Switching Desks

Documentation / Contents - Desks

• Overview of the Desks Overview
  • What Belongs to the Window Manager
• Switching Desks
  • Finding the Current Desk
  • The Scroll Arrows
• Moving Windows Between Desks
  • The Global Desk
  • Click, Double-Click and Drag
• Creating, Renaming, and Removing Desks
  • Naming a Desk
  • Adding a Desk
  • Removing a Desk
• The Menus
  • The Overview Menu
  • The Desk Menu
  • The Window Menu
  • The Help Menu
  • The Button 3 Popup
• Size, Orientation, and Labels
  • Scale
  • Orientation
  • Window Labels
  • Snapshots or Buttons
• Setting Preferences
  • The Overview Page
  • The Desk Names Page
  • Apply and Close
• Keys and Shortcuts
  • Overview Menu
  • Desk Menu
  • Window Menu
• Where the Settings Live
• Copyright Information

Switching Desks

Click a desk cell in the Desks Overview to switch to it. The screen changes to show that desk's windows and hides the others. Only one desk is on screen at a time.

Clicking works on the empty part of a cell and on a miniature window in it, so you never have to aim around the windows. Clicking a miniature and moving the pointer starts a drag instead; see Moving Windows Between Desks.

Finding the Current Desk

The desk you are on is marked in the overview so you never lose your place. Watching the map while you switch also shows the windows appear and disappear as each desk comes and goes.

Because the desks belong to the window manager, the mark follows a desk change made any other way: a keyboard shortcut, another program, the overview itself. There is no second opinion about which desk is current.

The Scroll Arrows

When the map is showing a sliding window of desks rather than all of them, small arrows appear at the ends. Click one to move the window of visible desks along, without switching desks. That lets you look at a distant desk before deciding to go there.

The arrows are outside the cells, so clicking one never switches a desk by accident.

To show every desk at once and be rid of the arrows, set "Show at once" to zero on the preferences page. See Setting Preferences.

Switching From the Keyboard

The overview is not the only way. The window manager binds the desk actions directly:

Ctrl+Alt+Right     Next desktop
Ctrl+Alt+Left      Previous desktop
Super+1 .. Super+0 Go straight to desktop 1 to 10
Alt+1 .. Alt+0     The same, on a second set of chords

These are the stock chords and they can be rebound. See the MenuShortcuts book, from Help Books in the Contents pane .

See Moving Windows Between Desks to rearrange what lives where.