Bring terminal to the front in Python

Question

Is there a way to bring the Linux terminal to the front of your screen from a python script? Possibly using some kind of os. command

I.e - Your python script opens up a GUI that fills the screen, but if a certain event happens that you want to see printed in the terminal to be viewed, but don't want to / can't show this information on the GUI (so please don't suggest that)

And if possible, hide it back behind your other windows again, if needed.

(Python 2, by the way)

Any suggestions greatly appreciated.

have you tried, `subprocess.Popen(somescript, shell=True)` or `subprocess.call(somescript, shell=True)` or `os.system("command")` — marmeladze, Apr 29 '15 at 16:00
http://superuser.com/questions/142945/bash-command-to-focus-a-specific-window may help you. — m0dem, Apr 29 '15 at 16:01
@marmeladze, I just tried both, os.system didn't have any effect, subprocess did bring terminal to the front, but only with an exception, I think that was probably down to my use of it, rather than it as a tool, so I will continue to try this method (exception is that the object is not iterable?), thanks for the point in the right direction though. — Aphire, Apr 29 '15 at 16:16
@M0dem, the link only just came up, originally the comment just said "[may] help you" and I didn't understand, I will check that link now, cheers. — Aphire, Apr 29 '15 at 16:18
@M0dem, after following that up, I have it working, thanks, if you want to post that as an answer, i'd be happy to accept. — Aphire, Apr 29 '15 at 16:31

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Apr 29 '15 at 16:28

Not in any generally supported way.

Some terminal applications may support the following control sequences. However, these sequences are not standardized, and most terminals do not implement them.

\e[5t  - move window to front
\e[6t  - move window to back

\e[2t  - minimize ("iconify") window
\e[1t  - un-minimize window

— from http://rtfm.etla.org/xterm/ctlseq.html

score 0 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 12:17

That "bring the Linux terminal to the front of your screen" is likely talking about terminal emulators running in an X Window environment. Ultimately this is accomplished by making a request to the window manager. There is more than one way to do this.

xterm (and some other terminal emulators) implement the Sun control sequences for window manipulation (from the 1980s) which were reimplemented in dtterm during the early 1990s. xterm has done this since 1996 (patch #18).
Python: Xlib — How can I raise(bring to top) windows? mentions wmctl, a command-line tool which allows you to make various requests to the window manager.
xdotool is another command-line tool which performs similar requests.
finally, Can a WM raise or lower windows? points out that you can write your own application (and because python can use shared libraries written in C, you could write a script using the X library).

I used the wmctrl to solve the problem in the end as M0dem suggested in comments, but as he did not post as an answer, I shall mark this up as the correct answer, because it gives more detail, and contains the solution I used. Cheers! — Aphire, Apr 30 '15 at 07:31

Bring terminal to the front in Python

2 Answers2