The Problem

The dispatcher togglespecialworkspace has no (documented) way of always-showing, or always-hiding, a workspace. It can only toggle the visibility between shown/hidden.

I am looking for a method with this behaviour:

• If the given special workspace is hidden, then show it
• Else do nothing (the given special workspace is already shown)

...and the inversely to hide it.

Possible Solution 1

The dispatcher togglespecialworkspace could take an optional second parameter for the desired action (toggle, show, or hide). I believe this is compatible with the current API.

# Default: `toggle`
hyprctl dispatch togglespecialworkspace magic
hyprctl dispatch togglespecialworkspace magic, toggle
# New behaviour
hyprctl dispatch togglespecialworkspace magic, show
hyprctl dispatch togglespecialworkspace magic, hide

Possible Solution 2

Alternatively, two new dispatchers could be introduced. I would imagine this is less favorable as it increases the amount of dispatchers.

hyprctl dispatch hidespecialworkspace magic
hyprctl dispatch showspecialworkspace magic

Possible Solution 3

Another alternative could be a way to request the visibility state of a specific special workspace. If this is already possible, I could not find a way to do it.

Maybe hyprctl workspaces could list a visible: 0/1 value for special workspaces?

hyprctl workspaces -j | jq '.[] | select(.name == "special:<NAME>") | .visible'
# Prints `0` or `1` (or nothing, if `<NAME>` is not the name of a special workspace)

hyprctl activeworkspace never returns the name of a special workspace, even if a special workspace is active and focused. Is this intended behviour? If not, I will open a new issue for that.

Current Workaround

To hide the current special workspace (and hence hide all special workspaces), the user can show, and immediately hide, a non-existent empty special workspace (named __TEMP here).

hyprctl dispatch togglespecialworkspace __TEMP
hyprctl dispatch togglespecialworkspace __TEMP

To show a special workspace: hide all special workspaces (as shown above), and then toggle the desired workspace.

hyprctl dispatch togglespecialworkspace __TEMP
hyprctl dispatch togglespecialworkspace __TEMP
hyprctl dispatch togglespecialworkspace <NAME>

Related: #6862
Possibly related: #7662