SplitNest

Workspaces and terminals

On this page

The detailed reference for workspaces, terminals and panes. For the overview, see the features.

Workspaces

Shown in the left sidebar, one project folder each. New workspace from folder… is the folder button at the top of the sidebar (Ctrl+Shift+O). The current workspace has a mint bar and bold name. Rename and remove workspaces with the buttons that appear on hover. Removing a workspace never deletes files; it only removes the entry and ends its sessions after confirmation.

The workspace sidebar and the file explorer are independent.

  • Collapse / expand the workspace sidebar to an icon rail with Ctrl+Shift+B or the first title-bar button. Show / hide the explorer with Ctrl+Shift+E or the second.
  • Resize either one by dragging its right edge, or focus the edge with Tab and use ←/→ (Shift = larger steps). Widths are saved and come back after a restart or after collapsing.
  • On a small window the panels are narrowed for display (explorer first) so the terminals keep at least 360 px; your saved widths are restored when the window grows.
  • Focus terminals (Ctrl+Shift+Enter, the third title-bar button, or the palette) hides both sidebars. Using it again, or pressing either sidebar shortcut, restores them exactly as they were. The title-bar button stays highlighted while focus mode is on.

Terminals

New terminal in the title bar (or Ctrl+Shift+T) opens a terminal tab in the current pane with the default shell; its arrow chooses another shell (PowerShell 7, Windows PowerShell, or a WSL distribution). The + in a pane’s tab bar does the same for that pane, using that pane’s current shell.

Title bar

SplitNest draws its own title bar.

  • Left: sidebar, file-explorer and focus-mode toggles, and the current workspace’s name and folder.
  • Center: a search box that opens the command palette.
  • Right: New terminal ▾, Split left/right and Split top/bottom (both act on the current pane). Every icon button has a tooltip with its shortcut.
  • Window buttons: minimize, maximize and close are still the native Windows buttons (Electron’s title-bar overlay), so snap layouts, double-click to maximize and dragging all work as usual.

Tabs

Every split pane has its own tab bar, so it can hold several terminals. Switch with Ctrl+Tab / Ctrl+Shift+Tab or the arrow keys on a focused tab bar. Close with the tab’s ×, middle-click, Delete on a focused tab, or Ctrl+Shift+W (closing the last tab closes the pane). Drag a tab to reorder it or drop it on another pane’s tab bar to move it; its shell keeps running. Background tabs keep running too.

  • A tab shows a status dot, its name, and a state label when not running (Not started, Starting, Exited (code), Failed). The tooltip has the shell, state, starting folder (it does not follow later cd commands) and the title the shell last set, if any.
  • Rename a terminal (for example Backend, Tests, Logs) by double-clicking its tab, pressing F2 on a focused tab, right-click → Rename terminal…, or the palette’s Rename terminal…. Enter saves, Escape cancels, and an empty name goes back to the shell’s name. Named tabs also show the shell in smaller text. Titles set by the shell never replace a name you chose. Long names are shortened on the tab; the full name is in the tooltip.
  • Right-click a tab (or Shift+F10 on it) for rename, start/restart, split with this shell, and close.

Panes

Each pane header has + (new terminal here), Split left/right, Split top/bottom and ⋯ (find, start/restart, rename, close terminal, close pane). When there are several panes, the current pane has a faint mint outline and a lighter header; while it has keyboard focus the outline is solid mint. Clicking a terminal or Ctrl+Alt+Arrow moves focus.

Short prompts

Settings → Short folder names in prompts, on by default. Long folders no longer wrap the prompt.

  • PowerShell shows PS car-rental> (or PS ~> at home) instead of the full path. This applies only when PowerShell’s built-in prompt is active after your profile ran; a prompt from $PROFILE, oh-my-posh or Starship is left alone. The setup line is not added to PSReadLine’s up-arrow history, but Get-History lists it as entry 1.
  • WSL bash gets PROMPT_DIRTRIM=1 (passed through WSLENV), so the usual \w prompt shows user@host:.../car-rental$. A PROMPT_DIRTRIM set in your ~/.bashrc wins, and prompts without \w (zsh, custom PS1) are unaffected.
  • Only the prompt changes. Terminal output is never rewritten or filtered. pwd, Get-Location, error messages and copied output keep full paths, and your profile files ($PROFILE, ~/.bashrc) are not modified. The full path is also in the tab tooltip.
  • It applies per session: changing the setting affects shells started afterwards, and turning it off gives the normal full-path prompt again.

Maximise pane

Ctrl+Shift+M, the ⤢ button in a pane’s header, its ⋯ menu, or the palette. The pane temporarily fills the terminal area. The other panes stay open underneath, so their shells keep running and their editors keep unsaved text. Restore layout (same shortcut or button) brings back the exact split sizes and selected tabs. Moving focus to another pane (Ctrl+Alt+arrows, opening a file beside it) or closing the pane also restores the layout.

Workspace counts

The counts in the sidebar show running shells only (1 shell running, 6 shells running), including background tabs. Editor tabs and shells that are not started, starting, failed or exited are not counted.

Tab labels

A renamed terminal shows Project B · PowerShell, with the shell in smaller text; unnamed tabs show just the shell. In narrow panes the shell part is dropped first; the full label is in the tooltip and accessible name.

Splits

Drag dividers to resize, or focus a divider with Tab and use the arrow keys (Shift = larger steps).

WSL panes

WSL panes start in the Linux path that wslpath reports for the workspace folder (for example /mnt/c/...). If the folder can’t be mapped, the pane explains why and offers an explicit Start in home directory instead button. It never silently starts somewhere else.