Workspaces

Workspaces under Haiku are virtual desktops which let you arrange applications' windows and background for each desktop.

We will review in details how to use the workspaces in this article.

The workspaces application is a desktop applet accessible via the menu below :

The first time you open it, it will display four workspaces :

You can of course change the number of workspaces via the "Change workspace count" menu :

In the screen preferences application, you can indicate the number of columns and rows to be displayed.

Let's use a 4x1 workspaces panel :

And let's remove the window border by unclicking the "Show window tab" :

You can decide to display the window as "Always on top" if you want, and also to use "Switch on mouse wheel" to scroll among workspaces via the mouse wheel.

If you want to keep the workspaces application as a replicant, just drag and drop the below icon on the bottow right corner of the application into the current desktop :

The workspaces panel will be attached directly on the desktop as below :

Great !

Now, what can be done ?

You can attach to each workspace a specific background.

In my case, I've attached a different colored background to each. Suppose you are using WebPositive on the first workspace :

If you want to move WebPositive to the second workspace, just click on the application window + Alt + F2:

You can also switch from previous/next workspace using the keyboard shortcut Alt+Ctrl+Left or Alt+Ctrl+Right or the wheel mouse when the pointer is inside the Workspaces application panel.

One nice feature is the ability to move window from one workspace to another directly in the workspaces panel.

For that just click on the window's preview of the application and move it to the destination workspace :

You can also decide to arrange a 4x4 workspaces panel :

You can consider this kind of setup if you want to split your monitor into 4 different areas and you would like to switch from one to another easily.

I'm not sure if this kind of configuration is often used, because most of the time it's the opposite : the user is extending his workspace by having 1 to 4 screens, and the system adapts the desktop in order to use each of these screens.

A last feature I would like to highlight, the possibility to display the Workspaces panel on top of all system's windows as per below :

Do you want to know more about the Workspaces application ?

In that case, you can consult the "Haiku user guide" page in the workspaces section for more information.