xidlehook

Because xautolock is annoying to work with.

xidlehook is a general-purpose replacement for xautolock.
It basically just executes a command when the computer has been idle for _ minutes.

Improvements over xautolock:

• As well as a notifier, there is now a canceller, for when the user stops it from locking.
• Not specific to locking. Multiple instances can run at the same time.
• Optionally only run once.
• Optionally prevent locking when an application is fullscreen.
• Optionally prevent locking when any application plays audio.

Missing features:

• Magic corners.
• Bell, because you should be using --notify.
• All the instance related stuff (you should use unix sockets with --socket).

Note: xidlehook's timer is only accurate to the minute and may very well execute 59 seconds later than it's supposed to. However, the delay between notifier and timer is accurate to the second. See #6 for technical details.

Example

Here's a lock using i3lock, with screen dim support:

xidlehook \
  --time 5 \
  --timer 'xrandr --output "$(xrandr | grep primary | cut -d " " -f 1)" --brightness 1; i3lock' \
  --notify 10 \
  --notifier  'xrandr --output "$(xrandr | grep primary | cut -d " " -f 1)" --brightness .1' \
  --canceller 'xrandr --output "$(xrandr | grep primary | cut -d " " -f 1)" --brightness 1' \
  --not-when-fullscreen \
  --not-when-audio

Note: Every command is passed through sh -c, so you should be able to mostly use normal syntax.

For an example in practice, here's what I use personally.

Installation

Installation using cargo:

cargo install xidlehook

It's also available on Nix and the AUR (not officially maintained).

Or if you want to clone it manually:

git clone https://github.com/jD91mZM2/xidlehook
cd xidlehook
cargo build --release

Too bloaty?

Are you not using pulseaudio?
You can disable that requirement completely with --no-default-features!
This however gets rid of --not-when-audio.

Socket API

The socket API is very simple. Each command is a single byte, sent over a unix socket. Bind a file using --socket /path/to/xidlehook.sock (where the path is whatever you want), and then you can send one of the following:

A common use case of xidlehook is using it to run a lockscreen. To then manually lock the screen, you could bind this bash command to a shortcut:

echo -ne "\x2" | socat - UNIX-CONNECT:/path/to/xidlehook.sock