Hacker News Reader

Just to add a bit more context on the personal motivation behind this project:

For years, I've felt this low-grade friction using macOS. I live on the keyboard, but managing windows always felt like a mouse-first task. Cmd+Tab is great until you have more than couple of apps open, and then it's just this endless, frustrating cycle. Mission Control is a visual puzzle that offers no keyboard-driven way to filter the chaos, forcing you back to the trackpad every time.

Coming from tools like the terminal and code editors where you can jump between anything instantly with a few keystrokes, the OS layer felt slow and inefficient by comparison.

That's really where the ideas for Macscope came from. The "tap vs. hold" mechanic was born from wanting to keep my Cmd+Tab muscle memory but add more power on top. The "Scopes" feature came directly from my frustration of manually rearranging the same 5-6 windows every single time I started working on a specific project.

It started as a tool just for me, but I'm hoping it resonates with others who feel the same way about their workflow. I'm really curious to hear if others share these frustrations and what your own workarounds have been.

Thanks again for all the feedback so far!

So, I saw this when I was browsing HN from my phone and made a note to come back and check it out on my Mac when I was home. I started playing around with the settings and customizing the behaviors, and within about five minutes, I thought: "I really like this."

It's not perfect, but it's off to a great start. I can't really provide useful feedback until I've spent more time integrating it into my workflow. But I can tell you that I test-drive a lot of apps that look interesting and this is one of the rare gems that I knew right away is a good fit for me.

But the best part: Apple broke the workflow for cycling open windows via hotkey more than a decade ago and they haven't fixed it. Closing or interacting with a window in the middle of cycling through them causes the order to reverse. Interacting with another window causes it to reverse again. It's madness. I used to hope to see it fixed with each major releases. I've long since given up on that. Apparently, no one in the c-suite at Apple manages dozens of open windows on a daily basis.

Your app solves this problem, one that has been tripping me up for sixteen years. Thank you. For that alone, I'd have kept it installed. The rest is just gravy on top.

Wow, thank you so much for taking the time to come back and try it out, and for writing such a thoughtful comment. This really made my day. Comments like this are incredibly motivating :)

My main complaint with the regular app switcher is it shows all apps, when I'd happily hide most of them and just access them occasionally from the dock.

I use the free Alt-Tab app to hide most apps, works well.

It has screen recording though, bc it creates previews. So best to block it from accessing the network with LuLu, just in case.

Macscope has a feature for this. You can right-click any item in the switcher and choose to hide it. There are two options: hide it just from the main list (it will still appear when you search), or hide it completely from both. You can manage all your hidden items later in Settings > Exclusions. Like here https://screen.studio/share/bcC1YlQR

Regarding privacy, I take that very seriously. All screen-capturing for live previews is done locally and is never stored or transmitted. You can also disable live previews entirely in the settings if you prefer a more minimal view. The app's only network calls are for checking for updates (Sparkle) and validating the license (Lemon Squeezy), never for any user data.

I completely agree with the 'zero-trust' approach (I'm a security-conscious person myself), so I'm planning a tutorial on how to use a firewall like LuLu to block all network access if users want it, just in case. The core app is designed to be fully functional offline—only license activation, automatic updates and some url favicons would be affected. If you interested here is our privacy policy here I describe the usage of each data/permission. https://macscope.app/privacy

I'm also an Alt-tab user and it's amazing. As a ex-windows user, I find it similar to the behavior I'm used to.

I gave it a shot. It is super nice to see someone trying to rethink a tool we use all the time. And integrating browser tabs was a really neat idea.

It doesn't work great for me, personally. Takes 5-10 seconds to respond to CMD+Tab, and shows hundreds of browser tabs instead of just the five I have open (I think it's seeing pinned tabs, which are actually bookmarks).

Still, I applaud you for this! It's refreshing to see this type of innovation.

Thank you so much for trying it out and for the kind words about the concept! I really appreciate it.

And thank you especially for the bug report. A 5-10 second delay is definitely not the intended behavior – it should be instant. You was the first user to report this. I've pushed several performance fixes in the past, but this sounds like that could be a new issue.

If you (or anyone else reading this) are running into these issues, I would be incredibly grateful for your help in reproducing them. What would be most helpful is your Mac model, macOS version, and which browser is showing the extra tabs. Even a quick screen recording of the issue would be amazing.

You can send any details or a video to the support email (support@macscope.app) or drop it in our Discord.

This is exactly the kind of feedback that makes a huge difference. Thanks again!

https://github.com/lwouis/alt-tab-macos

That's a great link, Alt-Tab is a fantastic utility! I've tried all the popular tools in this space, including Raycast's switcher, and they are all excellent at what they do.

My goal with Macscope was to address a slightly different problem. Most switchers answer the question "what app/window do I want to open?". I found my workflow often involved a second step: "...and now I need to use another tool to position it."

Macscope tries to be a combination of a switcher and an arranger, answering the question "open and where?" in a single action.

A feature I'm really happy with that illustrates this is the new "Placement Mode". You can use a dedicated hotkey (e.g., Ctrl+Opt+L) that tells Macscope "I'm about to switch to a window, and I want it to snap to the right half of the screen." When you select the window, it both switches and arranges in one fluid motion.

Here’s a quick video showing how it works in practice: https://screen.studio/share/pg4H5i4c

It's a different approach, but hopefully a useful one for certain workflows. Thanks for sharing the link for others' reference!

Thank you for sharing this! I've been using Witch Daemon for a while, but it does have the occasional glitches (esp. multi-screen setups). At first impression this is super-fast without lag, I'll keep testing it for a while.

I don’t see anything indicating whether I can resize the grid overlay to show more or fewer icons. Is it resizable beyond the example of full screen with the default number of icons? Can I see five columns of eight icons per row, for example? I have way too many open apps for such a small grid layout to be efficient managing my apps.

Looks pretty clean. Nice job with that aspect.

Hey!

Following up on our conversation from a few days ago. You asked about resizing the grid to show more or fewer items, and I'm happy to announce that this feature is now live in the latest version (v1.35)!

While Macscope is open, you can now use

Command + Plus (⌘+) and Command + Minus (⌘-) to dynamically increase or decrease the size of the previews. This allows you to shrink them down to see many more windows at once—which should be a big help for managing the large number of apps you mentioned—or make them larger for a more detailed view.

Thanks again for the excellent feedback; it directly helped shape this update.

Hope you get a chance to try it out!

Hey there!

Thanks for the kind words on the design!

Right now, the grid layout and preview size is kind of fixed. But you're right that there isn't an option to manually configure it to a specific layout like "five columns of eight icons."

Making the preview size or the grid customisable is definitely on the roadmap. I've already been playing around with options during development, and it will likely come in a future version :)

Is there a way to disable the advanced window management and scope features? I'm tempted to try out your utility because of the Search & Switch feature. However, I'm already using a window manager (aerospace) that I'm not ready to replace. Given how aerospace works, I suspect the window management/scope features would clash.

That's a really great question, and you're right, not everyone will need the Scopes or arrangement features, especially if they already have a window manager like aerospace that they love.

Right now, there isn't a single toggle to disable them, but they are designed to be completely opt-in. The arrangement features only activate if you explicitly multi-select windows and choose a layout, so they shouldn't interfere with your setup if you're just using Macscope for searching and switching.

That said, I completely agree that a dedicated 'switcher-only' mode is a fantastic idea. I'll add an option to disable the advanced management features in an upcoming version. Thanks for the great suggestion!

In the meantime, the free trial should be safe to use alongside aerospace if you stick to the search/switch functionality.

If you just want to autocomplete and switch to a certain window, RayCast has a switcher that lets you filter by app name or window title:

https://www.raycast.com/changelog/1-19-0

Hey. I'm trying to arrange views in multi-monitor setups, but when I tried to arrange some windows on a DisplayLink screen, it literally makes them disappear, unable to open/restore them until I force-close them.

It's also not showing apps in other spaces, which I would like to be shown. Mac's default Cmd+Tab does that.

Hey, thanks for the detailed feedback.

You've definitely found a critical bug with DisplayLink screens. Multi-monitor support is still a bit experimental, and setups using third-party drivers like DisplayLink can be particularly tricky, so I really appreciate you reporting this.

To help me fix this, it would be amazing if you (or anyone else with a similar setup) could provide more detail. A screen recording of the issue happening would be invaluable, as I don't have a DisplayLink setup for testing myself. You can send it to the support email on the site or share it in our Discord.

Regarding apps in other spaces, you are absolutely right to expect them to be shown. The intention is for Macscope to list apps from other spaces (much like the default Cmd+Tab does), likely treating them as minimized items. It's clear this isn't working correctly in the current version. Thanks for flagging it—I'll revisit this feature and prioritize a fix :)

who adds a video to a website that is moving up and down constantly? i cant watch it like that.

Can it help with the annoying macos bug that about half the time disconnecting and reconnecting external screen to my MacBook does not move windows back to external screen?

That's a super annoying macOS bug; I've definitely felt that pain.

While Macscope can't fix the underlying issue in macOS, this is a perfect use case for its "Scopes" feature. It's designed to solve exactly this kind of layout restoration problem.

Here’s how you can solve it with Macscope:

When you have all your windows arranged perfectly on your external monitor, open Macscope.

Multi-select all of those windows and save them as a new "Scope". You could name it something like "Work Setup".

The next time you reconnect your monitor and macOS scatters your windows, just open Macscope and activate your "Work Setup" Scope. It will move and arrange all of those windows back to their saved positions on your external monitor in one go.

So, it essentially gives you a one-click way to restore your entire workspace after that bug hits. Hope that helps!

does it display minimized apps as default macos switcher? that bothers me to degree i would pay for substitute.

There is an option for minimized windows in https://alt-tab-macos.netlify.app/

- Show, Hide, Show at end

I'm not sure if "minimized app" is the same as "minimized window," but it seems to do what I want.

Yes, it absolutely can!

There's an option in

Settings > General > Window Filtering called "Show minimized windows" that you can enable. It's turned off by default, but if you flip that on, all your minimized apps and their windows will show up in the list.

The only heads-up is that live previews aren't available for minimized windows due to a system limitation, so they'll show the app icon instead.

Hope that helps!

Show HN: Macscope – I decide to built a better Cmd-Tab replacement for macOS