Feature Request: Ability to Icon/Avatar Desktops

Whenever I do 4-finger upswipe to see all of my desktops, I always wish that I could assign an icon or avatar below the desktop so that if I have all of my Word docs on Desktop 1 I could assign the “MSWord” icon to that desktop and instead of having to squint at all of the desktops trying to find where my Word docs are, I could just look for the icon and go directly to that desktop. Same for Excel, Facebook, eBay, etc., etc. I think this would make navigation between desktops much easier by giving the user a snapshot of which desktop they’ve chosen to have a program on.

Interesting idea.

One thing you could do for now is to change each desktop background to something that reminds you (although not so effective if windows cover the entire desktop area).

In the linux world FVWM (Feeble virtual window manager) had an ‘always on top’ window with a map of your desktops. A click switched to that desktop. If you clicked in a miniature window in that desktop that window became active. This meant 1 mouse click to switch and optionally activate a given window.

The currently active desktop was surrounded by a heavier line, and in the default config a brighter version of the background colour, so it was visually obvious which desktop you were in.

Later versions of FVWM condensed this to an icon on the ‘dock’ This was workable with up to 3x3 desktops. This version didn’t show representatives of the windows.