Workspace is used to organize your apps into tasks. i.e. you may keep your chat applications in one workspace and coding ide into other workspace.

If you work with any of the older versions of the ubuntu i.e. 14.04 or 16.04, and upgraded to 18.04 recently, you’ll notice that workspace grid doesn’t work same way as working in older versions. You can’t use it as 2 x 2 grid or so.

To get rid of it, you can install workspace grid from ubuntu software centre and configure it to have multiple grid.

Workspace Grid Configuration.

You can configure other options too. i.e. show workspace labels in the switcher.

Apart from this, in each workspace you can’t have individual set of applications in each workspace.

i.e. if you have one chrome window open in one workspace and another chrome window open in another workspace and if you open chrome in first workspace, it’ll show both the chrome window there in first workspace one only.

To get rid of it, simply set switcher flag from shell to current workspace only using dconf-editor:

Org -> Gnome -> Shell -> App-switcher -> current-workspace-only

Holla, you got your old workspace grid in 18.04 🙅

I just love it, workspace looks like magic. You are just pressing arrow keys, and it directly changes set of applications for you.

You may also move apps from one workspace to another by just drag it from one workspace to drop it to another workspace.

If you’re new to workspace, I would recommend reading this awesome article:

I hope this post help you to solve workspace issue in ubuntu 18.04 to get your desktop organised 🎉