Workspace Switcher

A workspace is one of your account's encrypted cloud workspaces — its own notes, archives, pins, settings, and layout. Most people only ever need one, but an account can own several (work vs. personal, one per text app you've generated, …), and the workspace switcher is the thin vertical rail along the left edge of the ROOT app that lets you hop between them without restarting.

When the Rail Appears

The rail is a ROOT-only surface. It never appears in a generated LEAF app, because a LEAF is bound to exactly one workspace by construction — there is nothing to switch to.

Inside ROOT it is hidden together with the rest of the window chrome:

• Mobile viewport — hidden.

• iOS — hidden (the mobile build is always a LEAF anyway).

• Zen mode — hidden along with the header; chrome hides with chrome.

Otherwise it is shown by default, one tile per workspace your account owns — there is no minimum-workspace-count threshold. You can hide it yourself; see "Hiding the Rail" below.

Hiding the Rail

If you'd rather reclaim the width, or you just don't use multiple workspaces, you can hide the rail independently of everything above. This is a per-device preference — it is not part of a workspace's settings, so switching workspaces never flips it, and hiding it on one device leaves it shown on your others.

Toggle it from the command palette (Mod+K) — Show workspace switcher, Hide workspace switcher, or Toggle workspace switcher (no default keyboard shortcut; configurable in Settings → Shortcuts). Hiding the rail while focus is inside it moves focus out first, so you never end up focused on a tile that just disappeared.

The Tiles

Each tile is a rounded letter avatar: the workspace name's first character on a background color derived deterministically from the workspace's id, so the same workspace always gets the same tint on every device. Hovering shows the full name as a tooltip. The active tile carries a single accent ring around its edge.

Keyboard users can move focus between tiles with the arrow keys, Home, and End (a standard tablist — exactly one tile is in the tab order at a time); Enter / Space activates the focused tile.

If the workspace list fails to load, the rail shows a single retry button rather than staying blank.

Switching Workspaces

Click any tile to switch to that workspace. Every tile — including the "+" tile — disables itself while a switch is already running, so you can't start a second switch until the current one lands.

The switch happens in-session — there is no page reload. Under the hood the app flushes any unsaved work, closes popped-out windows, tears down the current workspace's session, and opens the new one; the whole app (editor, pins, sidebar, settings) reflects the new workspace once the swap lands. If you switch back to the workspace you're already in, nothing happens.

Creating a New Workspace

Open the New workspace wizard in any of these ways:

• Click the + button at the bottom of the workspace rail.

• Open the command palette (Mod+K) and run Create New Workspace….

• Use the keyboard shortcut Mod+Alt+Shift+W (Cmd+Alt+Shift+W on macOS) — the default binding for Create New Workspace….

Any of these leaves the current workspace (the same safe teardown a switch uses) and takes you to the workspace creation wizard: pick a workspace name, set a master password (used to encrypt everything end-to-end before it leaves your device — it cannot be recovered if lost), and choose a starter-content preset (Standard, Minimal, or Full). If you already have at least one other workspace, the wizard offers a link back to your existing workspaces instead.

Creating a workspace mints a brand-new one, which requires an active subscription — new accounts get an automatic free 30-day trial, so this doesn't block a first-time signup. See Cloud-first onboarding for the full genesis flow and the trial policy.

Generating or Opening a Leaf App from a Workspace Tile

Right-click (or long-press-equivalent context menu) any tile to act on that specific workspace without switching to it first:

• "Generate leaf app…" — if the workspace has no generated LEAF app yet, opens the generate dialog locked to that workspace.

• "Open <appName>.app" — if a LEAF already exists for that workspace, launches it directly instead.

This is the same generate pipeline described in ROOT app — generating leaf text apps; the tile's context menu just skips picking a workspace in the dialog, since right-clicking the tile already picked it.

Command Palette and Shortcuts

Palette commands are available whenever ROOT is running on desktop (hidden on mobile). Change Workspace… and Create New Workspace… additionally gray out while a switch is already in progress:

• Change Workspace… — drills into a list of your account's workspaces; picking one switches to it, same as clicking its tile. No default keyboard shortcut (configurable in Settings → Shortcuts).

• Create New Workspace… — starts the same wizard as the rail's "+" button. Default shortcut: Mod+Alt+Shift+W.

• Show workspace switcher / Hide workspace switcher / Toggle workspace switcher — the per-device visibility toggle described in "Hiding the Rail" above. No default keyboard shortcut (configurable in Settings → Shortcuts). The native app menu's View → Show Workspace Switcher check item drives the same toggle — see App Menu.