Multiple scratchpads for special apps

[agenbite]

Hi! I'm loving scroll, it has greatly improved the way I interact with my computer! :)

Something I miss from hyprland, though: I would like to have some apps running out of the way, and it'd be great to be able to make them visible with a binding. I'm thinking of something like this, where I have the sound control panel (pavucontrol) and the bluetooth control panel (blueman) running in their own scratchpads, and they come up with a keybind. Ideally, one would enter the screen from the left, and the other from the right.

Is this possible in scroll? I doubted if posting this in the lua API category, since I guess it's doable with some lua incantations (which I'm completely ignorant of).

[dawsers]

There is a scratchpad where you can keep windows and recall them with a key binding. They will open as floating windows in your current workspace/monitor. In the default configuration:

#
# Scratchpad:
#
    # Scroll has a "scratchpad", which is a bag of holding for windows.
    # You can send windows there and get them back later.

    # Move the currently focused window to the scratchpad
    bindsym $mod+Shift+z move scratchpad

    # Show the next scratchpad window or hide the focused scratchpad window.
    # If there are multiple scratchpad windows, this command cycles through them.
    bindsym $mod+z scratchpad show
    bindsym --no-repeat $mod+Alt+z scratchpad jump

You send any window to the scratchpad using $mod+Shift+z, and recall them in a loop using $mod+z, or using jump with $mod+Alt+z

Is this what you mean?

[agenbite]

On 04/01/2026, 15:29, dawsers wrote: Is this what you mean?

Not really. What I would like to have is more like several scratchpads: the ability to hide and recall certain windows, even better if they hide towards and reappear from both sides of the screen with a nice animation. :)

[dawsers]

OK, I think what you want is to have some panels with system settings that come out from the sides. That is more what a desktop shell would provide, something like DankMaterialShell or caelestia. you can write those things very easily using quickshell, or you can download either of those I mentioned for a pre-packaged solution.

[agenbite]

Well, not exactly what I was looking for, but I'll have a look. Thanks!

[dawsers]

Other than that, the current scratchpad lets you set the window you send to it wherever you want, by simply moving it with a move command. You can create a rule that sends a certain app to the scratchpad when it's created, and positions it wherever you want. Then you can recall it using scratchpad jump. If you want something more complicated than what for_window provides, you can write a Lua script.

    for_window [app_id="mpv"] move scratchpad
    for_window [app_id="mpv"] scratchpad show
    for_window [app_id="mpv"] resize set width 800 height 600
    for_window [app_id="mpv"] move position 0 px 800 px
etc.