Show HN: Macscope – Cmd+Tab Are Wasting Your Time. I Built a Modern Approach
macscope.appHi HN,
Some of you may remember Macscope from an earlier post. I'm back with an update—thanks to a ton of great feedback, the app is now more stable, polished, and powerful than ever.
For years, I've felt this low-grade friction using macOS. I live on the keyboard, but managing windows always felt like a task for the mouse. Cmd+Tab is great until you have more than a few apps open, and then it's just an endless, frustrating cycle. Mission Control is a visual puzzle that offers no quick way to filter the chaos.
Coming from tools like the terminal and code editors where you can jump to anything instantly, the OS layer felt slow by comparison. That's where the idea for Macscope came from.
Macscope is a new window switcher and manager built on the philosophy of enhancing, not replacing, your existing muscle memory.
It works by augmenting the familiar Cmd+Tab workflow. A quick tap of your shortcut instantly switches between recent apps, just like you're used to. A slightly longer hold, however, opens the full Macscope interface where you can manage all your open windows and browser tabs.
Here are some of the key features:
Unified Search & Switch: A single interface to instantly find and switch to any window, browser tab (Safari, Chrome, Arc, etc.), or application just by typing.
Live Previews: See a real-time preview of what's inside each window so you know exactly where you're going. (You can also disable this for a minimal experience).
Placement Modes: Go beyond just switching. Instantly snap any selected window to the left/right/top/bottom half of your screen with a simple modifier shortcut.
Scopes: Save a collection of app windows as a "Scope" and instantly restore that entire workspace later. It's perfect for quickly switching between different projects.
It’s a native macOS app built with Swift and supports both Apple Silicon and Intel machines.
There's a free trial with 250 actions so you can see if it fits your workflow an a special offer for 15 days!
Website:https://macscope.app
Join our Discord Community:https://discord.gg/ehktEWr97K
I built this to scratch my own itch, but I figured others might find it useful too. I'll be here all day to answer questions and would be grateful for any feedback. Thanks for checking it out! 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!