Multiple windows

Open a session, a project, a single terminal or the dashboard in its own window, so you can put an agent on a second monitor and keep the main window for everything else. Throughout this page ⌘ is Cmd on macOS and Ctrl on Windows and Linux.

What can have its own window

A window like this is deliberately plain. A session or project window has the bar with the project and session names along the top and the view underneath; a terminal window has a one-line header with the terminal's name and the project and session it belongs to; the dashboard window is just the dashboard. There is no sidebar, because the main window already has one.

Open something in a new window

Any of these works:

• The header. The window button at the top right of a session or project, next to the close button.
• The ⋯ menu. Open the ⋯ menu on a session or project row, in the sidebar or on a dashboard row, and choose Open in new window.
• The keyboard. With a session or project selected, press ⌘⇧N.
• Search. In the ⌘K search, highlight a session or project and press ⌘Enter instead of Enter.
• A terminal tab. Right-click a terminal's tab and choose Open in new window. The same menu also has Rename and Close terminal.
• The dashboard. Use the Open dashboard in new window button in the dashboard's header.

⌘⇧N is rebindable like every shortcut: look for Open in new window under Settings → Shortcuts. See Keyboard shortcuts.

It moves, it doesn't copy

A session, project or terminal you open in a new window moves there. It is in one window at a time, so you never have the same terminal open twice, typing into it from two places or resizing it from two sides.

Back in the main window:

• Its row in the sidebar, and on the dashboard, shows a small window icon.
• Selecting it brings its window to the front. A moved terminal keeps its tab in the main window; clicking that tab brings the terminal's window forward.
• If the main window was showing it, it now says the session or project is open in another window, with two buttons: Focus window and Bring back here.

The agent and every terminal keep running throughout. Moving a session to a window, and back again, keeps the terminal's recent scrollback.

The dashboard is the exception: its window is a second, live copy, and the main window keeps its own dashboard too. There is only ever one dashboard window. Clicking a session in it opens that session in the main window.

A session from a split view

A session that is a pane of a split view can move into a window of its own too, from the window button in its pane's header or any of the ways above. It stays in the split view: back in the main window its pane says it is open in another window, with Focus window and Bring back here, and keeps its header so you can still maximize the pane or remove it from the split view. When the session comes back, it is in its pane again.

A whole split view can't move into a window of its own, and session and project windows don't offer the split view entries in their ⋯ menus.

Closing windows

Closing a session, project or terminal window brings it back to the main window, where you left it. Nothing stops: a running agent, a dev server in a terminal, a build — all of it keeps going.

Closing the main window quits Plexus, just as it always has, and closes every other window with it. That stops your running agents and terminals, the same as quitting does.

After a restart

Session, project and dashboard windows reopen where they were when you quit, at the same size. If that spot is on a screen you have since disconnected, the window opens on one you still have. A window whose session or project no longer exists doesn't come back.

Terminal windows don't reopen: terminals end when Plexus quits, so there is nothing to put back in them.

When a session can't move

Open in new window is greyed out, with the reason written under it (on the header button, in its tooltip), while any of these is going on for the session:

• a review cycle, an AI review or an AI summary is running,
• a git operation such as a rebase, merge or squash is in progress,
• the Explorer has a file with unsaved changes,
• the session is still starting.

Wait for the job to finish, or save the file, and try again.

A terminal can't move until it has started, or while the session it belongs to is in another window; move the session instead, and its terminals go with it.

Notifications

Notifications and sounds still come once per event, however many windows you have open and whichever one you are looking at. See Status & indicators.

Related

• Sessions & worktrees — what a session is.
• Split view — several sessions side by side in the main window.
• Dashboard — the global and project dashboards.
• Terminal and Project Terminal — the scratch terminals you can move.
• Keyboard shortcuts — every shortcut, and how to rebind them.