I suggest trying RabidVWM. I think it can do this. I once had this 'problem' before, being unable to see the selected/current desk with a maximized window covering the entire minidesk. My solution for ckVWM was to have an external always-on-top window for the graphical frame of the current minidesk; I used shortcuts that were toggled by VWMOnSwitchToN . I would imagine that you could do the same by just moving a label or an lsbox around, but see if RabidVWM can do it before resorting to this.