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Unified Desks

by Billy Coover

Two monitors, one desktop. SUPER+1-5 moves BOTH screens together to a paired set of workspaces, and each bar shows its own screen. For exactly 2 monitors.

GitHub

Security review

No obvious issues detected

Deterministic scan — not a security guarantee

None
Risk level
None
Analyzed commit
e3edb6b
Scanned
1 month ago

No potentially dangerous behavior detected in the analyzed commit.

Automated analysis only — not a security guarantee.

AI advisory review

No obvious issues detected

Language-model assessment · ~deepseek/deepseek-v4-flash-latest — advisory only

None
AI risk level
None
Recommendation
install
Model
~deepseek/deepseek-v4-flash-latest
Analyzed commit
e3edb6b
Reviewed
1 month ago

This is a two-monitor workspace-pairing utility with well-scoped, user-initiated setup. It writes to Hyprland config only after an explicit click, uses symlink-safe file helpers, and contains no network access, obfuscation, or destructive behavior. The deterministic scan found nothing, and manual review agrees.

How this check works

This review combines the deterministic scan (the rule-based results above) with an independent look at the plugin's code by a language model. The model reads a trimmed sample of the repository's files, the manifest, and the README, then gives a plain-language risk level and a recommendation: install (no notable danger), review (look closer first), or avoid (clearly dangerous).

It runs on the same analyzed commit as the deterministic scan and is strictly advisory — it is not a security guarantee and never blocks a plugin by itself. A human moderator still reviews plugins before they are listed.

AI advisory only — automated analysis, not a security guarantee.

Install
$ omarchy plugin add https://github.com/azcoov/omarchy-unified-desks --enable
Desktop #Hyprland #bar #workspaces

Unified Desks

Two monitors, one desktop.

Two screens showing workspace 3 and workspace 8, the same desk highlighted on both bars, joined by a SUPER+3 keypress

Every other multi-monitor workspace plugin for Omarchy splits your screens apart — each monitor gets its own independent workspaces. This one joins them.

SUPER+1 … SUPER+5 move both monitors at once. A desk is a pair of workspaces: the left screen gets workspace N, the right gets N+5. Switch a desk and your whole two-screen scene changes together, instead of one half of it.

SUPER+1  ->  left: ws 1    right: ws 6
SUPER+2  ->  left: ws 2    right: ws 7
SUPER+3  ->  left: ws 3    right: ws 8
SUPER+4  ->  left: ws 4    right: ws 9
SUPER+5  ->  left: ws 5    right: ws 10

⚠ For exactly two monitors

This plugin is built for a two-monitor setup — it was written for a pair of side-by-side ultrawides. With any other number of displays the desk model switches itself off: no workspace rules are written, and every workspace key falls straight through to plain, stock Hyprland behaviour, so SUPER+3 simply goes to workspace 3. The bar widget shows a dimmed 2✕ badge so you know why.

The monitor count is re-checked on every keypress, not just at startup, so unplugging a display stands the desks down instantly and plugging one back in brings them straight back — no reload, and never a moment without working workspace keys.

Why not just make one workspace span both screens?

You cannot, and it is worth knowing why before you install this.

Hyprland binds every workspace to exactly one monitor — that is structural, not a setting. The only way to get a genuinely spanning workspace is to have the GPU present both panels as a single output (NVIDIA Surround), which does not work on Linux. Even hyprland-virtual-desktops, built for this exact wish, states that windows cannot span monitors.

So a truly unified workspace is off the table. What is achievable is moving both monitors as one unit, which is what this does. Individual windows still cannot straddle the bezel while tiled.

What it changes

Nothing, until you ask. Installing the plugin only adds its bar widget. The widget shows a Set up desks button; until you click it, nothing outside the plugin's own directory is touched — a shell start writes no files at all.

Clicking it performs the one-time setup:

File Change
~/.config/hypr/unified-desks.lua Installed from the plugin payload
~/.config/hypr/hyprland.lua One fenced require() block, appended
Bar Adds the Unified Desks widget

Originals are copied to ~/.local/state/io.github.azcoov.unified-desks/originals/ before anything is touched.

Every path this plugin writes is predictable, which makes it a target for a planted symlink. None of them are written with a plain shell redirect:

  • Files the plugin owns (unified-desks.lua, the backups, restore.sh) go through a helper that refuses a symlink or non-regular destination and publishes by atomic rename from a temporary file inside the destination directory, so a symlink swapped in mid-write cannot redirect it either.
  • hyprland.lua is opened once with O_NOFOLLOW, which makes the kernel refuse a symlink in the same syscall as the open. Testing the path first and then redirecting would be a time-of-check/time-of-use race; this has no such window. The "is the fence already there?" check runs on that same descriptor.

Setup is also content-addressed: if nothing differs, nothing is written.

If you keep hyprland.lua in a dotfiles repo as a symlink, setup will refuse to touch it and tell you so. Add the line yourself to the real file:

require("hypr.unified-desks")

Keybindings

Key Action
SUPER + 1..5 Switch both monitors to desks 1–5
SUPER + 6..0 Switch to the desk that workspace belongs to (6→desk 1 … 0→desk 5)
SUPER + SHIFT + N Move window to that desk, on the screen it is already on
SUPER + SHIFT + ALT + N Same, without following it

Any workspace key takes you to the desk containing that workspace, so SUPER+7 and SUPER+2 both land on desk 2. Workspaces 6–10 are the right-hand halves of a desk, and reaching one on its own would desynchronise the pair — which is exactly the confusion this plugin removes.

SUPER + SHIFT + N is rebound for a reason: the stock binding always targets workspace N, so pressing it on the right monitor would fling the window to the left screen. Here it targets whichever half of the desk you are already on.

Choosing how many desks

Five is the default, using workspaces 1–10. If you want three, or eight, write a single number to ~/.config/omarchy/unified-desks.conf:

echo 3 > ~/.config/omarchy/unified-desks.conf
hyprctl reload

Desk N is always workspace N on the left screen and workspace N + count on the right. So the layout follows from the number you pick:

Desks Left screen Right screen Keys used
3 ws 1–3 ws 4–6 SUPER+1–6
5 (default) ws 1–5 ws 6–10 SUPER+1–0
8 ws 1–8 ws 9–16 SUPER+1–0

Valid values are 1 to 10. Anything missing, unparseable, or out of range falls back to five rather than leaving you with a broken keymap.

Both the keybindings and the bar widget read this same file, so they cannot disagree, and the widget picks up a change without a restart.

Fewer than five desks leaves the spare number keys alone — at three desks, SUPER+7…SUPER+0 keep Omarchy's stock behaviour and switch to plain workspaces 7–10.

More than five desks needs more workspaces than the number row has keys. At eight desks the right-hand halves are workspaces 9–16, and only the desk keys SUPER+1–8 matter; SUPER+9 and SUPER+0 land on desks 1 and 2, because a workspace key always takes you to the desk that contains it. Every desk stays reachable from the number row.

Changing the count later: Hyprland assigns a workspace to a monitor when that workspace is created, so workspaces that already exist keep whichever screen they are on. Switch from five desks to eight and workspace 7 — which used to be a right-hand half — is still sitting on the right monitor even though it is now a left-hand one. Empty workspaces sort themselves out as soon as they are destroyed and recreated; for ones holding windows, move the windows off, or just log out and back in. Easiest is to pick your count before you fill the desks up.

Losing a monitor

All ten keys stay bound whatever the monitor count. If a display is unplugged, the desk model switches off and every key falls back to plain, stock workspace behaviour — so you are never left without working workspace keys. Plug the second monitor back in and desks resume.

The bar widget

Shows 5 desks, not 10 workspaces. Clicking one switches both monitors, the same as the keybinding.

It also fixes a real bug in the stock widget. Omarchy's omarchy.workspaces highlights Hyprland.focusedWorkspace, a global value, so on two monitors both bars draw the same cell and one of them is lying. This widget resolves each bar's own monitor and derives the desk from that monitor's active workspace — so the two bars agree when desks are in sync, and honestly differ when they are not.

A desk lights up as occupied if either half holds windows.

Install

omarchy plugin add https://github.com/azcoov/omarchy-unified-desks.git --enable

Then put the widget in your bar — it defaults to the left section, replacing the stock workspace indicator — and click Set up desks on it once. That click is the only thing that writes to ~/.config/hypr.

After updating the plugin, click it again (or run desks-ctl install) to refresh the Hyprland side; it is idempotent and reports already up to date when there is nothing to do.

Uninstall

~/.config/omarchy/plugins/io.github.azcoov.unified-desks/scripts/desks-ctl restore
omarchy plugin remove io.github.azcoov.unified-desks

restore strips the fenced block from hyprland.lua, removes unified-desks.lua, and reloads Hyprland. Your originals remain in ~/.local/state/io.github.azcoov.unified-desks/originals/.

Conflicts

This plugin owns workspace bindings and workspace-to-monitor rules. Do not run it alongside plugins that claim the same ground:

  • im0001gt.screens with workspace spreading enabled. Turn spreading off (manageWorkspaces) — with it on, Screens writes its own workspace_rule entries into monitors.lua and the two plugins fight over the same rules. Unified Desks loads last so its rules win, but you are left with duplicates. Screens also replaces the bar's workspace widget on install, so re-select Unified Desks in shell.json afterwards.
  • chagel.workspace-tags with per-monitor tags enabled
  • mmsbrggr.per-monitor-workspaces, shameel.workspaces, ragnacron.workspaces-per-monitor, ziryt.split-workspaces, and similar per-monitor workspace plugins — they implement the opposite philosophy

Troubleshooting

~/.config/omarchy/plugins/io.github.azcoov.unified-desks/scripts/desks-ctl status

Reports monitor count, whether the Lua file and hook are installed, and how many workspace rules are active.

If the bar reverts to showing ten workspaces, another plugin reclaimed the widget slot — set the left widget id back to io.github.azcoov.unified-desks in ~/.config/omarchy/shell.json.

Requirements

  • Omarchy with the shell plugin CLI
  • Hyprland 0.55+ with Lua config
  • jq, python3
  • Exactly two monitors

License

MIT