The launchpad allows you to manage your windows, open new windows, switch the desktop and change the monitor brightness.

Window Management

You can open up to 6 windows on a single desktop.

In the center of the launchpad you see all of your currently opened windows. The active window is highlighted with a purple outline. You can switch the active window by clicking on a different window in the window overview. Pressing on the X-button will close a window and pressing on the bar-button will hide or show the top-window-bar of the specific window.

Using the controls in the top right corner you can move and resize the active window. You have the option to center it, make it fill the entire screen, one of two halfs, or one of three thirds. For more advanced window placement, you can use the Keyboard Shortcuts.

Open New Windows

Using the left top apps-overview you can open a new window. Simply press on an app-icon and a new window will be opened. Currently there are still some gray tinted icons which cannot be used at the moment.

<aside> <img src="https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/secure.notion-static.com/aef46a0a-865a-4423-b1d9-12809595dda0/notion-icons-basics.png" alt="https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/secure.notion-static.com/aef46a0a-865a-4423-b1d9-12809595dda0/notion-icons-basics.png" width="40px" /> Pro tip: shiftscreen automatically calculates the free space on your monitor and will place new windows on the position where there is the most free place. So all you have to do, is to resize the current windows and make free space, open a new window and shiftscreen will fill it.

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Desktops

A desktop is a container of up to 6 windows. You can create and delete desktops using the bottom bar in the launchpad.

Pressing on a different desktop will switch to the specified desktop.

Monitor Brightness and Night Shift

You can change the monitor brightness using the slider in the top right corner of the launchpad.

You can activate and deactivate night shift using the moon-icon-button for working when it's dark around the monitor. Night shift will automatically be disabled the next morning.

Control modes

In the launchpad (and the app settings) you can change the app control mode. This determines how you primarily interact with your monitor. There currently are the touch, mouse and device as monitor modes.

  1. Touch mode

    The only thing special here is that the launchpad will be on your iPad or iPhone instead of the monitor.

  2. iPad mouse mode (iPad only)

    The launchpad view will fill the monitor which is ideal since you will use a mouse to interact with the monitor.

  3. Device as trackpad mode

    Here you use the actual device (likely the iPhone) as the trackpad. More details here.