Wildcard apps

Some apps you use from every workspace: a browser, a chat, a password manager. Their window lives in one place, so each time a link or a click brings one forward, Layout would take you there, and you would come back a moment later. Make them wildcard apps: their window comes to you instead.

When you bring an ordinary app forward, Layout switches to the workspace that holds its window (see Moving windows). A wildcard app works the other way around: the workspace stays, and the window comes to it.

Make an app wildcard

In Settings › Apps, click Add App… and choose the app. ⓧ makes it an ordinary app again.
Or right-click the app’s icon in the Layout bar and choose Wildcard App.
Or, in the editor, under Open windows, open a window’s … menu and choose Wildcard App.
Or accept Layout’s offer: see Layout offers it.

The change applies right away. The app’s windows in a workspace whose layout has it stay there: that workspace is their home. Its other windows go back to its home, or wait in General, out of sight, when no layout has the app. One on screen in the workspace you’re in stays until you leave.

Call it from any workspace

Bring the app forward the way you usually do: a link that opens it, its Dock icon, its own shortcut or menu bar icon, or a window picked in Layout’s ⌘Tab, in ⌘` or in the command palette. Holding a dragged file over its Dock icon works too: see Dragging onto an app in the Dock. Layout doesn’t switch workspaces. The window the app brought forward comes to the workspace you’re in:

It joins the workspace where new windows go: in a Stacked workspace, on top of the stack, like the workspace’s own apps. In a workspace without a New windows zone, it keeps the position and size it last had on screen. A window its app won’t resize, such as Calculator’s, keeps its own size.
It’s the same window every time. Layout doesn’t open another one.

Only the window the app brings to the front comes. If the app shows a panel that Layout doesn’t manage, such as 1Password’s Quick Access, nothing moves.

Going somewhere on purpose still takes you there: a window picked in a workspace’s list in ⌥Tab, a card of the Overview, a workspace’s shortcut or a swipe.

An app can be busy with what you asked it, such as Messages opening the conversation a notification names. Its window comes as soon as it answers, within 3 seconds. After that, Layout gives the keyboard back to the workspace you’re in, so you never type into a window you can’t see. Call the app again to bring its window.

Where it waits

The window stays in the workspace you called it from as long as you’re there. Switch away and it goes back:

To its home. A workspace whose layout has the app is its home, such as General for a browser it holds. The window goes back to its place there, zone included. Going to its home, you find it on screen; going anywhere else, it waits there, out of sight, like that workspace’s other windows. The visit survives a relaunch of Layout, and launching a workspace whose layout has the app ends it: the window stays where Launch puts it. A window with no place at home yet, such as a new one the app opened elsewhere, goes there too, at the position and size it last had. So does one you move with Move To to a workspace whose layout doesn’t have the app: to keep the app there, add it to that layout, which makes the workspace one of its homes.
To General, out of sight, for an app that no layout has. Coming back doesn’t bring it back, and neither does going to General. Only a call does, from wherever you are.

Hiding or quitting the app in front with ⌘H or ⌘Q doesn’t call it, even when macOS brings the wildcard app forward next: its window stays where it is, and the focus stays in your workspace.

A wildcard app’s window that Layout finds out of sight, after a relaunch for instance, goes back to its home, or waits in General when it has none.

Layout offers it

When an app keeps taking you out of a workspace and you come back within two minutes, three times in two hours, Layout offers to make it a wildcard app, once, on the notification card: “Firefox took you out of DartWords 3 times in 4 minutes”. Bring It Here makes it a wildcard app. No Thanks means Layout won’t offer that app again; Settings › Apps still can.

The card stays 10 seconds, and as long as the pointer is on it. With Show notification cards off, Layout doesn’t offer.

In ⌘ Tab

If you use Layout’s ⌘Tab (see Switchers), your wildcard apps are in it in every workspace. They come after the workspace’s own windows:

A wildcard app’s window is listed wherever it is. Pick it and it comes to the workspace you’re in, as when you call it.
A wildcard app without a window is listed by its name, with No window open. Pick it and the app opens, or reopens, and its new window comes to the workspace you’re in.

Listed last, they never take the place of the window a quick ⌘Tab goes back to.

To change this, go to Settings › Apps:

Show wildcard apps in ⌘ Tab in every workspace turns it on or off for all of them. On by default.
⌘ Tab everywhere, next to each app, leaves that app out while the others stay. Left out, the app’s window shows in ⌘Tab only while it’s in the workspace you’re in.

The macOS app switcher already lists every open app: these settings apply to Layout’s ⌘Tab only.

In General’s switcher

⌃⌥., General’s switcher, lists all your wildcard apps after General’s own windows, the same way: a window wherever it is, or the app’s name with No window open. Pick one and it comes to the workspace you’re in, not to General. The ⌘Tab settings above don’t change this list.

In your layouts

A layout can have a wildcard app like any other app: Launch opens and places it, the preview shows it, its work context applies, and the Layout bar, ⌥Tab and the command palette count it among the workspace’s own apps. Add a wildcard app to a layout and that workspace becomes one of its homes: its windows waiting in General go there at your next switch.

Called into a workspace whose layout doesn’t have it, its window is a visitor: the workspace’s row in ⌥Tab and in the command palette leaves it out, and so does the Layout bar. Saving your desktop leaves it out too: it comes to you anyway.

Make it an ordinary app again and nothing in your layouts changes. Its windows waiting in General become General’s windows: they come back on screen if you’re in General, or the next time you switch there.