# Transparent terminals in i3wm

**URL:** <https://forum.codeselfstudy.com/t/transparent-terminals-in-i3wm/1622>\
**Category:** Operating Systems, Editors, and Tools\
**Created:** [May 7, 2019, 8:04am UTC](https://forum.codeselfstudy.com/t/transparent-terminals-in-i3wm/1622 "2019-05-07T08:04:47Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Josh](https://forum.codeselfstudy.com/user_avatar/forum.codeselfstudy.com/josh/32/4_2.png) [@Josh](https://forum.codeselfstudy.com/u/Josh)\
**Post date:** [May 7, 2019, 8:04am UTC](https://forum.codeselfstudy.com/t/transparent-terminals-in-i3wm/1622/1 "2019-05-07T08:04:47Z")

</div>

I was browsing around some of the [Linux customizations on Reddit](https://old.reddit.com/r/unixporn/) and wanted to see how transparent terminals look on my desktop with i3.

For anyone who wants to try it:

```plaintext
$ sudo apt update && sudo apt install compton

```

Put this in `~/.config/compton.conf`:

```auto
opacity-rule = ["85:class_g = 'Gnome-terminal'"];

```

(or whatever programs you want to make transparent – see [this page](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Compton))

I put this in my i3conf file (seen [here](https://old.reddit.com/r/i3wm/comments/2yytvs/make_terminals_transparent/cpes6mp/)):

```plaintext
# for transparency
exec --no-startup-id compton

```

I’m not sure if it will work until I restart my computer, so I ran compton in another terminal:

```plaintext
$ compton &

```

and it worked. I kind of like it, but don’t know if it will be too distracting in the long term.

 ![compton-i3](https://forum.codeselfstudy.com/uploads/default/original/1X/b2d4b7ecd819ad2303983fff8dec4c3619d600e7.jpeg)

 ![transparent-terminal-i3](https://forum.codeselfstudy.com/uploads/default/original/1X/ae93bed8e588bf59f268973b88c4241cd67be7b0.jpeg)

**Related discussion:** [[POLL] What Terminal Do You Use? (Linux)](https://forum.codeselfstudy.com/t/poll-what-terminal-do-you-use-linux/2541)

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![flcpge](https://forum.codeselfstudy.com/user_avatar/forum.codeselfstudy.com/flcpge/32/653_2.png) [@flcpge](https://forum.codeselfstudy.com/u/flcpge)\
**Post date:** [May 8, 2019, 6:17am UTC](https://forum.codeselfstudy.com/t/transparent-terminals-in-i3wm/1622/2 "2019-05-08T06:17:58Z")

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When it comes to eye candy I believe less is more. I set the opacity between 80 and 90% when i used Compiz with XFCE in the past. I think Compton is much lighter on resources than Compiz.

It looks good.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Josh](https://forum.codeselfstudy.com/user_avatar/forum.codeselfstudy.com/josh/32/4_2.png) [@Josh](https://forum.codeselfstudy.com/u/Josh)\
**Post date:** [May 8, 2019, 7:39pm UTC](https://forum.codeselfstudy.com/t/transparent-terminals-in-i3wm/1622/3 "2019-05-08T19:39:19Z")

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It has been working out. I use my [desktop background switching script](https://forum.codeselfstudy.com/t/desktop-background-switcher-for-i3wm/1044) to rotate the backgrounds until I find one that works well.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Josh](https://forum.codeselfstudy.com/user_avatar/forum.codeselfstudy.com/josh/32/4_2.png) [@Josh](https://forum.codeselfstudy.com/u/Josh)\
**Post date:** [July 5, 2019, 5:49am UTC](https://forum.codeselfstudy.com/t/transparent-terminals-in-i3wm/1622/4 "2019-07-05T05:49:31Z")

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It lasted about 2 months. I just turned off the transparency, because sometimes it got harder to read the code, especially when I switched to tabbed windows (`alt-w` in my configuration) and there was another text file behind the terminal. 😞

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![flcpge](https://forum.codeselfstudy.com/user_avatar/forum.codeselfstudy.com/flcpge/32/653_2.png) [@flcpge](https://forum.codeselfstudy.com/u/flcpge)\
**Post date:** [July 6, 2019, 1:30am UTC](https://forum.codeselfstudy.com/t/transparent-terminals-in-i3wm/1622/5 "2019-07-06T01:30:58Z")

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Too much eye candy is distracting.