passwordstore passdemenu and type automatically in i3wm

I start passdmenu with a key combination handled by i3 window manager for storing my passwords securely. On Arch Linux, this package can be installed with pacman -S passdmenu.

In order to make typing work, I need xdotools

# pacman -S xdotools

To make passdmenu appear on a specific keyboard combination, update the i3 config:

# ~/.config/i3/config (redacted version)
set $mod Mod4
bindsym $mod+y exec passdmenu --store $PASSWORD_STORE_DIR_PRIVATE --type

I am using --type to make it type passwords automatically. If you have not installed xdotools, it will silently fail to show, with to apparent errors.

General rule of thumb when binding things in i3 is to

• Make sure the command works from your terminal
• Make sure the full system environment has been loaded before i3 is started, or else you will not have the same set of system variables available