Tiling Windows

Windows and tabs are dead. Tiling windows are where the real stuff is made.

Inside a frame, panes tile: they fill the space without overlapping, and when you add, remove or resize one the others adjust. If you have used i3, Hyprland or a terminal multiplexer, this is home.

[todo: add screenshot of a frame with three tiled panes and of parts the gap between panes, the chartreuse focus bar, a resize seam.]

The essentials, on Linux:

shift + super + arrow shifts focus of a pane, indicated by the chartreuse bar at the bottom of the focused pane
ctrl + super + arrow moves a pane
ctrl + shift + enter auto aligns panes
super + shift + enter full screen = makes current pane full screen. The same combo to auto adjust back to the pane inside of the frame.
ctrl + super + \ is focus mode (removes the Kaba bar at the top of the frame). This automatically occurs in full screen mode.
ctrl + ~ shows which Frames are available. You can navigate available Frames with arrow left / right and you can delete frames by clicking the x.

The same actions on every platform are in the tables below. All shortcuts can be changed under Settings → Keyboard.

Frames & Panes

Frames

Tabs are dead
real time web
towards a jit UI
can you feel the AGI if all you want out of your browser is horizontal / vertical tabs?

All apps update in real time but you view them individually. A frame holds a set of panes arranged your way, and switching frames switches the whole arrangement at once.

Create, reorder and close frames from the frames view (ctrl + ~) or the frame strip. See UI layout.

Panes

status bar
options
navigation
crud
keyboard hotkeys
ui

Each pane has its own status bar (back, forward, reload, developer tools, move, close) and its own right-click menu with every option on this page. See UI layout. The rest of this page is the detail.

Split

Action	Linux	macOS	Windows
Split vertically (side by side)	`Super+Shift+\|`	`Cmd+Shift+\|`	`Ctrl+Shift+\`
Split horizontally (stacked)	`Super+Shift+_`	`Cmd+Shift+_`	`Ctrl+Shift+-`
New pane	`Super+Enter`	`Cmd+Enter`	`Ctrl+Enter`
Close pane	`Super+Shift+W`	`Cmd+Shift+W`	`Ctrl+Shift+W`
Undo the last frame or pane action	`Super+Shift+Z`	`Cmd+Shift+Alt+Z`	`Ctrl+Alt+Z`

A new pane appears next to the pane that spawned it. You can also right-click a link and choose Open in Pane Right or Open in Pane Below.

By default a new pane shows the desktop; Settings → Keyboard can make it open a terminal or a URL of your choice instead.

Focus

Action	Linux	macOS	Windows
Select pane up / down / left / right	`Super+Shift+Arrow`	`Cmd+Shift+Arrow`	`Alt+Shift+Arrow`

Move

Action	Linux	macOS	Windows
Move pane up / down / left / right	`Super+Ctrl+Arrow`	`Cmd+Ctrl+Arrow`	`Ctrl+Alt+Arrow`

With the mouse, click the move handle in a pane’s status bar, then click where it should go. While moving, the arrow keys choose a target, Enter confirms and Esc cancels. The pane menu’s Move Pane submenu can also send a pane up, down, left, right, or To a New Frame.

[todo: add screenshot of moving a pane and of parts the move handle, drop targets on pane edges, the Moving hint with arrows, Enter and Esc.]

Resize

Action	Linux	macOS	Windows
Resize pane up / down / left / right	`Super+Ctrl+Shift+Arrow`	`Cmd+Ctrl+Shift+Arrow`	`Ctrl+Alt+Shift+Arrow`
Auto align (balance) all panes	`Ctrl+Shift+Enter`	`Cmd+Shift+Enter`	`Ctrl+Shift+Enter`

With the mouse, drag the seam between two panes. A pane cannot be made smaller than 10% of its container; the divider stops at the limit.

Pane full screen

Action	Linux	macOS	Windows
Toggle pane full screen	`Super+Shift+Enter`	`Cmd+Shift+Enter`	`Ctrl+Shift+Enter`

Makes the current pane fill the frame without closing the others; the same combo puts it back. It is also Toggle Pane Fullscreen in the pane menu.

[todo: confirm the macOS and Windows chords for pane full screen. In kaba 0.146 they are the same keys as “auto align panes” on those two platforms.]

Gaps

Gaps are the space between panes and around the frame, as in i3-gaps. They can be set at three levels, each inheriting from the next: one pane, every pane in a frame, and the global default.

Action	Linux	macOS	Windows
Decrease / increase gap, this pane	`Ctrl+Super+-` / `Ctrl+Super+=`	`Ctrl+Cmd+-` / `Ctrl+Cmd+=`	`Ctrl+Alt+-` / `Ctrl+Alt+=`
Reset gap, this pane	`Ctrl+Super+0`	`Ctrl+Cmd+0`	`Ctrl+Alt+0`
Same, for all panes in the frame	add `Shift`	add `Shift`	add `Shift`

The global default is 10 px and is set under Settings → Look & Feel → Pane gaps. The range is 0 to 60 px. At 0, panes touch, the mouse resize seam disappears, and keyboard resize still works.

Layout modes

Right-click a frame in the strip and choose Layout Mode:

Mode	Behaviour
Tiling (default)	Panes share the frame side by side and stacked.
Tabbed	One pane fills the frame; the others are reachable from a tab strip at the top of the frame.

Save and restore

Save current Frame stores the layout and the page in each pane under a name. Reopen it from the desktop’s Frames widget, from Hippocampus, or with /frame <name> in the omnibar.

Memory Saver and panes

Panes you have not used for a while are frozen to free memory. A frozen pane shows Frozen to save memory; click it to wake it. You can freeze one immediately with Discard Pane Now in the pane menu. See Memory Saver.