Instead, something I really wanted was to be able to toggle the hiding and showing of all floating windows per workspace. It sometimes happens that I just want to work with floating windows for a while, and the number of windows explodes, and I end up with all these floating windows on top of my tiled windows. Using i3 with the default configuration, I had to manually move all floating windows out of the way to get to the tiling windows below, and then move them back when I wanted to work with them again. That was cumbersome, so I did this:

bindsym $mod+Tab exec "current_workspace=\\"$(i3-msg -t get_tree | jq -r 'recurse(.nodes[]) | select(.type == \\"workspace\\" and ([recurse((.nodes, .floating_nodes)[])] | any(.focused))) | .name')\\"; floating_workspace=\\"F${current_workspace%:*}\\"; if i3-msg -t get_tree | jq -e \\"recurse(.nodes[]) | select(.type == \\\\"workspace\\\\" and .name == \\\\"$current_workspace\\\\") | .floating_nodes | length > 0\\"; then i3 \\"[workspace=$current_workspace floating] move to workspace $floating_workspace\\"; else i3 \\"[workspace=$floating_workspace floating] move to workspace $current_workspace\\"; fi"

Now, I just press Super+Tab and all floating windows on workspace e.g. 6:some-topic get moved to new workspace F6, and when I press it again they're moved back to 6:some-topic, right where they were. This is workspace independent; the windows belong to a workspace. I can hide the floating windows of however many workspace I want and call them back and they won't get mixed.

I think it's pretty cool that i3's configuration and tooling allow for this kind of advanced configuration. It's like I added a whole new feature.

You need to create a keybinding that calls `scratchpad show` using a window class qualifier to target the app you want. That's the key to making the scratchpad useful.

Problem solved! Here is your quake terminal toggle.