Workspaces, tabs and panes
How Flow organises terminals and what it restores after a relaunch.
Each Flow window has a sidebar of workspaces. A workspace holds tabs, and each tab can split into panes.
Workspaces
Each workspace in the sidebar shows three lines:
- Its name. Inside a git repository, the workspace takes the repository’s name, so it keeps that name in any folder inside it. Outside a repository it takes the folder’s name.
- The folder you’re in.
- In a git repository, the branch. A
*after the branch means there are uncommitted changes.
A new workspace opens right below the selected one. Drag a workspace up or down to reorder the list. Flow keeps the order when you reopen it.
To rename a workspace, press ⇧⌘R or right-click it and choose Rename Workspace. Press Return to keep the name or Esc to cancel. A workspace you rename keeps your name wherever you cd.
To close a workspace, hover over it and click the ×, or right-click it and choose Close Workspace.
| Shortcut | Action |
|---|---|
| ⌘N | New workspace |
| ⌘1–8 | Switch workspace |
| ⌘9 | Last workspace |
| ⇧⌘[ ⇧⌘] | Previous or next workspace |
| ⇧⌘R | Rename workspace |
| ⌘B | Show or hide the sidebar |
Drag the sidebar’s edge to make it wider or narrower.
Tabs
The tab bar appears once a workspace has more than one tab.
| Shortcut | Action |
|---|---|
| ⌘T | New tab |
| ⌃1–9 | Switch tab |
| ⌥⌘W | Close tab |
Panes
| Shortcut | Action |
|---|---|
| ⌘D | Split right |
| ⇧⌘D | Split down |
| ⇧⌘↩ | Zoom the pane to fill the tab |
| ⌘W | Close pane |
Drag a divider to resize panes. Panes you’re not typing in are dimmed. To change how much, use Dim unfocused panes in Settings › Appearance.
Command palette
Press ⌘P to list every tab and pane in the window, most recently used first. Press ⌘I to list the terminals running an agent, in every window. The agent you’re looking at comes first, then the ones waiting for you, the finished ones, the idle ones and the working ones. Within each group, the one that has waited longest comes first.
Type to search by workspace, folder, tab, pane or agent name. claude finds every terminal running Claude Code, and left finds the left pane of each split. Move through the list with the arrow keys, and the window shows the selected place. Press Return to go there, or Esc to go back to where you were.
To step through the list without the search, hold ⌘ and press P, I, ↑ or ↓. Flow goes to the selected place when you let go of ⌘. A quick ⌘P P goes back to the previous place.
| Shortcut | Action |
|---|---|
| ⌘P | Go to a tab or pane |
| ⌘P P | Go back to the previous place |
| ⌘I | Go to an agent |
Windows
⇧⌘N opens a new window with its own workspaces.
Closing the last window doesn’t lose its workspaces. The next window Flow opens, from the Dock, a menu or a relaunch, brings them back.
Closing terminals
Flow asks before closing a pane, tab, workspace or window, or quitting, while a program is running in it. To be asked always or never, change Confirm closing terminals in Settings › General.
Restoration
Flow reopens your windows, workspaces, tabs and splits, each in the folder it was in. Programs that were running don’t come back, so each pane starts a new shell.
A restored terminal starts its shell the first time you look at it, so Flow opens quickly however many workspaces you have. Until then its tab shows the folder it will start in. Once started, a terminal keeps running when you switch to another tab or workspace.