Improve Welcome Page UX by Prioritizing Workspace-Oriented Actions

[dhruvisompura]

Description

The current welcome page experience in Positron prioritizes actions that land users in a context without a workspace. While this "scratchpad" like experience allows users to jump in and start writing code quickly, there are limitations to working in this context (see table below) and can cause confusion when workspace features aren't available.

Positron as of right now doesn't create a project dotfile intentionally. Despite that, we still want to promote folder-oriented workflows.

Feature	Without Workspace	With Workspace
Workspace settings (settings.json)	❌	✅
Debugging (launch.json)	❌	✅
Tasks (tasks.json)	❌	✅
Persistent project state	❌	✅
Extensions	Limited	Full
Project-specific extensions	❌	✅
Source control integration	Minimal	Full support

When users trigger actions like “New File” or “New Notebook” from the welcome page, they are dropped into a no-workspace context. Even after saving their work, they remain outside of a formal workspace. This flow is unintuitive and the only indication the user has to know they are not in a workspace is the File Explorer.

A more intentional welcome flow helps users avoid unknowingly working without a workspace and unlocks the full capabilities of the IDE from the start.

Proposed Changes

These changes apply to the welcome page regardless of being in a workspace or not. This issue is not fully resolving the Folder/Project/Workspace terminalogy issue - the changes are strictly contained within the welcome page.

1. Promote Folder/Project action above all other actions in their own section and update all labels to use the term Folder instead of Project:
   a. Open Folder (previously "Open...")
   b. New Folder
   c. New Folder from Git
   d. New Folder from Project Wizard Template (previously "New Project")
2. Promote the "Recent" section under the Folder/Project section since it encourages using workspaces
3. De-emphasize New File/New Notebook actions (text only link with no icon that is regular sized)
4. Remove the “New Console” button. A console already starts automatically, and its a single-click to create a new one from the console pane.

The welcome page would look something like this (the top left section would look different):

Testing

e2e tests:

• verify when you are not in a workspace, you see the no-workspace welcome page
  • verify "open folder" exists and works as it currently does
  • verify "new folder from template" exists and opens the new folder flow
  • verify "new folder from git" exists and works as it currently does
  • verify the welcome.showNewWelcome command shows the no-workspace welcome page
• verify when you are in a workspace, you see the workspace welcome page
  • verify "new notebook" exists and works as it currently does
  • verify "new file" exists and works as it currently does
  • verify "new folder from template" exists and opens the new folder flow
  • verify the welcome.showNewWelcome command shows the workspace welcome page
• verify recent and help sections show up on both welcome pages
• verify the tab title is "Welcome"
• verify that the "Show welcome page on startup" checkbox shows the startup page on next startup if checked.
• verify the "Connect to..." option shows up on both welcome pages. Note: This button does not show up on web.

[jennybc]

This move makes me extremely happy!

[midleman]

Verified Fixed

Positron Version(s) : 2025.07.0-170
OS Version(s) : MacOS

Test scenario(s)

Confirmed that all scenarios outlined in ticket behave as expected. The e2e welcome test has also been updated to reflect these changes. Closing ticket.