Neither desktop nor monitor is a required parameter - if either is omitted, the omitted property will default to toCurrent.

Together, these settings interact in the following ways:

"desktop"
"monitor" any
Leave where it is		 "toCurrent"
Move to current desktop		 "onCurrent"
On current desktop only
"any"
Summon the MRU window		 Go to the desktop the window is on (leave position alone) Move the window to this desktop (leave position alone)

If there isn't one on this desktop:

  • create a new one (default position)

Else:

  • activate the one on this desktop (don't move it)
"toCurrent"
Summon the MRU window TO the monitor with the foreground window		 Go to the desktop the window is on, move to the monitor with the foreground window Move the window to this desktop, move to the monitor with the foreground window

If there isn't one on this desktop:

  • create a new one (on the monitor with the foreground window)

Else:

  • activate the one on this desktop, move to the monitor with the foreground window
"toMouse" [2]
Summon the MRU window TO the monitor with the mouse		 Go to the desktop the window is on, move to the monitor with the mouse Move the window to this desktop, move to the monitor with the mouse

If there isn't one on this desktop:

  • create a new one (on the monitor with the mouse)

Else:

  • activate the one on this desktop, move to the monitor with the mouse
"onCurrent"
Summon the MRU window for the current monitor

If there is a window on this monitor on any desktop,

  • Go to the desktop the window is on (leave position alone)

else

  • Create a new window on this monitor & desktop

If there is a window on this monitor on any desktop,

  • Move the window to this desktop (leave position alone)

else

  • Create a new window on this monitor & desktop

If there isn't one on this desktop, (even if there is one on this monitor on another desktop),

  • create a new one on this monitor

Else if ( there is one on this desktop, not this monitor)

  • create a new one on this monitor

Else (one on this desktop & monitor)

  • Activate the one on this desktop (don't move)
int
Summon the MRU window for monitor N

If there is a window on monitor N on any desktop,

  • Go to the desktop the window is on (leave position alone)

else

  • Create a new window on this monitor & desktop

If there is a window on monitor N on any desktop,

  • Move the window to this desktop (leave position alone)

else

  • Create a new window on this monitor & desktop

If there isn't one on this desktop, (even if there is one on monitor N on another desktop),

  • create a new one on monitor N

Else if ( there is one on this desktop, not monitor N)

  • create a new one on monitor N

Else (one on this desktop & monitor N)

  • Activate the one on this desktop (don't move)
Stories, revisited

With the above settings, let's re-examine the original user stories, and see how they fit into the above settings. (Stories that are omitted aren't relevant to the discussion of these settings)

When the desktop param is omitted below, that can be interpreted as "any desktop value will make sense here"

  • Story A Press a hotkey anywhere to activate the single Terminal window wherever it was
    • This is { "monitor": "any", "desktop": "any" }
  • Story B Press a hotkey anywhere to activate the single Terminal window on the current monitor. If it wasn't previously on that monitor, move it there.
    • This is { "monitor": "toCurrent" }
  • Story D Ctrl+1 to activate the terminal on monitor 1, Ctrl+2 to activate the terminal on monitor 2.
    • This is [ { "keys": "ctrl+1", monitor": 1 }, { "keys": "ctrl+2", monitor": 2 } ]

As some additional examples:

// Go to the MRU window, wherever it is
{ "keys": "win+1", "command":{ "action":"globalSummon", "monitor":"any", "desktop": "any" } },

// activate the MRU window, and move it to this desktop & this monitor
{ "keys": "win+2", "command":{ "action":"globalSummon", "monitor":"toCurrent", "desktop": "toCurrent" } },
// Since "toCurrent" & "toCurrent" are the default values, just placing a single
// entry here will bind the same behavior:
{ "keys": "win+2", "command": "globalSummon" },

// activate the MRU window on this desktop
{ "keys": "win+3", "command":{ "action":"globalSummon", "monitor":"any", "desktop": "onCurrent" } },

// Activate the MRU window on monitor 2 (from any desktop), and place it on the
// current desktop. If there isn't one on monitor 2, make a new one.
{ "keys": "win+4", "command":{ "action":"globalSummon", "monitor": 2, "desktop": "toCurrent" } },

// Activate the MRU window on monitor 3 (ONLY THIS desktop), or make a new one.
{ "keys": "win+5", "command":{ "action":"globalSummon", "monitor": 3, "desktop": "onCurrent" } },

// Activate the MRU window on this monitor (from any desktop), and place it on
// the current desktop. If there isn't one on this monitor, make a new one.
{ "keys": "win+6", "command":{ "action":"globalSummon", "monitor": "onCurrent", "desktop": "toCurrent" } },

Summoning a specific window

What if you want to press a keybinding to always summon a specific, named window? This window might not be the most recent terminal window, nor one that would be selected by the monitor and desktop selectors. You could name a window "Epona", and press win+e to always summon the "Epona" window.

We'll add the following property to address this scenario

  • "window": string|int
    • When omitted (default): Use monitor and desktop to find the appropriate MRU window to summon.
    • When provided: Always summon the window who's name or ID matches the given window value. If no such window exists, then create a new window with that name/id.

When provided with monitor and desktop, window behaves in the following ways:

  • desktop
    • "any": Go to the desktop the given window is already on.
    • "toCurrent": If the window is on another virtual desktop, then move it to the currently active one.
    • "onCurrent": If the window is on another virtual desktop, then move it to the currently active one.
  • monitor
    • "any": Leave the window on the monitor it is already on.
    • "toCurrent": If the window is on another monitor, then move it to the currently active one.
    • "onCurrent": If the window is on another monitor, then move it to the currently active one.
    • <int>: If the window is on another monitor, then move it to the specified monitor.

NOTE: You read that right, onCurrent and toCurrent both do the same thing when window is provided. They both already know which window to select, the context of moving to the "current" monitor is all that those parameters add.

Other properties

Some users would like the terminal to just appear when the global hotkey is pressed. Others would like the true quake-like experience, where the terminal window "slides-in" from the top of the monitor. Furthermore, some users would like to configure the speed at which that dropdown happens. To support this functionality, the globalSummon action will support the following property:

  • "dropdownDuration": float
    • When omitted, 0, or a negative number: No animation is used when summoning the window. The summoned window is focused immediately where it is.
    • When a positive number is provided, the terminal will use that value as a duration (in seconds) to slide the terminal into position when activated.
    • The default would be some sensible value. The pane animation is .2s, so 0.2 might be a reasonable default here.

We could have alternatively provided a "dropdownSpeed" setting, that provided a number of pixels per second. In my opinion, that would be harder for users to use correctly. I believe that it's easier for users to mentally picture "I'd like the dropdown to last 100ms" vs "My monitor is 1504px tall, so I need to set this to 15040 to make the window traverse the entire display in .1s"

NOTE: dropdownDuration will be ignored when the user has animations disabled in the OS. In that case, the terminal will just appear, as if it was set to 0.

Some users might want to be able to use the global hotkey to hide the window when the window is already visible. This would let the hotkey act as a sort of global toggle for the Terminal window. Others might not like that behavior, and just want the action to always bring the Terminal into focus, and do nothing if the terminal is already focused. To facilitate both these use cases, we'll add the following property:

  • "toggleVisibility": bool
    • When true: (default) When this hotkey is pressed, and the terminal window is currently active, minimize the window.
      • When dropdownDuration is not 0, then the window will slide back off the top at the same speed as it would come down.
    • When false: When this hotkey is pressed, and the terminal window is currently active, do nothing.

Quake Mode

In addition to just summoning the window from anywhere, some terminals also support a special "quake mode" buffer or window. This window is one that closely emulates the console from quake:

  • It's docked to the top of the screen
  • It takes the full width of the monitor, and only the bottom can be resized
  • It often doesn't have any other UI elements, like tabs

For fun, we'll also be adding a special "_quake" window with the same behavior. If the user names a window _quake, then it will behave in the following special ways:

  • On launch, it will ignore the initialPosition and initialRows/initialCols setting, and instead resize to the top half of the monitor.
  • On launch, it will ignore the launchMode setting, and always launch in focus mode.
    • Users can disable focus mode on the _quake window if they do want tabs.
  • It will not be resizable from any side except the bottom of the window, nor will it be drag-able.
  • It will not be a valid target for the "most recent window" for window glomming. If it's the only open window, with "windowingBehavior": "useExisting*", then a new window will be created instead.
    • It is still a valid target for something like wt -w _quake new-tab

A window at runtime can be renamed to become the _quake window (if no other _quake window exists). When it does, it will resize to the position of the quake window, and enter focus mode.

We'll also be adding a special action quakeMode. This action is a special case of the globalSummon action, to specifically invoke the quake window in the current place. It is basically the same thing as the more elaborate:

{
    "monitor": "toCurrent",
    "desktop": "toCurrent",
    "window": "_quake",
    "toggleVisibility": true,
    "dropdownDuration": 0.5
},

Minimize to Tray

Many users have requested that the terminal additionally supports minimizing the window "to the tray icon". This is a bit like when you close the Teams window, but Teams is actually still running in the system tray, or the "notification area".

The Teams tray icon

fig 1: an example of the Teams tray icon in the notification area.

When users want to be able to "minimize to the tray", they want:

  • The window to no longer appear on the taskbar
  • The window to no longer appear in the alt-tab order

When minimized to the tray, it's almost as if there's no window for the Terminal at all. This can be combined with the global hotkey (or the tray icon's context menu) to quickly restore the window.

The tray icon could be used for a variety of purposes. As a simple start, we could include the following three options:

Focus Terminal
---
Windows > Window 1 - <un-named window>
          Window 2 - "This-window-does-have-a-name"
---
Quit

Just clicking on the icon would summon the recent terminal window. Right clicking would show the menu with "Focus Terminal", "Windows" and "Quit" in it, and "Windows" would have nested entries for each Terminal window.

  • "Focus Terminal" would do just that - summon the most recent terminal window, wherever it is.
  • "Windows" would have nested popups for each open Terminal window. Each of these nested entries would display the name and ID of the window. Clicking them would summon that window (wherever it may be)
  • "Quit" would be akin to quit in browsers - close all open windows [1].

The tray notification would be visible always when the user has "minimizeToTray": true set in their settings. If the user has that set to false, but would still like the tray, they can specify "alwaysShowTrayIcon": true. That will cause the tray icon to always be added to the system tray.

There's not a combination of settings where the Terminal is "minimized to the tray", and there's no tray icon visible. We don't want to let users get into a state where the Terminal is running, but is totally hidden from their control.

From a technical standpoint, the tray icon is managed similar to the global hotkey. The Monarch process is responsible for setting it up, and processing the messages. When a Monarch dies and a new process becomes the Monarch, then it will re-create the tray icon.

UI/UX Design

To summarize, we're proposing the following set of settings:

{
    "minimizeToTray": bool,
    "alwaysShowTrayIcon": bool,
    "actions": [
        {
            "keys": KeyChord,
            "command": {
                "action": "globalSummon",
                "dropdownDuration": float,
                "toggleVisibility": bool,
                "monitor": "any"|"toCurrent"|"onCurrent"|int,
                "desktop": "any"|"toCurrent"|"onCurrent"
            }
        },
        {
            "keys": KeyChord,
            "command": {
                "action": "quakeMode"
            }
        }
    ]
}

Potential Issues

Compatibility

As part of this set of changes, we'll also be allowing the Win key in keybindings. Generally, the OS reserves the Windows key for its own shortcuts. For example, Win+R for the run dialog, Win+A for the Action Center, Win+V for the cloud clipboard, etc. Users will now be able to use the win key themselves, but they should be aware that the OS has "first dibs" on any hotkeys involving the Windows key.
Mixed elevation

Only one app at a time gets to register for global hotkeys. However, from the Terminal's perspective, unelevated and elevated windows will act like different apps. Each privilege level has its own Monarch. The two are unable to communicate across the elevation boundary.

This means that if the user often runs terminals in both contexts, then only one will have the global hotkeys bound. The naive implementation would have the first elevation level "win" the keybindings.

A different option would be to have elevated windows not register global hotkeys at all. I don't believe that there's any sort of security implication for having a global hotkey for an elevated window.

A third option would be to have some sort of "whenElevated": bool? property for global hotkeys. This would explicitly enable a given hotkey for unelevated vs elevated windows.

  • "whenElevated": null: behave as normal - the first context level to run wins
  • "whenElevated": true: only register the hotkey when running elevated
  • "whenElevated": false: only register the hotkey when running unelevated
OneCore / Windows 10X

I'm fairly certain that none of these APIs would work on Windows 10X at all. These features would have to initially be disabled in a pure UWP version of the Terminal, until we could find workarounds. Since the window layer is the one responsible for the management of the hotkeys and the tray icon, we're not too worried about this.

  • If there are any other applications running that have already registered hotkeys with RegisterHotKey, then it's possible that the Terminal's attempt to register that hotkey will fail. If that should happen, then we should display a warning dialog to the user indicating which hotkey will not work (because it's already used for something else).

  • Which is the "current" monitor? The one with the mouse or the one with the active window? This isn't something that has an obvious answer. Guake implements this feature where the "current monitor" is the one with the mouse on it. At least for the first iterations of this action, that's what we'll use. monitor: onCurrent|onCurrentWindow|toCurrent|<int>

  • Currently, running both the Release and Preview versions of the Terminal at the same time side-by-side is not generally supported. (For example, wt.exe can only ever point at one of two.) If a user binds the same key to a globalSummon or quakeMode action, then only one of the apps will actually be able to successfully claim the global hotkey.

Implementation plan

Currently, in dev/migrie/f/653-QUAKE-MODE, I have some sample rudimentary code to implement quake mode support. It allows for only a single global hotkey that summons the MRU window, without dropdown. That would be a good place for anyone starting to work on this feature. From there, I imagine the following work would be needed:

  • Add a globalSummon action. AppHost would need to be able to get all of these actions, and register all of them. Each one would need to be assigned a unique ID, so WM_HOTKEY can identify which hotkey was pressed.
    • This could be committed without any other args to the globalHotkeys. In this initial version, the behavior would be summoning the MRU window, where it is, no dropdown, to start with. From there, we'd add the remaining properties:
    • Add support for the toggleVisibility property
    • Add support for the desktop property to control how window summoning interacts with virtual desktops
    • Add support for the monitor which monitor the window appears on.
    • Add support for the dropdownDuration property
  • Add the minimizeToTray setting, and implement it without any sort of flyout
    • Add a list of windows to the right-click flyout on the tray icon
    • Add support for the alwaysShowTrayIcon setting
  • When the user creates a window named _quake, ignore the initial size, position, and launch mode, and create the window in quake mode instead.
    • Exempt the _quake window from window glomming
    • Add the quakeMode action, which globalSummon's the _quake window.
    • Prevent the _quake window from being dragged or resized on the top/left/right.

Future Considerations

I don't believe there are any other tracked requests that are planned that aren't already included in this spec.

  • Should the tray icon's list of windows include window titles? Both the name and title? Maybe something like ({name}|{id}): {title}? I'd bet that most people don't end up naming their windows.
  • Dropdown duration could be a float|bool, with true->(whatever the default is), false->0.
    • We could have the setting appear as a pair of radio buttons, with the first disabling dropdown, and the second enabling a text box for inputting an animation duration.
  • It might be an interesting idea to have the ability to dock the quake window to a specific side of the monitor, not just the top. We could probably do that with a global setting "quakeModeDockSide": "top"|"left"|"bottom"|"right" or something like that.
  • We might want to pre-load the quake window into the tray icon as an entry for "Quake Mode", and otherwise exclude it from the list of windows in that menu.
  • We might think of other things for the Quake Mode window in the future - this spec is by no means comprehensive. For example, it might make sense for the quake mode window to automatically open in "always on top" mode.
  • It was suggested that the quake mode window could auto-hide when it loses focus. That's a really neat idea, but we're a little worried about the implementation. What happens when the IME window gets focus? Or the Start Menu? Would those end up causing the quake window to prematurely minimize itself? For that reason, we're leaving this as a future consideration.
  • Perhaps there could be a top-level object in the settings like 
    {
  "quakeMode": {
      "hideOnFocusLost": true,
      "useFocusMode": false,
      "profile": "my quake mode profile" ,
      "quakeModeDockSide": "bottom"
  }
}
    That would allow the user some further customizations on the quake mode behaviors.
    • This was later converted to the idea in #9992 - Add per-window-name global settings
  • Another proposed idea was a simplification of some of the summoning modes. { "monitor": "any", "desktop": "any" } is a little long, and maybe not the most apparent naming. Perhaps we could add another property like summonMode that would act like an alias for a monitor, desktop combo.
    • "summonMode": "activateInMyFace": { "monitor": "toCurrent", "desktop": "toCurrent" }
    • "summonMode": "activateWherever": { "monitor": "any", "desktop": "any" }

Resources

Docs on adding a system tray item:

Docs regarding hiding a window from the taskbar:

Footnotes

[1]: Quitting the terminal is different than closing the windows one-by-one. Quitting implies an atomic action, for closing all the windows. Once #766 lands, this will give us a chance to persist the state of all open windows. This will allow us to re-open with all the user's windows, not just the one that happened to be closed last.

[2]: Addenda, May 2021: In the course of implementation, it became apparent that there's an important UX difference between summoning to the monitor with the cursor vs to the monitor with the foreground window. "monitor": "toMouse" was added as an option, to allow the user to differentiate between the two behaviors.