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

instantWM also supports multiple named scratchpads through instantwmctl:

instantwmctl scratchpad create terminal
instantwmctl scratchpad toggle terminal
instantwmctl scratchpad list
instantwmctl scratchpad delete

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 recognizes that identity during initial window management and makes the window a visible floating scratchpad before the first layout pass. This is how ins scratchpad avoids briefly inserting its terminal into the tiled tree while it waits for IPC registration.

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