Layouts

Paneflow ships four layout presets that reshape the active workspace into a canonical arrangement. Each preset preserves every shell - it moves the existing panes into new positions instead of opening or closing anything.

The presets always operate on the active workspace's full set of panes. They never alter the workspace count or the active focus target; the focused pane stays focused after every preset.

How do I apply a layout preset?

Each preset has a default keybinding and an action name you can remap in paneflow.json:

Press the key from any pane. The workspace immediately reflows; the focused pane keeps its content and selection state intact.

Even horizontal

layout_even_horizontal lays every pane out in a single row, each with equal width.

+--------+--------+--------+--------+
|        |        |        |        |
|   1    |   2    |   3    |   4    |
|        |        |        |        |
+--------+--------+--------+--------+

When to use: comparing four short-output streams side by side (test runners, log tails, build watchers). Best on wide monitors - on a 13-inch laptop, four columns get cramped past three panes.

Even vertical

layout_even_vertical stacks every pane into a single column, each with equal height.

+-----------------------------------+
|                                   |
|                1                  |
|                                   |
+-----------------------------------+
|                                   |
|                2                  |
|                                   |
+-----------------------------------+
|                                   |
|                3                  |
|                                   |
+-----------------------------------+

When to use: following a sequential workflow where you want each pane to keep its full terminal width (long log lines, wide tables, side-by-side diff output). Pairs naturally with a vertical-orientation monitor.

Main vertical

layout_main_vertical parks the focused pane on the left at 60% of the width, then stacks the remaining panes vertically on the right at 40%.

+-------------------+---------------+
|                   |       2       |
|                   +---------------+
|         1         |       3       |
|       (main)      +---------------+
|                   |       4       |
|                   +---------------+
|                   |       5       |
+-------------------+---------------+

When to use: one "primary" pane with supporting panes (a code editor or AI agent on the left, build / test / log tails on the right). The focused pane becomes the main pane, so move focus to the pane you want to enlarge before pressing the chord.

Tiled

layout_tiled arranges every pane into a balanced grid. The algorithm matches tmux's: start at 1x1 and grow rows and columns alternately until the grid holds every pane. With 4 panes you get a 2x2 grid, with 5 or 6 panes a 2x3 grid, with 7-9 panes a 3x3 grid.

4 panes              6 panes
+--------+--------+  +------+------+------+
|   1    |   2    |  |  1   |  2   |  3   |
|        |        |  |      |      |      |
+--------+--------+  +------+------+------+
|   3    |   4    |  |  4   |  5   |  6   |
|        |        |  |      |      |      |
+--------+--------+  +------+------+------+

When to use: monitoring five or more shells with no clear primary

• dashboards, multi-service development, fan-out background jobs. The tiled grid keeps every pane large enough to read at a glance on a 1080p monitor up to about 9 panes; past that, prefer multiple workspaces or zoom (Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+Z) on whichever pane is currently the focus.

What happens to my pane content?

Layout presets only reshape the pane tree. Each shell keeps:

• Its running command or shell state.
• Its scrollback buffer and selection.
• Its environment, working directory, and process tree.
• Its focus handle (the previously focused pane stays focused).

If you have a long-running build in pane 3 and apply layout_main_vertical, the build keeps running uninterrupted in whichever slot pane 3 ends up in. Layout actions are non-destructive

• nothing prompts you to confirm and nothing is unrecoverable.

Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+= equalises every split ratio without changing the tree structure, which is a useful follow-up after manually resizing a few dividers.