Layouts and panes

This page covers how to open, arrange, and resize panes, how each layout places them, and how workspaces, floating panes, popups, and the scratchpad fit around the layout. For what panes, workspaces, and layouts are, see Core concepts.

Each workspace has its own layout. The default is Dwindle. Press Ctrl+A, then m to cycle layouts, or use the M command key to open Layouts, which previews each one. Press Ctrl+F in Layouts to make the highlighted layout the default for new workspaces. Profiles can set a layout per workspace; see Profiles.

Work with panes

Press these command keys after the Ctrl+A prefix, or hold Alt while pressing them. See Keybindings for the full reference.

Task	Command key
Open a pane	Enter
Open a floating pane	Shift+Enter
Close the focused pane	w
Focus left, down, up, right	h, j, k, l, or arrow keys
Swap with a neighbor	H/J/K/L, or Shift plus arrows
Move and reinsert beside a neighbor	Ctrl+H/J/K/L, or Ctrl plus arrows
Cycle focus	Tab or Shift+Tab
Grow or shrink	= or -
Enter resize mode	r
Toggle floating	t
Toggle fullscreen	f
Promote to master	.
Rename the pane	N

Swap exchanges two panes without changing the layout's shape. Move takes the focused pane out and reinserts it beside the neighbor, which can change the split tree.

In resize mode, use h/j/k/l or the arrow keys, then press Esc or Enter. Layouts without adjustable sizes ignore resizing. A floating pane resizes its own rectangle.

A new pane starts in the focused pane's current working directory when rozi can detect it, and otherwise in the configured cwd. See Terminal features.

Compare layouts

Layout	Arrangement	Resizable
Dwindle	Each new tiled pane splits the focused pane.	Split ratios
Master	One master pane on the left, with the rest stacked on the right.	Master width
Grid	Near-square, row-major grid.	No
Columns	Equal full-height columns.	No
Rows	Equal full-width rows.	No
Scrollable	Ordered full-height columns on a horizontal strip.	Each pane width
Monocle	Every tiled pane fills the workspace, with the focused pane on top.	No

The same five panes in each layout:

~/src/rozi — web

Each new pane splits the focused one along its longer side.

[layout]
default = "dwindle"

Dwindle

Dwindle picks the split direction from the focused tile's shape: wide tiles split side by side, and tall tiles split top and bottom. Terminal cells are taller than they are wide, so [layout].split_width_multiplier (default 2.3) corrects for that when comparing width and height. Closing the focused pane moves focus to the pane that takes over its space.

Press Space to flip the focused split's direction. To change ratios, use = and -, resize mode, or drag a split boundary.

Master

The first tiled pane is the master. Press . to promote the focused pane. To change the master width, use = and -, resize mode, or drag the master boundary.

Grid, columns, and rows

These layouts size panes from their count and order. Grid fills rows, Columns gives every pane the full workspace height, and Rows gives every pane the full workspace width. Grow, shrink, and resize mode have no effect.

Scrollable

Scrollable arranges panes as full-height columns on a strip wider than the screen. One pane fills the view. With more panes, each column keeps its own width, and the strip scrolls to show the focused pane.

• Directional focus stops at the ends of the strip instead of wrapping around. Tab and Shift+Tab still cycle through every pane and wrap.
• Focus on hover does not scroll. Pointing at a partly hidden column focuses it in place; the strip scrolls when a key or click reaches that pane.
• Moving, swapping, or dragging a column does not scroll the strip if the column ends up fully visible. If it lands partly hidden, the strip scrolls just far enough to show it.
• A script can scroll the strip to a pane without focusing it with rozi pane reveal.

A column's default width is 0.45 of the view, and widths are limited to 0.20 through 0.80. To change the focused column's width, use = and -, the horizontal resize-mode keys, or drag with the mouse.

Monocle

Monocle stacks every tiled pane in the same area. Use directional focus, Tab, or Shift+Tab to choose which pane is visible. Hidden panes keep running.

To maximize one pane briefly without changing the workspace layout, use fullscreen instead.

Floating and fullscreen panes

Press t to move the focused pane between the tiled layout and a floating rectangle. Shift+Enter opens a new floating shell near the pointer, or centered if rozi has not seen the pointer yet.

To move a pane with the mouse, hold the modifier (Alt by default) and left-drag. Right-drag to resize. Instead of holding the modifier, you can press the prefix before dragging.

Press f to make the focused pane fill the workspace. Focus and layout commands stay on that pane until you leave fullscreen. If a new pane opens and takes focus, it becomes the fullscreen pane, and the old one returns to its place.

Pane open and close animation styles

Set [animations].pane_style, or use General › Animations › Pane open/close in Settings, to choose how panes appear and disappear.

Style	Effect
off	The pane appears and disappears at once. Neighboring panes still animate into place.
scale	The pane grows from its center with a soft fade. This is the default.
slide	A tiled pane slides in from its split edge, clipped to its tile, while neighbors spring into their new size. Floating panes use scale.
portal	The pane's contents appear radially from the center, ringed by sparse punctuation.
scan	The pane's contents appear along a diagonal sweep from the top-left corner.

portal and scan work for tiled and floating panes, including popups. The pane keeps its final size throughout, so the program inside does not see a resize on every frame.

• portal, scan, and tiled slide use geometry_ms for their duration. Floating slide behaves like scale and uses close_ms when closing.
• Inside the scratchpad, these styles apply to individual panes; the scratchpad's dropdown keeps its own animation.
• The panes a new session starts with, such as the launcher's shell or a profile's layout, do not play these effects. They arrive with the session's switching animation; see Sessions.
• Turning animations off, or changing the enabled, spawn, or close switch, finishes any running pane animation at once.

You can set durations, the motion curve, and one parameter per style: where scale grows from, where portal opens, and which corner scan sweeps from. See Pane animation curves and effect settings.

Titles and exited panes

A pane's title comes from the first of these that is set:

1. A custom title set with the N command key.
2. A title supplied by the application.
3. The current working directory.
4. The pane's fallback label.

Submitting an empty name clears the custom title.

[pane] titlebar selects bar, border, integrated, or inset, and [pane] show_titles can hide titlebars. See Configuration for every option.

With [pane] hold_on_exit = true, a pane whose program exits stays in its place in the layout. Run Respawn exited pane from the command palette to restart its original command in its original working directory.

Borders

[pane] border_mode chooses separate frames, merged frames, no frames, or split dividers. Merged frames join within a layer. The scratchpad sits above the workspace, so its frames do not join the tiles underneath.

Separate settings choose the frame style for each kind of pane and for pickers:

Setting	Applies to
border_style	Tiled panes
float_border_style	Floating panes and popups
scratch_border_style	Scratchpad panes
fullscreen_border_style	Fullscreen panes
picker_border_style	Pickers
picker_tab_background, picker_tab_style	Picker category tabs
picker_selection_style	The highlighted picker row

See Configuration.

Workspaces

rozi has nine workspaces.

Task	Command key
Switch to workspace 1 through 9	1 through 9
Move the focused pane and switch	Shift+1 through Shift+9
Move or swap the whole workspace	Ctrl+Shift+1 through Ctrl+Shift+9
Rename the workspace	n

Bare n renames the workspace; N renames the focused pane.

Each workspace keeps its own layout, name, focused pane, and pane order. An empty workspace stays available and offers to start a shell. Profiles save workspace names and layouts. In a named session, panes keep running until you kill the session. See Sessions.

Workspace switching animation

When you switch, the workspace content slides sideways: higher-numbered workspaces enter from the right and lower-numbered ones from the left. Jumping several workspaces shows only the source and the destination. The workbar, sidebar, and overlays stay still, and pane sizes do not change during the slide.

To turn the slide off, use General › Animations › Workspace switching in Settings, or set [animations] workspace = false. workspace_ms sets the duration (default 220 ms). The master [animations] enabled switch also turns it off.

Popups and scratch panes

A popup is a one-off pane opened by a configured popup command or by the control interface. It is not part of the workspace layout. By default, a popup stays open after its command finishes so you can read the output; then Enter, Esc, or Space closes it.

The scratchpad is a dropdown layer over the workspace, opened with the ` (backtick) command key.

• Its panes belong to your client alone. They survive workspace changes and switching to another session, but they are not shared, saved in profiles, or included in resurrection snapshots. They close when the client exits.
• Scratch panes support the usual tiling, floating, and fullscreen commands, but the scratchpad is not another workspace.
• Tiled scratch panes use the dropdown's remembered height. Floating scratch panes can move and resize anywhere in the client window. A fullscreen scratch pane covers the whole window, and leaving fullscreen restores its previous position and size.

See Sessions.

Pane synchronization

Pane synchronization copies what you type in one pane to the other eligible panes in the same workspace. It has no default key: turn it on for a workspace from the command palette, or bind toggle-pane-synchronization. Profiles can restore it through the workspace's synchronized setting.

Use it with care: a command meant for one shell runs in every synchronized pane.