Find your way around the desktop.

Super is the Windows key, or ⌘ on a Mac keyboard. Press it to open the overview, start typing an app’s name, and press Enter. The same search finds files, settings and calculations.

• Super+A opens the app grid, with every app installed.
• The dock at the bottom of the overview holds your favorite apps. Right-click an app there or in the app grid and choose Pin to Dash to add it.
• Alt+Tab or Super+Tab switches between open apps.
• Alt+F2 runs a command without opening a terminal.

To see everything CoreDesktop installs, browse the software catalog.

Tiling Shell divides each screen into tiles. CoreDesktop starts you with three columns. A new window goes into an empty tile by itself, so you rarely need to drag or resize anything.

From the keyboard, select a window and hold Super:

• ← and → move it to the next tile. At the edge of the screen, they move it to the next monitor, if there is one.
• ↑ maximizes it, from a tile in the top row. If the layout has a tile above, it moves the window there instead.
• ↓ puts a maximized window back in a tile.

With the mouse, drag a window by its title bar:

• Hold Ctrl while you drag, and the tiles appear. Drop the window on one.
• Hold Ctrl and Alt to stretch it across more than one tile.
• Or drag the window to the top of the screen. A strip of layouts opens, and you drop the window into a tile of any of them.

Drag the window away from its tile to free it. It goes back to the size it had before.

Click the Tiling Shell icon in the top right of the top bar to choose a layout for the current workspace. CoreDesktop comes with three columns, two columns and a single full-screen tile. Each workspace keeps its own layout, so one can have three columns for code and another a single tile for a video call.

To change a layout or make your own:

1. Click the Tiling Shell icon, then Edit Layouts (or New Layout).
2. Choose the layout to change, then Start editing.
3. Click inside a tile to split it in two side by side, where the line shows. Ctrl+click to split it top and bottom. Right-click a tile to delete it. Drag the line between two tiles to resize them.
4. Click the Tiling Shell icon again and choose Save, or Cancel to leave the layout as it was.

Ultrawide monitors are where this shines: try four narrow columns, or a wide middle tile with a narrow one on each side.

Workspaces are screens side by side, each with its own windows and layout. There’s always an empty one at the end; put a window on it and another empty one appears.

From the keyboard:

• Super+Page Up or Page Down switches to the workspace to the left or right. Ctrl+Alt+← or → does the same.
• Add Shift to take the selected window with you: Super+Shift+Page Up or Page Down.

With the mouse:

• Click the dots in the top left of the top bar, or press Super, to open the overview. It shows your workspaces side by side; click one to go there, or scroll to move between them.
• In the overview, drag a window onto another workspace to move it there.
• On a touchpad, swipe left or right with three fingers to switch, and up to open the overview.

Notifications appear at the top of the screen for a moment. Click one to open what it’s about.

To see the ones you missed, click the clock in the middle of the top bar, or press Super+V. That opens the calendar and the list of notifications. Clear removes them, and the Do Not Disturb switch holds new ones back until you turn it off. They still go into the list.

CoreDesktop uses notifications too. If a daily backup fails, you’ll hear about it here.

The menu in the top right, which you can also open with Super+S, has Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, sound, power and dark mode.

Press Print (PrtSc on many keyboards) to open GNOME’s screenshot tool. Choose an area, a window or the whole screen, then press Enter or click the round button. To record a video instead, switch the tool from the camera to the video icon first, and stop the recording with the red button in the top bar.

• Print opens the screenshot tool.
• Shift+Print takes a screenshot of the whole screen.
• Alt+Print takes a screenshot of the selected window.
• Ctrl+Shift+Alt+R opens the tool ready to record.

Screenshots go to ~/Pictures/Screenshots and are copied to the clipboard, so you can paste one straight into a chat. Recordings go to ~/Videos/Screencasts.

To point at something with arrows, boxes or text, or to blur a password before you share, use Flameshot: open it from the app grid, or run flameshot gui. For recordings with your camera, several sources or live streaming, there’s OBS Studio.