cowpager - Man Page

FvwmPager-style visual pager for the cow window manager

Synopsis

cowpager [-r rows] [-c cols] [-m mon[,mon...]] [-1] [-h]

Description

cowpager is a small graphical pager that displays desks tracked by and the windows on them.  Each desk is drawn as one unified canvas containing every windoW.

Without any options, cowpager will show all desks and windows across all outputs.

Options

-r ROWS

Arrange desks in ROWS rows.  If only -r is given, the number of columns is computed from the number of desks.

-c COLS

Arrange desks in COLS columns.  If only -c is given, the number of rows is computed from the number of desks.  When neither -r nor -c is given, all desks are arranged in a single row.

-m LIST

Restrict the pager to the listed outputss.  LIST is one or more output names separated by commas (e.g. -m HDMI-A-1,DP-1).  Both the tab strip and the windows drawn on the page grid are filtered to this set; tabs appear in the order given on the command line.

When -m names a single output, the tab strip is not shown.

Without -m, all outputs are shown in the way cow manages them.  See cow(1) -- OUTPUT MANAGEMENT.

-1

Display only the currently active desk.

-h

Print usage and exit.

Display

Output Tabs

Each tab in a desk cell will show the following information:

  • focused -- this output holds the focused window and that window lives on this desk.  Shown as a bright green background.
  • active -- this output's current desk is this desk (but the focused window is elsewhere).  Shown as a light-grey background.
  • present -- this output is on a different desk, but this desk contains at least one window owned by it.  Shown as a thin blue accent stripe along the bottom of the tab.
  • empty -- No windows at all, shown as a light-grey background.

The tab label is the output's name when it fits, falling back to its cow-assigned number when the name would overflow the slot.

Page Grid and Viewports

Window miniatures are placed on the grid.  Windows are coloured by their id. The focused window is drawn in yellow.

For every output currently on the active desk, a translucent yellow rectangle marks that output's viewport position within the page grid.  When two outputs share a desk but sit on different pages, both rectangles are drawn.

Use

Examples

Show every output and every desk (the default):

  cowpager &

Limit the pager to two specific outputs, arranged in two rows:

  cowpager -r 2 -m HDMI-A-1,DP-1 &

Single-output pager pinned to DP-1, showing only the active desk:

  cowpager -1 -m DP-1 &

See Also

cow(1)

Authors

Thomas Adam

Referenced By

cow(1), cowident(1), cowrearrange(1).

2026-08-07 0.1 cowpager - cow pager