Keyboard shortcuts
Default bindings; all remappable in System Settings › Shortcuts › PlasmaZones.
Shortcuts are registered through phosphor-shortcuts: KGlobalAccel with component key plasmazonesd, or an XDG Portal fallback in the portable build (-DUSE_KDE_FRAMEWORKS=OFF). Settings are keyed by action ID, so rebinding one never touches another.
Drag to snap
The drag and span modifiers aren't keyboard shortcuts; they're settings. Hold the drag modifier while moving a window to pop the zone overlay, and hold the span modifier over two adjacent zones to snap across both.
- Drag modifier Configurable to Meta, Ctrl+Alt, Alt+Shift, Alt+Meta, or Ctrl+Alt+Meta.
Alt - Zone-span modifier Hold while dragging across two adjacent zones to snap across both.
Ctrl+Alt
Core
- Open zone editor
Meta+Shift+E - Open settings
Meta+Shift+P - Cycle the focused screen's placement mode Walks snapping → tiling → scrolling, skipping any mode you have disabled.
Meta+Shift+T - Open the shortcut cheatsheet
Meta+Alt+/ - Previous layout on current screen
Meta+Alt+[ - Next layout on current screen
Meta+Alt+] - Open layout picker
Meta+Alt+Space - Toggle layout lock
Meta+Ctrl+L - Reapply current layout
Meta+Ctrl+Z
Zone focus + movement
- Focus window in adjacent zone
Alt+Shift+←/→/↑/↓ - Move focused window into adjacent zone
Meta+Alt+Shift+←/→/↑/↓ - Swap focused window with window in adjacent zone
Meta+Ctrl+Alt+←/→/↑/↓ - Cycle focused window backward / forward through zones
Meta+Alt+, / Meta+Alt+. - Rotate all windows clockwise / counter-clockwise within current layout
Meta+Ctrl+] / Meta+Ctrl+[ - Push focused window to the nearest empty zone
Meta+Alt+Return - Restore focused window to its pre-snap size
Meta+Alt+Escape - Toggle focused window's floating state
Meta+F - Switch focus between the floating windows and the placed ones Mode-neutral: it returns to the tiled windows on a tiling screen and to the columns on a scrolling one.
Meta+Alt+X
Snap
- Snap focused window to zone 1…9 on current screen
Meta+Ctrl+1 … Meta+Ctrl+9 - Snap every visible window to its best-fit zone
Meta+Ctrl+S
Layouts
- Load quick-layout slot 1…9 Slots are defined in ~/.config/plasmazones/assignments.json; assign in the layout picker.
Meta+Alt+1 … Meta+Alt+9
Tiling
Assign Tiling to a screen (or cycle to it with Meta+Shift+T), then pick one of the 27 built-in algorithms or a custom Luau one in Settings. Master+Stack, BSP, Spiral, Grid, and Monocle are the common picks.
- Focus the master window
Meta+Shift+M - Swap focused window with master
Meta+Shift+Return - Increase / decrease master ratio
Meta+Shift+L / Meta+Shift+H - Increase / decrease master count
Meta+Ctrl+= / Meta+Ctrl+- - Retile all windows
Meta+Ctrl+T
Scrolling
Assign Scrolling to a screen and the whole vocabulary lives on Meta+Alt. Four directional variants ship unbound — a stop-at-the-edge and a wrapping pair for the previous and next column — for users who want niri's exact edge behaviour; bind them under Shortcuts.Scrolling in ~/.config/plasmazones/config.json.
- Focus the next / previous column and slide the strip Horizontal wheel ticks and two-finger horizontal touchpad scrolls work too. Switchable, and invertible, under Settings → Scrolling → Window.
Meta+wheel - Focus the first / last column on the strip
Meta+Alt+Home / End - Move the focused column to the start / end of the strip
Meta+Alt+Shift+Home / End - Focus the first / last window in the column
Meta+Alt+V / Shift+V - Page the view back / forward along the strip
Meta+Alt+Y / Shift+Y - Center the focused column
Meta+Alt+C - Center all visible columns
Meta+Alt+Shift+C - Cycle the column through the template's width presets, forward / back
Meta+Alt+PgUp / PgDown - Widen / narrow the column freely
Meta+Alt+W / Shift+W - Maximize the column to the full strip width
Meta+Alt+F - Expand the column to the free space / shrink it to its minimum
Meta+Alt+E / Shift+E - Equalize the widths of all columns
Meta+Ctrl+Shift+T - Toggle windowed fullscreen for the focused window
Meta+Alt+Shift+F - Consume the next window into this column / expel the focused one into its own
Meta+Alt+I / Shift+I - Consume or expel toward the start / end of the strip One key each way: it consumes the neighbour when there is one to take, and expels the focused window when there isn't.
Meta+Alt+U / O - Toggle the column between sharing and tabbing its windows
Meta+Alt+T - Grow / shrink the window's share of the column
Meta+Alt+H / Shift+H - Cycle the window height through the template's height presets
Meta+Alt+Shift+PgUp / PgDown - Reset every window height in the column
Meta+Ctrl+Alt+T
Virtual screens
- Swap virtual screens in that direction Virtual screens subdivide a physical monitor into 2–10 logical workspaces, each with its own layout.
Meta+Ctrl+Shift+←/→/↑/↓ - Rotate virtual screens clockwise / counter-clockwise
Meta+Ctrl+Shift+] / Meta+Ctrl+Shift+[
Rebinding
Every action has a stable ID assigned by phosphor-shortcuts's ShortcutManager, defined in src/daemon/controllers/shortcutmanager.cpp in the PlasmaZones repo. Users rebind per-action via System Settings › Keyboard › Shortcuts → PlasmaZones, which writes to ~/.config/kglobalshortcutsrc. Overrides take effect the next time the daemon reloads, either on PlasmaZones start or after the Meta+Ctrl+Z "Reapply layout" shortcut above.