A small tool for Qtile-like scratchpads in Hyprland or simplifying usage of the built-in functionality, configured entirely inside of hyprland.conf.

cargo install hyprscratch

paru -S hyprscratch

In hyprland.conf:

#start the hyprscratch daemon
exec-once = hyprscratch [DAEMON_OPTIONS]

#configure scratchpads
bind = $MOD, $KEY, exec, hyprscratch $CLIENT_TITLE "$HYPRLAND_EXEC_COMMAND" [SCRATCHPAD_OPTIONS]

Example scratchpad:

bind = $mainMod, b, exec, hyprscratch btop "[float;size 70% 80%;center] alacritty --title btop -e btop" onstart

• clean [spotless]: automatically hides all scratchpads on workspace change. The spotless option also hides them on losing focus to non-floating cients.

• no-auto-reload: does not reload the configuration when the configuration file is updated.

• persist: makes it so that the scratchpad doesn't get replaced when a new one is summoned.

• cover: makes it so that the scratchpad doesn't replace another one if one is already present.

• sticky: makes it so that the scratchpad isn't hidden by clean.

• shiny: makes it so that the scratchpad isn't hidden only by clean spotless.

• eager: spawns the scratchpad hidden when the daemon is started.

• summon: only creates or brings up the scratchpad.

• hide: only hides the scratchpad.

• poly: toggle all scratchpads with the same title

• special: uses the special workspace. Ignores most other scratchpad options and is ignored by clean spotless.

• cycle [normal|special]: cycles between scratchpads (optionally only normal or special ones) in the order they are defined in the configuration file.

• previous: summon the last used scratchpad that is not currently active.

• hide-all: hides all scratchpads, useful mostly when stacking multiple of them.

• kill-all: closes all scratchpad clients that are open

• reload: re-parses the configuration file without restarting the daemon.

• get-config: prints out the parsed configuration.

• kill: kills the hyprsctatch daemon

• logs: show logs

To find the title needed for a scratchpad, run hyprctl clients and check the initialTitle field. An incorrect title results in the scratchpad not being hidden and a new one being spawned instead.

To group multiple scratchpads together, bind them to the same key and use stack on all of them.

Terminal applications often all use the title of the terminal emulator. Usually the title can be set with the --title flag to differentiate them.

If there are multiple scratchpads with the same initial title, this program just grabs the first one it finds.

Scratchpads don't have to be floating. This can also be used to just spawn a specific client, where the binding also hides it or grabs it from another workspace. Non-floating scratchpads are ignored by clean.