[akimbostrawman]

Autostart management is one of the few things I dislike about sway. Over a longer period of trial and error i managed to create a sway config with sleeps to exactly get the kind of layout i want with 10 workspaces and about a dozen apps with some needing to be started in a specific order to properly function.

Only downside is that I have to wait about 45 seconds after login to do anything or else the layout gets screwed up and the window focus gets hijacked by new spawning apps and workspaces.

It seems this method also has those issues.

[__hugues]

45s? how long do your apps take to start? what dependencies exist between your apps?

sway-layout does not enforce any dependencies between apps. everything is started concurrently, so unless your apps manage their own interdependencies, it's not going to work

on the other hand, that means the initial wait should be much shorter

one potential avenue you could explore might be to configure a headless output, and try to have your slow starting apps/workspaces anchored there until they are ready. I haven't trie it though...

[akimbostrawman]

Its less that they need 45s to start and more that there needs to be some leeway in case they for whatever reason take couple seconds longer to not screw up the layout. For 10 application a per app sleep of only 3 seconds is already 30 seconds. I will see if this tool might work for me tho.