Alt-tab switcher

Windows-style ALT+TAB for Omarchy. Cycles every window on every workspace, ordered by most recently used.

Hold ALT, tap TAB to move down the list, release ALT to jump to the highlighted window.

Behaviour

Two things make this behave like Windows rather than like Hyprland's cyclenext:

• The window list is snapshotted when the switch starts and then frozen, so the order cannot shuffle underneath you while you tab through it.
• Selection is virtual. Focus moves once, when you release ALT. Focusing on every tap would drag you across workspaces on the way past.

Special and scratchpad workspaces are excluded. Every monitor is included.

Requirements

• Omarchy Quattro, for the shell plugin system
• Hyprland 0.56 or newer, configured in Lua

No other dependencies, and nothing to install beyond this repository.

Install

Add the plugin and enable it:

omarchy plugin add https://github.com/Pablo-Merino/omarchy-altswitch.git --enable

Then load the keybindings from ~/.config/hypr/bindings.lua:

dofile(os.getenv("HOME") .. "/.config/omarchy/plugins/io.github.pablo-merino.altswitch/altswitch.lua")

Apply it with hyprctl reload.

That line replaces Omarchy's four default ALT+TAB bindings (cyclenext and bring_to_top, in both directions). It unbinds them itself, so no other edit is needed.

Settings

Application icons are shown by default. Hide them with:

omarchy-shell altswitch set showIcons false

Changes apply immediately and persist in the plugin's entry in ~/.config/omarchy/shell.json.

The equivalent manual setting is:

{ "id": "io.github.pablo-merino.altswitch", "showIcons": true }

Remove

Delete the dofile line from ~/.config/hypr/bindings.lua, then:

hyprctl reload
omarchy plugin remove io.github.pablo-merino.altswitch

Omarchy's default ALT+TAB bindings come back on the next reload.

How it works

The plugin is two halves that talk over Omarchy's shell IPC.

altswitch.lua runs inside Hyprland and owns all state and all keys. It reads the window list from hl.get_windows(), sorted by Hyprland's own focus_history_id, and drives the panel with omarchy-shell altswitch show|select|hide.

AltSwitch.qml runs inside omarchy-shell and only draws the list. It takes no keyboard focus, so it cannot trap your keyboard, and it hides itself after ten seconds if an ALT release is ever missed.

Two Hyprland details are worth knowing if you plan to modify this:

• Committing on ALT release cannot be a keybind. A release bind on a modifier only fires when that modifier is tapped alone; pressing TAB in between cancels it. The raw input.keyboard.key event stream is read instead.
• Focusing a window from inside a key callback updates Hyprland's active window but does not settle until the next input event, so the focus dispatch is sent through hyprctl from outside that callback.

Known limitations

• Keys that the switcher does not bind still reach the window underneath while the list is open. Blocking them needs an exclusive keyboard grab, which risks trapping the keyboard if a switch is ever left open.
• There are no window thumbnails.

License

MIT