Special Workspaces

Displays populated and currently active Hyprland special workspaces as compact chips in the Noctalia bar.

Plugin

Field	Value
ID	jamesfeeder/special-workspaces
Entries	Bar widget: special-workspaces; service: workspace-state

Requirements

• Noctalia v5 with plugin API 3 or newer.
• Hyprland, including its hyprctl utility.
• Install socat on PATH.

Usage

Enable jamesfeeder/special-workspaces in Settings → Plugins, then add Special Workspaces to the bar from Settings → Bar.

The widget shows special workspaces in alphabetical order. Click on a workspace capsule to toggle the workspace. Active workspaces remain visible when empty. Inactive workspaces appear only while populated and can be hidden with hide_inactive.

Settings

Setting	Type	Default	Description
font_size	int	11	Workspace name font size. Set 0 to use system default.
max_label_chars	int	0	Maximum Unicode characters shown from each workspace name. 0 shows the full name.
hide_inactive	bool	false	Hide populated workspaces unless they are visible on a monitor.
capsule_radius	int	8	Corner radius in logical pixels. Negative values are treated as 0.
capsule_padding	int	5	Space before and after the label along the bar axis, in logical pixels. Negative values are treated as 0.
capsule_min_width	int	35	Minimum capsule length along the bar axis, in logical pixels. Negative values are treated as 0.
active_style	select	"fill"	Active capsule style: "fill" or "ghost".
inactive_style	select	"fill"	Inactive capsule style: "fill" or "ghost". Hidden when hide_inactive is enabled.
active_color	color	"primary"	Fill color of active capsules. Palette role name or hex value.
active_text_color	color	"on_primary"	Label color inside active capsules.
inactive_color	color	"secondary"	Fill color of inactive capsules.
inactive_text_color	color	"on_secondary"	Label color inside inactive capsules.

Notes

• Active means visible on any monitor, not focused.
• Fill style uses the configured colors, which default to primary for active workspaces and secondary for inactive ones. Ghost style uses a transparent fill with the active color, or on_surface text for inactive capsules.
• Color settings take either a palette role name (primary, secondary, tertiary, on_surface, ...) or a hex value such as #3B4261. Useful when the bar's own workspace widget already uses one of those roles and the capsules would otherwise be indistinguishable from it.
• On vertical bars, capsules grow vertically and display one Unicode character per line from top to bottom.
• The service snapshots hyprctl -j clients and hyprctl -j monitors, then listens to Hyprland's .socket2.sock through socat.
• If the event socket disconnects, the service waits for it to return, refreshes its snapshot, and reconnects. It retains the last valid state while hyprctl is unavailable and retries failed snapshots up to twice.