Size, Orientation, and Labels

The Desks Overview has several presentation choices. None of them changes the desks themselves, only how the map is drawn.

Scale

The map is drawn at a percentage of your real screen, from four percent to eighteen percent, with eight percent as the default. A larger map shows the miniature windows in more detail; a smaller one takes less of your screen.

Set it from the Scaling submenu on the Overview menu: five common values, plus Custom... for the slider. See The Menus.

The window resizes itself to the size the scale implies. Height always follows the scale; the width can be overridden in the settings file, which is worth knowing if you run enough windows that their labels collide. See Where the Settings Live.

Orientation

The desk cells can be laid out in a row or a column, or the overview can choose for you.

Auto          follow the usable screen area
Horizontal    a row of cells
Vertical      a column of cells

Auto reads the usable area, which is the screen minus any strip the window manager has reserved, and picks the arrangement that fits. So if you reserve a strip down the left or right edge of the screen, the desks stack to suit it rather than being squeezed into a row that does not fit. The reserved strip is set with the dock area tool; see the DockArea book, from Help Books in the Contents pane .

Set the orientation on the preferences page; see Setting Preferences.

Window Labels

Each miniature window can carry a name under it, and there are three choices, as a radio group on the Overview menu and again on the preferences page.

Display Window Name    the window's own title
Display Icon Name      the window's icon title (the default)
Display No Names       nothing but the plain rectangle

Icon name is the default because it is the shorter of the two and stays readable at map scale. Pick whichever keeps the map legible for the number of windows you run; with a crowded desk, no names at all is often clearest.

The colour of a desk's name can be set on the preferences page: the scheme's own text colour, which is the default and the right answer, or one of five named colours when you want the names to shout.

Snapshots or Buttons

Snapshots       windows as miniature rectangles
Buttons only    each desk is a plain button

Snapshots is the default and is the point of the tool. Buttons only turns the overview into a plain desk switcher, which is what you want when the map is small, when the machine is slow, or when you only ever use it to change desks.

Hide Snapshots on the Overview menu toggles this; the preferences page has it as a pair of radio buttons.

The Global Cell

The Global desk is an extra cell for sticky windows. Show or hide it with Show Global Desk on the Overview menu, or the "Show the Global desk" check box on the preferences page. See Moving Windows Between Desks.

Hide Menubar on the Overview menu gives the menu bar's space to the map. The third mouse button still reaches every menu. See The Menus.

See Overview of the Desks Overview to start over, or Setting Preferences for the panel that sets all of this in one place.

Size, Orientation, and Labels