Floating windows are always on top about herbstluftwm

[t-wissmann]

As kriansa already wrote, all floating windows are always above all tiling windows. If you want hide a particular floating window, you can minimize it. The keybindings in the default autostart for these are:

hc keybind $Mod-Shift-m set_attr clients.focus.minimized true
hc keybind $Mod-Control-m jumpto last-minimized

The first keybinding minimizes the focused window, and the second keybinding brings back the most recently minimized window (i.e. a lifo=stack order). If you want a fifo-order, you can replace last-minimized with longest-minimized.
Also, you can use any window selection utility (like rofi) or taskbar to raise minimized windows again.

I think the effect is almost the same as having floating windows below tiled windows, with the only difference that cycle_all does not traverse minimized windows. Also, minimization has the advantage that you don't see them behind semi-transparent tiled terminal windows :)

[kriansa]

Yes, floating windows are on a layer above and I don't think you can disable that. The only thing that can be on top of a floating window is another floating window -- and you can sort of control that behavior with raise_on_click and raise_on_focus.

You can try making these windows pseudotile which will make them occupy only the space needed but still be tiled so you can move other windows in front -- there's a shortcut for that in the default config which is $mod-p.

I personally float only windows that will be closed quickly, such as alert messages, popups, calculator, etc. If I want them around it's more interesting to tile or pseudotile so I can cycle and toggle layouts more easily.

Also, cycle should work among floating windows as well, but they will be selected last.

[jinithin]

Thank you both so much for clarifying. I'll create some keybinds for minimizing/raising instead.