Focus application or cycle through its windows

[alper]

This is a pretty common request from other window managing tools:

I see this:
#1809 (comment)

Which points me at being able to write something like that myself, but it would be a bit complicated:

• For a named application say "Ghostty"
• Run aerospace list-windows --focused to see if it's already focused
• If not, run aerospace list-windows --all | grep Ghostty and get the first window id
• Run aerospace focus --window-id ID
• If the application is already focused get all window ids again but return the id after the one that is currently focused (looping)
• Focus that ID

Bonus points for starting the application if it's not already running.

Is this possible to do in a simpler way? What command-line tool should I use to cycle through the options?

[alper]

I guess I can make a shell script that does this.

[alper]

Claude generated this:

#!/usr/bin/env bash
set -euo pipefail

APP="$1"

# Get all window IDs for this app (clean format, no padding issues)
IDS=()
while IFS='|' read -r id name; do
    if [[ "$name" == "$APP" ]]; then
        IDS+=("$id")
    fi
done < <(aerospace list-windows --all --format '%{window-id}|%{app-name}')

# If no windows, launch the app
if [[ ${#IDS[@]} -eq 0 ]]; then
    open -a "$APP"
    exit 0
fi

# Get the currently focused window
FOCUSED="$(aerospace list-windows --focused --format '%{window-id}|%{app-name}')"
FOCUSED_ID="${FOCUSED%%|*}"
FOCUSED_APP="${FOCUSED#*|}"

if [[ "$FOCUSED_APP" != "$APP" ]]; then
    # App not focused — focus its first window
    aerospace focus --window-id "${IDS[0]}"
else
    # App is focused — cycle to next window
    for i in "${!IDS[@]}"; do
        if [[ "${IDS[$i]}" == "$FOCUSED_ID" ]]; then
            NEXT=$(( (i + 1) % ${#IDS[@]} ))
            aerospace focus --window-id "${IDS[$NEXT]}"
            exit 0
        fi
    done
    # Fallback (shouldn't happen)
    aerospace focus --window-id "${IDS[0]}"
fi