Scratchpad

Scratchpads are floating windows which can be shown above any tag, including fullscreen windows. Press super+s to toggle the default scratchpad. If it does not exist yet, the focused window becomes the scratchpad; later presses show or hide it.

Advanced: named scratchpads

You can create multiple named scratchpads with instantwmctl:

instantwmctl scratchpad create terminal
instantwmctl scratchpad toggle terminal
instantwmctl scratchpad list
instantwmctl scratchpad restore

Scripting and launcher integration

If no name is supplied, the IPC commands use instantwm_scratchpad.

Scratchpad launchers can assign the window class or Wayland app ID scratchpad_<name>. instantWM makes such a window a floating scratchpad as soon as it appears, so it never briefly shows up in the tiled layout. ins scratchpad relies on this for its terminal.

The edge overlay is related but separate: it has screen-edge show/hide behavior and is toggled by super+t.