Why use a virtual desktop when you can simply buy more monitors?

because at least on windows, they just don’t work well

shit always opens on the wrong desktop, they’re slow and glitchy. it’s just a pain

I just have four monitors

very infrequently I use virtual desktops for particular things, but too often I need to see the secondary shit while doing the primary and also have a meeting or tertiary info up while accessing chat

They’re great for work from home, especially when sharing screens. My background and task panel changes when I change desktops, and a script controls which Firefox profile is the default.

So one VD is work, another is play.

I tried using them but in the end it becomes too much of a hassle. I tried doing a work-out work kind of setup with my laptop but it’s more cumbersome to maintain than just closing it all

Reminds me of compiz in the old school days. The desktop cube was the (impractical) shit!

Can’t tell from the screenshot (need moar pixels), but that reminds me of the old software that would give Windows XP, 6 workspaces… It was so amazing but would utterly kill my old PIII with 192MB of RAM.

For more than a decade I developed a 3x3 grid with intuitive shortcuts with one monitor, a very visual space distribution, and I do not change it for anything (even when docking my laptop I use only the main monitor, I find it much more mentally efficient, since desktop swaping is faster than moving my head)

I took long train rides for a few years, where I’d work with a laptop, so my entire workflow is now single-monitor. I frequently sit down at workplaces at $DAYJOB where I would have two monitors and then I disable one of them, because it’s just genuinely not useful to me.

And if that didn’t terrify you, I also prefer touchpads now. 🙃

Does anyone else never use them ever?

Indispensable on laptop computers!

Never used them in my life and I’ve been machine computing over 25 years. Always one monitor, one desktop. I close shit I dont need regularly, I click on icons on the tab bar to get to the app I need. The tab bar is wide enough to hold like 30+ of them. Why do I need more than one desktop? Windows go over another, the tab bar shows everything I have open. Why switch? I never got it.

Never once used them. My spouse has them on her mac book, which I know because she’ll randomly just lose whatever she’s doing and have some video playing that she can’t find again for another few minutes. So other than a minute of entertainment once every few months, not sure why they even exist.

TIL þere exist people who don’t use virtual desktops.

How do you even?

How far do you even have to be to use a 65" screen? Doesn’t seem practical at all for desktop use.

I use both

Quad monitors + GNOME workspaces are awesome

I’m thinking of trying them, but hard for me to find a usecase. I have two monitors and it’s often useful for me to have different combos of apps open at the sane time, so not sure how to properly use it.

I have a 34" 1440p monitor, which I almost always have tiled in half, and a 1080p monitor next to that. Some more involved workflows will have me branching out to other desktops but I can get a lot done with two monitors. A third would be nice but I’ll need a new desk for that.

I’ve got triple monitors and 8-10 virtual desktops full at any given moment. Lots of multitasking. Lots of context switching where I don’t necessarily want to close out any windows. Tilling WM.

Kind of thinking about adding more virtual desktops…

Even with multiple monitors, they are still useful. I use them to separate different tasks so I can switch back and forth with a keyboard shortcut.

yeah I’ve got two laptops for 80% of my computer usage and one has 10" 1920x1080, other has 13" 1366x768. It’s impossible to read text or do any serious work when having more than two windows visible at the same time, and virtual desktop with hotkeys make it much more tolerable.

I can’t stand virtual desktops. I have 4 monitors specifically so I can have as many things visible at once at possible without switching. I work from home so this is my machine I use for everything. 1 monitor for main task or games, 1 for side tasks, 1 for media or even more side tasks, and 1 exclusively for work and personal chat. My top monitor is very large so I often have 2 or 4 different things going on at once side by side on that one. I disable virtual desktops and tiling windows on every operating system I’ve used.

If my GPU had more outputs, I would have more monitors. I also have a 2nd computer with a single 1080p monitor to the right (I have an L desk) for home network stuff, usually keep my security camera feed on that one.

I respect anyone who does use virtual desktops because I acknowledge that if you master the workflow, it can be more efficient if you have more than like 5 or 6 tasks going at once (vs 4 monitors), however I will die on the hill of never ever using them.

I use them to both maximize desktop space for multitasking (my monitor splits evenly into two 4:3 windows side by side) and keep my tasks organized, as I tend to let my brain wander of distracted. Been using i3 for like a decade now.

I use a lot of virtual desktops and yeah, I genuinely disable other monitors, if I sit at a workplace where I’d have two.

Benefits:

• Fast context switch (browsing, editing, documentation, etc).
• Fast grouping(again browsing and all).
• Automatic grouping (one can set rules were opens were)
• It is even more useful on single monitors, the little space one has means that usually on can split the screen no more than 2 times, this means that swtiching quickly between groups of windows save you a load of time.
• On the long run one gets used to the workflow and the cognitive effort of moving around windows becomes super low.

Cons:

• Might take some cognitive effort getting used to the workflow/keybinds. (usually worth it in the long run)
• Moving around windows or workspaces can be difficult if not setup up correctly.

One step further

Tags (as opposed of workspaces/virtual-desktops) are a system used by the likes of dwm, dwl, river, mangowc to choose what windows get displayed on the screen. This would allow you to toggle and view different groups of windows on the same screen(like viewing multiple virtual-desktops at the same time). This would allow one to do that super fast context switching at a more complex level if needed. For instance you could toggle the “tag 2” while viewing “tag 1” effectively merging the two tags into the same screen instead of switching back and forth with workspaces. This method requires a little of more focus and remembering the state of the windows/tags.

Quick mention of my Window Managers if anyone is interested in the topic.

I don’t like stacked windows.

Stuff that needs to run in the background moves to another desktop, like a console window logging output.

When layouting with ECAD I also like to have schematic and layout maximised. So wiki tickets and datasheets need to go somewhere.

It’s easier to handle with a tiling window manager. Sadly at work I’m stuck with windows.

I’ve tried them, but my workflow makes them less useful. I prefer maximized windows, so each program behaves like their own virtual desktop.

I rather much prefer dual monitors with rules so each program always starts maximized on a specific monitor.

I never used them when i was still using a DE, but now as a tiling window manager user i use them all the time, since the point of those is that windows are placed in a layout and don’t overlap, so after opening like 3 windows max, it gets too cramped for my taste and i move to a different workspace.

What OS are you on? Virtual desktops on Mac and windows are just terrible. On Linux I’ve been using virtual desktops on Linux since the 90s and when I see my colleagues on Mac using a single desktop with 20 windows trying desperately to switch between windows I just shake my head.

I use dynamic virtual desktops and have a separate desktop for every task. That keeps me focused on that task, but also lets me easily jump to something different. I couldn’t imagine trying to be productive any other way.

I’m curious if those who do are using single monitors or low resolution?

I use a single monitor.

Why use virtual desktops versus a single desktop? Because I generally want to have a fullscreen window making use of all of the pixels on my monitor. I don’t have a visible taskbar unless I have the Super key down. I don’t have anything onscreen other than the application that I’m using.

Why use virtual desktops versus some sort of huge monitor? You have a relatively-small portion of your visual arc that you can actually read — even on a small monitor. A laptop at a reasonable distance already covers that. I did, at one point, use a netbook as a bit of a challenge. I stuck that on a stand near my face, used an external keyboard. It took up more of my visual arc than did a typical very large monitor.

Why use virtual desktops versus multiple physical monitors?

• If your workflow needs a multiple physical monitors, you’re limited when you can’t lug those around (or at least, you’re required to lug around a lot more physical hardware). I can pop open a laptop wherever and work as readily as if I’m at my desktop. Same sort of issue applies with a very large monitor.

  For the same reason, I do everything possible to keep my workflow in the terminal. Using graphical systems remotely over anything but the fastest, lowest-latency networks is disappointing. But because my workflow is heavily terminal-based, I can use a system remotely about as comfortably as if I’m sitting in front of it.

• I think that a lot of problem that people using multiple physical monitors are trying to work around is software using screen space inefficiently, putting stuff like toolbars, panes and tabs onscreen where people aren’t actually using the information, because their software isn’t using that screen space efficiently or don’t have functionality to efficiently switch. Like, let’s say that you have Visual Studio open. grabs a random screenshot off GitHub

  

  Ignore the red outlines. Like, you’re looking at the actual core stuff there through a little tiny portal there. Most of the stuff onscreen there is material that isn’t being used, just tying up pixels.

  I don’t have “tabs” in emacs. I can have a hundred buffers open, and it doesn’t use up more screen space. Every “tab” is eating up pixels without providing much utility. Yeah, I have software packages in emacs to rapidly switch to other files in a project — but they don’t consume screen space other than when I’m actually actively using them. I don’t have a toolbar showing a bunch of buttons that I’m not clicking on. I don’t have a list of open (and maybe closed) files always onscreen. I don’t even have a menubar.

• I can switch virtual desktops more-quickly than I can move my eyes and recenter on a different desktop, though that’s really a secondary issue.

• I suppose that it’s cheaper and more power-efficient, but that’s not really my main concern.

EDIT: Note that I’m not specifically trying to beat up on Visual Studio. It may be that in 2025, there’s some way to strip down what screen space it uses — I haven’t used it for many moons, so I’m long out of date on it. Just using it as an example of a software package that I often see screenshots of with a lot of “mostly-dead space” consumed onscreen.

Depends on your workflow. I’m usually using a i3wm or sway environment so I can put windows side by side, but on my ultrawide monitor it usually is best to limit that to two windows (usually a couple of browser windows or a browser and a terminal). I also often have a text editor open as well, so it helps if I can open that on another desktop, and quickly switch to it as needed. My main goal isn’t to really minimize anything, just switch desktops because I find it easier to just switch around. In windows I generally don’t use desktops as I find their goal is more to have you minimize stuff which I find kinda annoying because I have to resize the window or something when reopening them.

One 4k, two 1440p physical monitors with 4 virtual desktops at work

i used them a lot when i had 1 monitor and did more than one thing at a given time, then never needed more than 1 again after getting a second monitor

I mostly only use them on macOS because each display has its own set of virtual desktops and I can just leave everything open and move between desktops instead of dealing with minimizing and reopening windows on individual displays instead of all displays switching desktops at once

(as far as I know, there aren’t any Linux DEs that have virtual desktops that work like that but I would love to be wrong about this because I love how this works on macOS)

I rarely use them on Linux (KDE in my case) though, it feels clunky and I usually just forget I had things open on another desktop lol

I don’t like them on any OS besides macOS. For me it just makes visual sense.

They were all the rage in the CRT years.

i tried them for awhile years ago, but determined fairly quickly that one is enough for me.

one of my first configurations on a new installs (ones with a DE) is setting number-of-desktops to ‘1’ and hiding the default switcher on the panel. even with a ui designed around multiple desktops (like the gnome implementation on my endless desktop at home) i just use one.

I have this set up and recently transitioned to using the numpad to jump to desktops so it’s always one move

I use Super Key + A and S instead of the arrow keys to be able to do it with one hand.

Desktop 1: with random shit I’m not supposed to be doing but it’s more interesting to my ADHD brain than the other shit right now.

Desktop 2: Some random GitHub link and another instance of VScode so I can keyboard shortcut to that if someone comes to talk to me.