Notifications
A message in Slack while you’re deep in another workspace, an agent waiting for your approval in a third: Layout knows which workspace each app lives in, so it tells you where something happened, and ⌃⌥N takes you there.
What becomes a notification
Section titled “What becomes a notification”- An app whose Dock badge appears or grows, such as Slack, Discord, Mail or Messages. The Dock says how many, never what or in which channel, so an app has one notification at a time, with the badge’s latest count.
- An agent that asks for you or finishes, once you connect Claude Code, Codex or Cursor. Cursor reports completed tasks and errors; it does not report approval prompts.
- A cmux pane with a notification you haven’t read in cmux: from any agent, or any tool that notifies in a cmux terminal. See cmux.
Badges that are already there when Layout starts don’t count as new. A badge that goes down was read in part: it stays as it was. The app in front never notifies you about itself.
Cursor’s Dock badge works the same way as other apps, separately from its agent’s notifications. Layout does not mirror macOS banners or alerts inside an app that have no Dock badge.
The card
Section titled “The card”When a notification comes, a card shows for a few seconds at the top of the screen: the app’s icon with the Dock’s red dot or the agent’s mark, its name and workspace, “3 new” or what the agent said, and the key that goes there.
On a MacBook, the card comes out of the camera housing, in the black of the Layout bar, and goes back in. On a display without a camera housing, it floats under the Layout bar, or under the menu bar when the bar is off.
- Click the card to go there. Keep the pointer on it and it stays.
- It never takes the keyboard from the app you’re in.
- A newer notification replaces it, with +2 when others came too: cards never stack.
- The app you’re in never shows one. An app of the workspace you’re in does: a badge that never clears keeps its red dot on in the bar, which can’t show that it grew.
- The same app’s card, still showing, just updates its count.
Turn the card off in Settings › General, under Show notification cards. The card doesn’t follow macOS Focus.
The bar keeps the first new one after the workspace’s name, with +2 when others wait: click it to go there, or hover it to read them all.
Go through them
Section titled “Go through them”⌃⌥N goes to the next notification and ⌃⌥P back to the one before, going round. Each brings the app’s window forward, one in the workspace you’re in first, or, for an agent, the session that asked for you: in Claude or Codex, the session itself; in a terminal, its window; in cmux, its tab and its pane. See Agents waiting for you. While a card shows, ⌃⌥N goes to its notification.
They keep their place while you go from one to the next. Go to another workspace by any other means and they start over from the top.
A wildcard app has no workspace of its own: its card and the list say “Any workspace”, and going there brings its window to the workspace you’re in. An app without a window that no layout lists says “No window”, and going there brings it forward as a click on its Dock icon would.
Every notification
Section titled “Every notification”⌃⌥/ lists every notification on your Mac, whichever workspace it comes from, in the order ⌃⌥N follows: agents asking for you first, then the newest. It’s also in the command palette.
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
| ↑ ↓ | Choose a notification |
| Return | Go there |
| ⌫ | Clear it |
| ⌘⌫ | Clear them all |
| Esc, or the same shortcut | Close the list |
When they go
Section titled “When they go”- An app’s notification is seen once the app comes to the front, whichever way you get there. It stays in the list, dimmed, until the Dock clears the badge. If the badge grows again, it’s new again.
- An agent’s notification goes when you visit its workspace.
- A cmux pane’s notification goes once you read it in cmux, by focusing the pane. Once cmux has come to the front, it stays in the list, dimmed, until then.
- Cleared from the list, an app’s notification stays out until its badge grows; an agent’s goes as if you had visited; a cmux pane’s stays out until its next notification.
Change the keys
Section titled “Change the keys”In Settings › Shortcuts: Next notification, Previous notification and All notifications. If one of your workspaces already used one of these keys, it keeps it, and the action shows no shortcut until you give it another.