Workspaces Overview

The overview displays every workspace and lets you navigate, focus, close, and move windows.

Settings and behavior

[overview]
zoom = 0.5
scroll_factor_horizontal = 1.0
scroll_factor_vertical = 1.0
background_blur = true
workspace_wallpaper = true
shortcuts = true
shortcut_keys = "1234567890"

Key	Default	Description
zoom	0.5	Workspace preview scale from 0.1 to 0.75.
scroll_factor_horizontal	1.0	Horizontal gesture and wheel sensitivity.
scroll_factor_vertical	1.0	Vertical gesture and wheel sensitivity.
background_blur	true	Blur the desktop behind the overview.
workspace_wallpaper	true	Show each output’s background inside its workspace previews.
shortcuts	true	Show and accept keyboard shortcut badges.
shortcut_keys	"1234567890"	Preferred keys for shortcut badges.

Background blur uses [appearance.blur]. Preview backgrounds use colors.overview.workspace_background when wallpaper mirroring is disabled or no background surface is available.

Open and navigate

Press Mod+O by default, or use an overview action. Opening the overview temporarily hides scratchpads and pinned windows.

• Click a window to focus it and close the overview.
• Middle-click a window to close it.
• Drag a window to move it to another workspace.
• Use the wheel to navigate vertically and Shift+wheel horizontally.
• Use a four-finger swipe to open or close the overview.

Two-finger scrolling and three-finger swipes navigate continuously. Movement along the output’s workspace axis moves between workspaces. Movement across it pans a scrolling workspace preview. Dwindle and Master layouts have no strip to pan.

Touchpad natural_scroll controls gesture direction. The horizontal and vertical overview factors adjust gesture distance and wheel sensitivity without changing application scrolling.

Which window actions act on

One card carries the full focused-border color while the overview is open. It is the target for focus, close, and other window actions. Each other workspace keeps a fainter marker showing which card will receive focus when selected.

The current output follows the cursor. Output-changing actions move the cursor to their destination as usual.

Keyboard shortcuts

Normal [keybinds] remain active in the overview. Directional focus actions select neighboring cards, and workspace or output actions keep their normal fallback behavior.

Shortcut badges provide direct, unmodified key sequences for visible window cards. When there are more cards than keys, Umbriel creates multi-key labels. Backspace removes the last key from a pending sequence. Escape clears the sequence first and closes the overview when no sequence is pending.

Set shortcuts = false to disable badges. A normal keybind takes precedence over a badge. shortcut_keys must contain at least two unique printable ASCII characters.

Move windows

Drag a window onto another workspace preview to move it. In a dynamic workspace list, dropping into a gap creates a workspace at that position. Static workspace inventories accept drops only onto existing previews.

The destination layout shows an insertion preview before the drop. Empty dynamic workspaces may disappear immediately after their last window is moved or closed.

Appearance

Overview cards reuse each window’s borders, corner radius, opacity, blur, and color presentation. Shortcut badges use colors.overview.badge.

Configure overview colors under [colors.overview].