instantOS

Tags ​

Required skills

Basic explanation ​

Each window is assigned to one or more tags. It is only visible when the tag is active. The tag bar in the top left shows the status of all tags

  • Dark Blue: The tag is not active with no windows assigned to it
  • Red: The tag is active with no windows assigned to it
  • Green: The tag is active and has the currently active window assigned to it
  • Blue: The tag is not active and has windows assigned to it
  • Yellow: The tag is active and has windows assigned to it

Basic actions ​

You can activate a single tag by clicking its indicator or using Super + the corresponding number key. To move a window to another tag, use Super + Shift + Tag-number. To move a window to a tag and follow it there, use Super + Alt + Tag-number. You can also drag a tag indicator to another tag to move the selected window. Hold Alt when releasing to move the window and follow it to the destination. Dropping a floating or tiled window on a tag works the same way: without Alt, the window moves and your view stays put; with Alt, the destination tag becomes the active view. Alt is checked on release, so you can press or release it mid-drag.

Activating multiple tags ​

Multiple tags can be toggled so all windows assigned to these tags become visible. The key binding to do this is super+ctrl+"Tag-number". Right clicking on the tag indicator achieves the same thing. Actions that focus on a single tag like following a window or clicking on the indicator will deactivate all additional tags.

Naming tags ​

Tags are named 1 … 20 plus a scratchpad tag s by default. Change them in config.toml — the number of entries is the number of tags:

toml
[tags]
names = ["1", "2", "3", "web", "mail", "chat", "media", "s"]

For a quick, session-only relabel, instantwmctl tag name "web" renames the tags in the current view, instantwmctl tag list shows every tag with its name, icon, and state, and instantwmctl tag reset goes back to the configured names. A reload also restores them.

Tag icons ​

Every tag can carry a second label — usually a nerd-font glyph — and the bar can switch between names and icons with super+alt+s (or permanently with [tags] show_icons = true):

toml
[fonts]
icon_family = "Symbols Nerd Font"   # any font with the glyphs you use

[tags]
names = ["1", "2", "3", "web", "mail", "s"]
icons = ["", "", "", "", "", ""]   # positional: index i is the icon for tag i

The icon list may be shorter than the name list (the remaining tags keep their names); an empty string means "no icon", and the name is shown for that tag even in icon mode.

How many tags the bar shows ​

The bar draws up to [bar] tag_slots cells (9 by default). Fewer cells suit wordy names, more suit icons. When you have more tags than cells, the last cell shows the current tag instead of a fixed one, so every tag stays reachable. Both the cell count and "hide tags without windows" ([bar] show_empty_tags, super+ctrl+shift+s) can be set per monitor in its [monitors."<output>"] entry — see Monitor configuration.