This was also my experience. I was using i3 for a year but things still weren't working the way I wanted it. Stumbled upon i3-gnome (https://github.com/csxr/i3-

This was also my experience. I was using i3 for a year but things still weren't working the way I wanted it. Stumbled upon i3-gnome (https://github.com/csxr/i3-gnome https://github.com/csxr/i3-gnome) and this maybe the current solution for this problem.