StayHere – a small app to keep macOS Spaces focused

[tnkrd]

Hi everyone,

I’d like to drop a post about a problem I managed to solve recently.

I switched to macOS not that long ago. I started using Spaces heavily. And one thing began to annoy me very quickly.
I wanted Spaces to work like separate rooms. One for programming. One for communication. One for writing. One for research...

But macOS doesn’t really help with this: I click Safari and suddenly I’m teleported to another desktop. The Dock shows apps from everywhere. Window switchers mix all contexts together. After a while, Spaces start leaking into each other, leaving me drowning in a mess.

I saw plenty of apps that propose navigating this chaos through fancy previews and thumbnails. Maybe I’m weird, but I don’t want better ways to navigate chaos. I want less chaos!

So I built a small menu bar app for myself. Its goal was to isolate workflows into Spaces and let me navigate through their content in a simple but effective way.

I built several features into it:

• meaningful names for Spaces, such as Work, Writing, Calls, or Programming;
• the current Space name visible in the menu bar;
• a small popup whenever the active Space changes, so you always know where you are;
• more predictable Dock clicks, preventing them from teleporting you to another Space where the selected app is already running;
• opening a new application window in the current Space whenever possible;
• window switchers scoped to the current Space, making navigation simpler and less distracting.

You can see it in action here:

I made both the source code and the app itself available for free here:

https://github.com/thabiger/stay-here

I’d appreciate any feedback on my work. 🙂 I'm still wondering if it's worth continuing.

Thanks for reading!
THA


--
A small disclaimer

Unfortunately, since I do not make any profit from it, I cannot afford to notarize it yet. Especially since I don't know if anybody will like it or if it even makes sense to keep going. This means macOS will show a warning, and you will have to accept it manually. In the README, I left a link to instructions explaining how to bypass this.

Still concerned about safety? No need to trust me - the code and build process are public. 🙂

 

[Gregg2]

That sounds useful for someone using Spaces to keep things separated. I used to have multiple apps open in one work session, and made use of Spaces. I think your "bullet list" has some nice enhancements.

 

[tnkrd]

Version 0.2.5 is out!

Windows Switcher can now be controlled by voice thanks to the exposed automation URL and integration with macOS’s built-in Voice Control feature. A live demo of this feature can be watched here:

It also supports keyboard control and displays windows in recently used order, making the most frequently needed ones even more accessible.