Today we want to use our MultiMedia Key in i3wm.

optional Requirements

- pactl
- xbacklight
- playerctl We only have to install the Packages we want to via our MulitMedia Keys.

i3 Configs

Like suggested in the i3vm FAQ we just edit our ~/i3/config File and add the following keybindings:

# Pulse Audio controls
bindsym XF86AudioRaiseVolume exec --no-startup-id pactl set-sink-volume 0 +5% #increase sound volume
bindsym XF86AudioLowerVolume exec --no-startup-id pactl set-sink-volume 0 -5% #decrease sound volume
bindsym XF86AudioMute exec --no-startup-id pactl set-sink-mute 0 toggle # mute sound

# Sreen brightness controls
bindsym XF86MonBrightnessUp exec xbacklight -inc 5 # increase screen brightness
bindsym XF86MonBrightnessDown exec xbacklight -dec 5 # decrease screen brightness

# Touchpad controls
bindsym XF86TouchpadToggle exec /some/path/toggletouchpad.sh # toggle touchpad

# Media player controls
bindsym XF86AudioPlay exec playerctl play
bindsym XF86AudioPause exec playerctl pause
bindsym XF86AudioNext exec playerctl next
bindsym XF86AudioPrev exec playerctl previous

Touchpad Script

The script toggletouchpad.sh for toggling your touchpad should have following content:

#!/bin/bash
if synclient -l | grep "TouchpadOff .*=.*0" ; then
    synclient TouchpadOff=1 ;
else
    synclient TouchpadOff=0 ;
fi

Troubleshooting

Playerctl is a command-line utility for controlling media players over DBus that works with most players.

If the XF86* keysyms do not work, we can see the available keysyms for our computer by executing this command:

xmodmap -pke

Or xev, an interactive tool for finding key symbols:

xev