Using i3lock with systemd-suspend

It took me a few tries before figuring this one out. But I eventually found the [the easy] solution in an old thread on the Arch Linux forums [Link].

I started out by creating the file /etc/systemd/system/i3lock.service with the following content:

[Unit]
Description=Lock screen before suspend
Before=sleep.target

[Service]
User=johan
Type=forking
Environment=DISPLAY=:0
ExecStart=/home/johan/Scripts/i3lock.sh

[Install]
WantedBy=sleep.target

I then enabled the service with the command:

# systemctl enable i3lock.service

That’s it! And for those curious, this is what my i3lock.sh looks like:

#!/bin/bash

icon="$HOME/.config/i3/lock.png"
img="$HOME/.cache/i3lock.png"

# Take a screenshot for our background
scrot $img
# Pixelate the background
convert $img -scale 10% -scale 1000% $img
# Add the lock-icon
convert $img $icon -gravity center -composite $img
# Finally run i3lock itself
i3lock -u -i $img

It will now lock my screen before it goes to sleep, so it’s locked when it wakes up again.