Files
Panama/config/dot/quickshell/manual/03-windows-and-workspaces.md
T
Gabriel Brown f8f5b25510 Make Shell a category, the bar legible, and the dock a real dock
Desktop & Dock becomes Shell — Bar, Dock, Control Center, Tiling,
Workspaces — the home for everything Quickshell draws. The settings-
management cluster moves to System as Sync & Backup, Appearance's
Shell tab dissolves, and 24-hour time finally lives on Date & Time,
which always owned it.

The bar gets what it never had: a way to survive the wallpaper. A
second neutral text family (follow theme, or forced light or dark),
a one-layer shadow under every glyph, and a gradient scrim for
wallpapers nothing else survives — all off by default, pixel-identical
until asked. Widgets earn toggles (weather, media, clipboard, calendar
countdown), the vitals cluster stops leaving a dead pill behind, and
Control Center's sections learn to step aside.

The dock graduates from MVP: a context menu with window rows, pin,
unpin, quit and new-window; scroll an icon to cycle its windows; drag
to reorder on the dock itself; hover previews with one-shot captures;
and "Add App to Dock" in the launcher. Three real bugs died en route —
menus that slid away with the autohide, a readonly-property crash on
every menu open, and a drag that drifted half a slot per icon on side
docks. The pinned-apps editor in Settings becomes a drag strip.

166 contracts; the full suite is green except two live display and
switcher tests that cannot run behind a locked session — re-verified
on unlock.

Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01Ms2FbjQy31TVf3CEvQhGM8
2026-08-24 04:28:20 -04:00

2.1 KiB
Raw Blame History

Windows and workspaces

How the split is chosen

A new window splits the space of the window that had focus. Whether it splits beside or below depends on which way that space is longer, which usually matches what you were about to do anyway.

When it does not, Super + Ctrl + G flips the split of the focused window, and Super + Ctrl + Z and Super + Ctrl + V decide the direction the next window will take before you open it.

Resizing

Super + Shift plus Y, O, B, M adjusts width; I, U, N and comma adjust height. These are inverted from what their letters suggest, on purpose, and the reason is written in config/dot/hypr/keybinds.lua next to the binds.

For anything finer, hold Super and drag with the right mouse button.

Fullscreen and floating

Super + U makes the focused window fullscreen. Super + Ctrl + C lifts it out of the layout to float, and Super + Ctrl + Shift + C pins it so it follows you between workspaces. A floating window can be moved by holding Super and dragging with the left button.

Workspaces

Ten of them, on Alt + 1 through Alt + 0. Alt + H and Alt + L step between neighbours, and Alt + Shift plus a number sends the current window somewhere without following it.

On a machine with more than one display, workspaces belong to whichever screen has focus. If you would rather pin workspaces one through ten to your main display and give the second screen its own, that is a switch on the Displays settings page.

How windows share the space — the layout, the master area, gaps and window edges — is Shell Tiling. The workspace switches themselves, and the projects below, are Shell Workspaces.

Projects

A project is the set of windows you open together: which applications, which workspace each was on, and for a terminal, which directory it was in.

Arrange things the way you want them, then run Save Layout as Project from the launcher. Open Project lays it out again on free workspaces, so it never lands on top of what you are already doing. An application that refuses to open twice is moved into place rather than launched again.