Workspace Switcher

Alt-tab for workspaces, for the Omarchy shell. Hold Super, tap Tab to cycle through live previews of your workspaces, release to switch. Calm by design: flat cards, no overlap, same theme tokens as Omarchy's own theme/background picker. Two layouts — a ribbon that keeps every workspace on screen, or a carousel that keeps the selected one in the middle.

Previews are genuinely live. Each card composites the workspace's windows at their real geometry with Quickshell's ScreencopyView (hyprland-toplevel-export), so even workspaces you can't see show their actual window contents — no screenshots, no cache, no background daemon. Empty workspaces show the current wallpaper.

Install

omarchy plugin add https://github.com/Woogy7/omarchy-workspace-switcher.git --enable
~/.config/omarchy/plugins/io.github.woogy7.workspaces/switcher-config menu install   # Setup › Workspace Switcher menu

Then add the keybindings — the plugin is an overlay, so it needs them. Append bindings.example.lua to ~/.config/hypr/bindings.lua (Omarchy ≥ 4.0 Lua config) and reload Hyprland. Out of the box it gives you:

Both replace Omarchy defaults (Super+Tab next workspace, Alt+Tab cycle windows). Set hold_mod = "SUPER" in the snippet if you'd rather hold Super, and drop the picker bind. The modifier release is detected compositor-side (hl.is_key_down polled by an hl.timer), so there is no client-side guessing.

Requirements: Omarchy 4.x (omarchy-shell), Hyprland with the Lua config, and a Quickshell build with ScreencopyView (the one Omarchy ships).

Remove

~/.config/omarchy/plugins/io.github.woogy7.workspaces/switcher-config bar off   # drop the bar icon
~/.config/omarchy/plugins/io.github.woogy7.workspaces/switcher-config menu remove   # drop the Setup menu block
omarchy plugin remove io.github.woogy7.workspaces

Then delete the Workspace Switcher block from ~/.config/hypr/bindings.lua and reload Hyprland; the plugin's entry in shell.json goes away with the plugin. Nothing else is written anywhere: settings live in ~/.config/omarchy/shell.json (only on your explicit set/menu actions), the menu block sits between marker comments in ~/.config/omarchy/extensions/omarchy-menu.jsonc (only when you run switcher-config menu install), and the keybindings are pasted by you.

Use

Hold-to-switch (Alt+Tab): what a lone tap does (press, release without cycling further) is the tapAction setting:

• "browse" (default): the switcher stays open as a picker — arrows, hover, Enter to switch, Esc to close. Alt+Tab again while open re-enters hold mode (release switches).
• "switch": pure alt-tab — a tap jumps to the next workspace immediately (a fast tap doesn't even show the UI).

Picker (Super+Tab, or omarchy-shell shell toggle io.github.woogy7.workspaces):

IPC actions

omarchy-shell shell summon io.github.woogy7.workspaces '{"action": "<a>"}' with open-next / open-prev (hold-mode open), next / prev (cycle; opens in hold mode if closed), commit (hold mode: switch to the selection). This is what the keybinding uses; it also lets you wire up other modifiers or a gesture.

Settings

Setup › Workspace Switcher in the Omarchy menu (Super+Space, or omarchy menu summon setup.workspace-switcher) exposes everything below with ✓ marks that update in place — show in bar, layout, tap action, preview size, gap, monitors, workspaces shown, look toggles, selected emphasis, animations, reset. Install it with switcher-config menu install (idempotent; switcher-config menu remove takes it out again). It merges a marker-delimited block into ~/.config/omarchy/extensions/omarchy-menu.jsonc and never touches your other entries.

Bar icon. The plugin also ships a bar widget (a 󰕰 chip): left click opens that settings menu, right click opens the switcher (swap them with the widget's click setting in the bar settings UI). Turn it on/off with the menu's Show in bar row or switcher-config bar on|off — it lands next to the Vitals chip if you have it, else at the end of the right section; move it with omarchy bar move.

Under the hood the menu calls switcher-config, which you can use directly:

switcher-config show                 # effective settings
switcher-config get layout
switcher-config set layout carousel  # numbers/booleans are typed automatically
switcher-config toggle showLabels
switcher-config bar on|off|toggle|status
switcher-config menu install|remove|status
switcher-config reset

Settings live inline on the plugin's entry in ~/.config/omarchy/shell.json (plugins[]). The file is watched, so edits apply live — no restart.

{
  "id": "io.github.woogy7.workspaces",
  "layout": "carousel",
  "previewWidth": 360,
  "unselectedOpacity": 0.7,
  "selectedScale": 1.04
}

Colours come from the theme's [image-picker] tokens (scrim, text, selected/unselected border), so it follows your theme like the picker does.

Notes

• Windows on hidden workspaces generally stop repainting (Hyprland sends them no frame callbacks), so their preview is their last committed frame — which is exactly what you'd see on switching.
• Hacking on Ribbon.qml: the shell's hot-reload keeps the old component for keepLoaded overlays, so run omarchy-restart-shell after edits. Settings changes don't need that.
• Workspaces are switched with hyprctl dispatch 'hl.dsp.focus({ workspace = "N" })' (Lua dispatcher syntax). The overlay keeps exclusive keyboard focus until it unmaps on purpose: dropping it earlier makes Hyprland refocus its last window and yank the workspace back.

License

MIT