Bsrgvty

It sounds simple; xdotool selects desktop, simulates F5 key press and returns focus to calling window / program.

After googling though it doesn't sound simple anymore.

I need to do this from bash / gnome-shell.

Any ideas?

This project is related to this Q&A where the icons drop off the left screen into a black whole because of different sized monitors:

• Desktop icons just dropped down left screen into never-never land

Thanks to Podesta's help I created this code:

TestIcons () [[ $TestSeconds == 0 ]] && TestSeconds=5

 local i Position File
 for (( i=0; i<$#IconsArr[@]; i=i+ICON_FLD_CNT )) ; do
 File="$ICONS_DIR"/"$IconsArr[((i+ICON_NAME_NDX))]"
 Position="$IconsArr[((i+ICON_COL_NDX))],$IconsArr[((i+ICON_ROW_NDX))]"
 gvfs-set-attribute -t string "$File" 
 'metadata::nautilus-icon-position' "$Position"
 done

 wmctrl -k on # Show desktop
 xdotool key F5 # Refresh desktop (show icon new positions)
 sleep $TestSeconds # Pause for view
 wmctrl -k off # Restore windows

 for (( i=0; i<$#OldIconsArr[@]; i=i+ICON_FLD_CNT )) ; do
 File="$ICONS_DIR"/"$OldIconsArr[((i+ICON_NAME_NDX))]"
 Position="$OldIconsArr[((i+ICON_COL_NDX))],$OldIconsArr[((i+ICON_ROW_NDX))]"
 gvfs-set-attribute -t string "$File" 
 'metadata::nautilus-icon-position' "$Position"

 done

 wmctrl -k on # Show desktop
 xdotool key F5 # Refresh desktop (show icon new positions)
 wmctrl -k off # Restore windows

 # TestIcons

This is what the screen looks like:

Script below work of @WinEunuuchs2Unix and is the final solution. My original answer is at the end.

#!/bin/bash

TestIcons () [[ $TestSeconds == 0 ]] && TestSeconds=5

 local i Position File
 for (( i=0; i<$#IconsArr[@]; i=i+ICON_FLD_CNT )) ; do
 File="$ICONS_DIR"/"$IconsArr[((i+ICON_NAME_NDX))]"
 Position="$IconsArr[((i+ICON_COL_NDX))],$IconsArr[((i+ICON_ROW_NDX))]"
 gvfs-set-attribute -t string "$File" 
 'metadata::nautilus-icon-position' "$Position"
 done

 wmctrl -k on # Show desktop
 xdotool key F5 # Refresh desktop (show icon new positions)
 sleep $TestSeconds # Pause for view
 wmctrl -k off # Restore windows

 for (( i=0; i<$#OldIconsArr[@]; i=i+ICON_FLD_CNT )) ; do
 File="$ICONS_DIR"/"$OldIconsArr[((i+ICON_NAME_NDX))]"
 Position="$OldIconsArr[((i+ICON_COL_NDX))],$OldIconsArr[((i+ICON_ROW_NDX))]"
 gvfs-set-attribute -t string "$File" 
 'metadata::nautilus-icon-position' "$Position"

 done

 wmctrl -k on # Show desktop
 xdotool key F5 # Refresh desktop (show icon new positions)
 wmctrl -k off # Restore windows

 
TestIcons

A few other xdotools commands that can be useful in similar situation:

If your window manager has a show desktop command, it can be useful to minimize, and bring back all windows. Usually it is set to ctrl+alt+d:

xdotool key ctrl+alt+d

If you want to save the currently active window, to later bring it back, you can use:

myWindow="$(xdotool getactivewindow)"

Ti minimize a window you can use. Adding it to a loop allows you to minimize all windows, as an alternative to the show dekstop.

xdotool windowminimize $(xdotool getactivewindow)

To bring the active window you saved back to the focus:

xdotool windowactivate "$myWindow"

To close the active window use:

xdotool getactivewindow windowkill

And most important, all those commands that you can use with active window, you can actually search and apply to specific cases. For example, searching for this specific window, based on the title.

xdotool search --desktop 0 --name "command line - xdotool" windowactivate

There are many different ways of searching for windows, based on the title, the class, if they are visible, etc. It can also manipulate both windows positions and the mouse. The manpage for xdotol is very comprehensive. Combining them with a bash script would give plenty of freedom to achieve most things.