Workspaces are a grouping layer above projects — each project lives in exactly one workspace, and each Solo window has one active workspace at a time. Separate windows can show different workspaces simultaneously. Use them to separate clients, jobs, or areas of work so the sidebar only shows the projects you care about right now.
How workspaces work
Every Solo install starts with a single workspace (named Default Workspace), and with only one workspace the app looks and behaves exactly as if workspaces didn't exist. Once you create a second workspace, the workspace rail appears automatically and you can start organizing.
Switching workspaces swaps the entire sidebar to that workspace's projects. Processes in other workspaces keep running in the background — switching never stops anything.
The workspace rail
With two or more workspaces, a narrow vertical rail appears on the left edge of the sidebar. Each disclosed workspace appears as a small icon — its initials, color, or custom image (see Managing workspaces).
When inactive workspace identities are disclosed, the rail is split into two groups:
- Top group — workspaces open in the current window. The active workspace has a highlighted border.
- Bottom group — all other workspaces, shown dimmed. These are either open in another window or not open anywhere yet.
Hovering a disclosed icon shows the workspace name and its project count. The + button at the bottom opens the rail's native menu. When inactive identities are disclosed, this menu includes Open entries for workspaces outside the current window; it always includes Hide inactive workspaces, New workspace, and Manage workspaces.
Right-clicking an empty area of the rail opens the same native menu. Right-clicking a disclosed workspace icon adds Rename workspace and Open in new window. If that workspace belongs to the current window, the menu also adds Close workspace; closing removes that workspace view from this window without deleting the workspace.
The rail supports keyboard navigation over its disclosed, focusable items: ↑ / ↓ move among workspace icons and the +N stack when it is present, Home / End jump to the first or last item, and Enter or Space activates the focused workspace or toggles the stack.
Hiding inactive workspaces
Enable Hide inactive workspaces from the rail's native menu or Settings > Workspaces. It collapses every workspace except the current one into a single +N button. While the stack is collapsed, those workspaces have no individual rail icons, Open menu entries, keyboard targets, or notification badges. Activate +N to reveal those identities; activate it again to collapse them.
Unread badges
When a process in another disclosed workspace has unread notification activity, that workspace's rail icon shows a badge with the number of unread processes (capped at 99+). When the inactive-workspace stack is collapsed, badges for those hidden workspaces are withheld until you reveal them. A disclosed badge clears as you read the activity, so you can tell at a glance which workspaces need attention. See Indicators for how unread state works generally.
Switching workspaces
There are several ways to switch:
| Method | How |
|---|---|
| Click | Click a disclosed workspace icon in the rail. Dimmed icons open that workspace or focus the window that already has it open. |
| Command palette | The Go to results include a Switch to <workspace> item for every workspace except the current one, labeled with a Workspace scope. |
| Hotkeys | Switch to workspace 1-9 commands jump to the Nth workspace in your configured order. They ship unbound — assign keys in Settings > Hotkeys. |
The numbered hotkeys use the configured global workspace order. Each window's top rail group keeps its own order, which can differ. To change a window's rail order, drag only workspace icons open in and owned by that window (see Managing workspaces). See Customizing keyboard shortcuts for how to bind the workspace commands.
Command palette scope
By default, the command palette searches only the current workspace. With two or more workspaces, a scope pill appears next to the palette's search field showing the current workspace name.
- Press
Tab(or click the pill) to toggle between searching this workspace and All workspaces. - When searching all workspaces, results from other workspaces include their workspace name so you can tell where a match lives, and you can match on the workspace name itself.
- The scope resets to the current workspace when you switch workspaces.
The toggle is available at the palette's top level; once you drill into a specific project, results are already scoped to that project.
Related pages
- Managing workspaces — creating, renaming, reordering, deleting, and icons.
- Multiple windows — opening workspaces in separate windows.
- Workspace MCP tools — managing workspaces from agents via MCP.