I use i3 for a short time now (hosted by ArcoLinux) and it’s great. It’s fast – even on older hardware – and after a while easy to use. One thing that’s not working out of the box is to lock the screen after a specific time of inactivity. That’s how I did it…

First I installed xautolock and i3lock:

pacman -S xautolock i3lock

Afterwards the configuration of i3 – located in ~/.config/i3/config – had to be modified:

#Press $mod (super) and X to exit - check toolbar for next choices
bindsym $mod+X mode "$mode_system"
bindsym control+mod1+Delete mode "$mode_system"

set $Locker i3lock --color=000000 && sleep 1

set $mode_system System (k) lock, (l) logout, (u) suspend, (h) hibernate, (r) reboot, (s) shutdown
mode "$mode_system" {
    bindsym k exec --no-startup-id $Locker, mode "default"
    bindsym l exec --no-startup-id ~/.config/i3/scripts/i3exit.sh logout, mode "default"
    bindsym u exec --no-startup-id ~/.config/i3/scripts/i3exit.sh suspend, mode "default"
    bindsym h exec --no-startup-id ~/.config/i3/scripts/i3exit.sh hibernate, mode "default"
    bindsym r exec --no-startup-id ~/.config/i3/scripts/i3exit.sh reboot, mode "default"
    bindsym s exec --no-startup-id ~/.config/i3/scripts/i3exit.sh shutdown, mode "default"

    # back to normal: Enter or Escape
    bindsym Return mode "default"
    bindsym Escape mode "default"
}


exec --no-startup-id xautolock -time 5 -locker 'i3lock --color=000000' -corners +00-

The bold text are modified lines. These settings activates the screenlock by hitting MOD+x k or automatically after five minutes of inactivity.

There’s one question left: How am I able to restart xautolock daemon without restarting my PC?