Desks: Your Virtual Desktops

Documentation / Contents - Window Manager

• Overview of the Window Manager
• Desks: Your Virtual Desktops
  • Switching Desks
  • Moving a Window to Another Desk
• How Windows Get the Keyboard: Focus
  • The Three Focus Policies
• Moving, Resizing, and Minimizing Windows
  • Moving a Window
  • Resizing a Window
  • Minimizing a Window
  • Maximizing a Window
• The Window Menu
  • The Commands
  • Close Versus Exit
• Tiling Windows Into a Mosaic
  • Turning Tiling On

Other cards

• Copyright Information

Desks: Your Virtual Desktops

A desk is a separate screenful of windows, sometimes called a virtual desktop or a workspace. cywm gives you several desks so you can keep one group of windows on one desk and a different group on another, instead of piling everything onto a single screen. Blueprint starts with ten desks.

Only one desk shows on the screen at a time. Switching desks hides the current set of windows and shows the next set. A window normally lives on one desk, but you can also make a window "sticky" so it shows on every desk.

Switching Desks

The Desks Overview window is the control surface for desks: a small map of all your desks, with the windows drawn as little rectangles inside them. Click a desk in the map to switch to it. The Desks Overview has its own help book; see the Desks book for the full story.

Moving a Window to Another Desk

In the Desks Overview, drag a window's little rectangle from one desk into another to move it there. Drop it on the Global desk to make it sticky, so it appears on every desk at once.

What cywm Holds

cywm keeps the list of desks, which desk each window is on, and which windows are sticky. The Desks Overview only shows this and lets you change it; the window manager is what actually holds it.

See also The Window Menu for per-window commands, and Tiling Windows Into a Mosaic, which each desk tracks on its own.