xdotool: Unknown command: 21043361

Question

As far as I know the below line of code should pull into focus the open nautilus window

xdotool windowactivate `xdotool search --onlyvisible --class nautilus`

But I am getting the error

xdotool: Unknown command: 21043361

i've done it here https://askubuntu.com/questions/200929/focus-existing-terminal-with-ctrl-alt-t-shortcut — Possum Gallo, Oct 18 '15 at 18:04

score 6 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 31 '12 at 23:06

xdotool author here.

What you are seeing is very likely that there are two window ids. You could try and figure out exactly which window id was the one you wanted, but in most cases can just use the 'command chaining' and 'window stack' features - see "WINDOW STACK" and "COMMAND CHAINING" in the xdotool manpage.

The simplest solution to your question is to have xdotool search and pass the window ids directly to the windowactivate command, like so:

xdotool search --onlyvisible --class nautilus windowactivate

The above does a search, saves the results on the window stack, then calls windowactivate, which with no arguments applies to the first window on the window stack (aka '%1'). Think of it as a way to pipe search results into other xdotool commands within the same command line.

Here's another example to get the titles of all google chrome windows, using the '%@' window stack thing that means 'all windows on the stack' (unlike %1, %2, etc which are specific windows in the stack)

% xdotool search --onlyvisible --class chrome getwindowname %@   
asdf - Google Search - Google Chrome
CNN.com - Breaking News, U.S., World, Weather, Entertainment & Video News - Google Chrome
Ask Ubuntu - Google Chrome
Google Chrome

In general, any command that emits a window id (search, selectwindow, getactivewindow, etc) will populate the window stack for use with chained commands. Another example, killing a window (usually quits an application) by clicking on it:

% xdotool selectwindow windowkill

Gilles 'SO- stop being evil' · Accepted Answer · 2012-10-31T00:32:50.557

3

I think what's happening is that the inner xdotool command is reporting multiple window IDs. So the outer command sees something like xdotool windowactivate 12345678 21043361 and doesn't know what to make of the second number.

If you don't mind which open Nautilus window you activate, you can select the first one:

xdotool windowactivate $(xdotool search --onlyvisible --class nautilus | head -n 1)

If you do mind, you might want to select further with --title or --maxdepth.

To exclude the root window, which is provided by Nautilus, this should work:

xdotool windowactivate $(xdotool search --onlyvisible --class nautilus |
                         grep -vxF $(xwininfo -int -size -root |
                                     sed -n 's/.*Window id: *\([0-9]\+\).*/\1/p') |
                         head -n 1)

edited Oct 31 '12 at 00:32

answered Oct 30 '12 at 22:27

Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'

60,593

It still gets the same error. – Hailwood Oct 31 '12 at 00:14
You are correct though, it is getting two ID's which is the issue, but your line of code still returns two? – Hailwood Oct 31 '12 at 00:15
@Hailwood Oops, I forgot the option to head to tell it to output only one line. Fixed. – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil' Oct 31 '12 at 00:16
Adding --limit 1 has the effect you were going for, I shall accept this answer as it helped me find the issue :) – Hailwood Oct 31 '12 at 00:17
Ah nice, now my question is, is there a difference between xdotool windowactivatexdotool search --limit 1 --onlyvisible --class nautilus`` and what you have? – Hailwood Oct 31 '12 at 00:19
and, actually, I just realized, the desktop is classed as nautilus... how could I select the file browser? – Hailwood Oct 31 '12 at 00:20
@Hailwood I don't use Gnome or Nautilus, so I'm not sure, but try excluding the root window, see my edit. – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil' Oct 31 '12 at 00:33

xdotool: Unknown command: 21043361

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