Layouts and zones

A layout divides the screen into zones. You assign apps to each zone, and launching the workspace puts a window of each app in its zone. The preview at the top of the editor shows the layout at the proportions of your display; with several displays, each one has its own layout (see Multiple displays). Each zone is labeled with its share of the screen: W% for a full-height column, H% for a full-width row, or W% × H%.

Start from a template

Below the preview, click the first menu, which shows the layout’s template, and choose a template under Start from:

Template	Zones
Duo	Left and Right, 50/50.
Editor + preview	Editor on the left two-thirds, Preview on the right third.
Debug	Editor on the left two-thirds; Browser above Terminal on the right third.
Focus	One zone, named Full screen.
Three columns	Left, Center, and Right.
Stacked	One Stack zone, which new windows join.
Free	No zones: every window floats.

Templates are starting points. Once you’ve applied one, you can split, remove, rename, and resize its zones. The menu shows the template’s name as long as the layout keeps the template’s structure, and Custom once you change it.

When you switch templates:

• The apps already assigned to zones carry over, one per zone, in order. Apps left over stack in the last zone. Free turns them all into floating apps.
• Floating apps stay floating. When you leave Free, its floating apps are spread over the new zones.
• Stacked sends new windows to its Stack zone and turns on Keep Floating Windows Inside the Margin. Free turns on the margin too. The other templates set New windows back to Floating and turn the margin off. See New windows.
• The zones get the template’s proportions back.

Put apps in zones

An empty zone in the preview reads “Choose an app”: click it to pick the zone’s app. To add an app to a zone that already has one, click the space around its apps, hover over the zone and click +, or right-click the zone and choose Add App…. Clicking one of the apps only selects its zone. Two apps or more in one zone make a stack. See Stacks and floating apps.

The app picker lists your installed apps, the running ones, and the apps your workspaces already hold. For an app it doesn’t list, such as a build in a project’s folder, click Other… and choose it, or drop it on the picker from the Finder. When it can’t take an app, the picker says why: a build for Simulator or another device, for example, or an app that runs in the menu bar.

Below the preview, Apps lists every app of the workspace: the apps of each zone, in reading order, then the floating apps. Add app, at the top of the list, asks where the new app goes: under Add to, choose a zone or Floating. Click a zone in the preview to select it: the rows of its apps light up.

Next to each app’s name, a menu shows where the app goes: its zone’s name, such as Left, or Floating. Under Place in, choose another zone or Floating to move the app there, out of anywhere else; a checkmark marks where it goes now. Remove from Workspace takes the app out of the workspace. Right-clicking the row opens the same menu. A click anywhere else on the row edits what the app opens: see Work context.

Drag apps on the preview

Each zone of the preview lists its apps, one row each, with a line of what the app opens: its folder, its terminal’s first command, its chat’s project, its number of tabs, its link or its device.

• Drag a row onto another zone to move the app there. A line shows where it lands among that zone’s apps.
• Drag it up or down within its zone to change the stack’s order.
• Drag it onto the strip under the preview, Floating · own position, to make it float.
• Press Esc during a drag to cancel it.
• Right-click a row for Edit What It Opens…, Move to Front, Float and Remove from Zone.

When you edit the workspace you’re in, its windows follow at once: an app moved to another zone takes its window along, and resized, split or removed zones put their windows in their new frames. A window you floated yourself stays where it is. Another workspace’s windows go to their new places at its next switch.

Undo

Every change you make in the editor undoes with ⌘Z and redoes with ⇧⌘Z, windows included. Renaming a workspace is one step, however many letters you type.

Split, remove, and rename zones

Hover over a zone in the preview, or select it, to show its buttons: + (add an app to the zone), Split right, Split down, and Remove zone. Right-click a zone for the same actions, plus Rename…: Add App…, Rename…, Split Right, Split Down, and Remove Zone.

• Split right and Split down cut the zone in half and add an empty zone after it, named “Zone” and a number.
• A zone never gets smaller than 10% of the screen in either direction. So you can’t split a zone that is less than 20% wide with Split right, or less than 20% tall with Split down. The button and the menu item are dimmed, and the button’s tooltip says the zone is too small.
• Remove zone gives the zone’s space to the zone before it, or to the zone after it if it was the first. That zone also receives its apps and its windows. Removing the last zone makes its apps floating apps.
• Rename… changes the zone’s name, shown in the preview, in Apps, in the New windows menu, and in Open windows.

Resize zones with dividers

Drag a divider in the preview to resize the two zones on either side of it. The divider moves in steps of 1%, which makes a precise split such as 80/20 easy to land on. Only those two zones change, and each one keeps at least 10% of the screen. The proportions are saved for this workspace.

Equalize, below the preview, gives every zone of each split the same share. It only shows when it would change something: not when the shares are already equal, nor when equal shares would make a zone smaller than 10%. Choosing the template again from Start from also restores its proportions, and its zones.

Spacing

Spacing is the gap Layout leaves around windows. It’s the same along the screen edges and between two windows. Set it from 0 to 40 px; it’s 0 px by default, so windows touch each other and the screen edges. In the editor, Spacing, at the right end of the row below the preview, shows the value: its arrows change it one pixel at a time. Settings › Windows has a slider for it.

Spacing applies to every workspace. The preview updates at once. To apply the new spacing to the windows of the active workspace right away, click Reapply in the editor’s header. Floating windows keep their position, unless the workspace keeps floating windows inside the margin.

Put windows back in place

Reapply, in the editor’s header, puts the active workspace’s windows back in place. It shows when the selected workspace is the one on screen. For another workspace, the header shows Switch here instead, which switches to it without launching its apps. Neither shows while Layout is paused. The Layout bar has the same command, Reapply layout, and so does the Layout menu bar icon, as Reapply Layout.

• Windows assigned to a zone go back to their zone, even if they were minimized.
• Floating apps with a set position go back to it.
• Other floating windows join the New windows zone if the workspace has one, or move inside the margin if Keep Floating Windows Inside the Margin is on. Otherwise they stay where they are.

You rarely need it: while you work, Layout puts zoned windows back in their zone when an app moves or resizes them on its own. It doesn’t do that for a window you moved or resized yourself, because that window has become floating. See Moving windows.

The windows of an app hidden with ⌘H keep their place until you show the app again.

Apps that set their own size

Some apps impose a minimum size or refuse to be resized. Layout then keeps the zone’s top-left corner and the size the app accepts. It doesn’t center the window, and it doesn’t change your proportions to make room. A minimum size larger than the zone can spill into the next zone. Simulator, for example, can’t be resized: its window goes to the top-left corner of its zone without necessarily filling it.

Other apps take the zone’s size, then go back to their own a moment later. The Android emulator does this to keep its screen’s aspect ratio. When an app puts the same size back right after Layout restores the zone, Layout stops there: the window stays floating where the app put it, as if you had moved it yourself.

When windows in different zones overlap because of this, the editor shows a warning at the top of the page. It names both apps and the widths they accepted, and explains that Layout can’t force an app below the size it accepts. To fix it, drag the divider to give that app’s zone more room.

Apps stacked in the same zone overlap on purpose, so they never trigger this warning. See Stacks and floating apps.

Saved desktops

A saved desktop has no zones to split: it keeps the exact frame of each window you saved. See Save your desktop.