Default space

The default space

Not everything deserves a place in a list. A default space owns every app no space claims, so you only name the exceptions.

{ "fallbackSpace": "personal" }

Now Slack belongs to work because work lists it, and everything else belongs to personal without being written down anywhere. In the work space an unlisted app's notifications are hidden, because work only allows work. In personal they show.

Set it in the app under General, "Default space". The sidebar marks that space default next to active.

Precedence

1. A shared app belongs to nobody and always gets through. It never falls back.
2. A space that lists the app owns it.
3. Otherwise the default space owns it.
4. With no default space set, the app is unassigned and allowUnassigned decides.

Setting a default space makes allowUnassigned irrelevant, since nothing is unassigned any more. The app disables that switch and says so rather than leaving a control that quietly does nothing.

Two different "defaults"

They are easy to confuse, so the app names them apart.

Default space owns unlisted apps. This is fallbackSpace.

Startup space is the space that is active on a fresh machine before anything has been switched to. This is activeSpace, and it only matters once.

Windows are a separate decision

Ownership decides notification routing. It does not move windows by default.

{ "fallbackPlacesWindows": true }

turns on a catch-all Hyprland rule that opens every unlisted app in the default space. It is off by default, and deliberately so: it is far-reaching. Every terminal, editor, and file manager you open while in work would land in personal. That is occasionally what people want and usually not, so it is a choice rather than a consequence.

The rule is emitted before the specific ones so a named app still wins:

o.window(".*", { workspace = "1 silent" })       -- catch-all, first
o.window("^(Slack)$", { workspace = "11 silent" })  -- overrides it

Checking it

omarchy-spaces status

unlisted   owned by Personal, shown here

In the work space the same line reads hidden here.