GitHub - bryancostanich/lattice: 2D space switcher for macOS

Grid-based space navigation for macOS — a spiritual successor to TotalSpaces 3.

macOS treats Spaces as a 1D list. Lattice lays them out as a 2D grid and lets you navigate with Ctrl+Opt+arrow. Pop an overview with thumbnails, click to jump, or use the menu bar list. Apple Silicon, macOS 14+. SIP stays on. No Dock injection. No scripting addition.

Features

• 2D grid navigation. Ctrl+Opt+←/→/↑/↓ switches spaces by grid direction. Per-display: the display under the mouse cursor is the one that moves.
• Pac-Man wrap. Off any edge wraps to the opposite edge. Disable with "wrap": false in config.
• Overview window. Ctrl+Opt+Space shows a compact grid of thumbnails. Cells are numbered 1–N in reading order. Current space highlighted. Click any cell — or press its number key — to jump. Stays up 3s when opened manually, 1s when auto-shown after a navigation.
• Auto-appear on space change. Switching by any means (Lattice's hotkey or Apple's Ctrl+arrow) pops the overview briefly so you always know where you are.
• Menu bar item. Shows current position as [col,row]. Click for a list of all spaces with checkmark on current — click an entry to jump.
• Per-display grids. Multiple monitors each get their own independent grid layout, sized to that display's space count by default.
• Auto-fit defaults. With 4 spaces you get 2×2, with 6 you get 3×2, with 9 you get 3×3 — ceil(sqrt(N)) columns by default. Override per-display in config.
• No animation needed. Designed to feel right with Reduce motion enabled (instant snap between spaces).

Hotkeys

Requirements

• macOS 14 (Sonoma) or later. Apple Silicon recommended.

Install

Homebrew (recommended)

brew tap bryancostanich/tap
brew install --cask lattice

Manual

Download the latest release from Releases, unzip, drag Lattice.app to /Applications, open it.

Lattice appears in the menu bar; no Dock icon. Releases are signed with a Developer ID and notarized by Apple, so Gatekeeper opens them without a warning.

Required macOS setup

Lattice will not work correctly until you change the following settings. The two marked required are non-negotiable; the rest are strongly recommended.

1. Disable "Automatically rearrange Spaces" — required

System Settings → Desktop & Dock → Mission Control → Automatically rearrange Spaces based on most recent use → off

macOS reorders your Spaces in the background every time you visit one when this is on. Lattice's grid mapping operates on the order of spaces — if the order shuffles, "the space to the right" stops meaning anything stable. With this off, your space order is fixed and Lattice works.

Terminal equivalent:

defaults write com.apple.dock mru-spaces -bool false && killall Dock

2. Grant Accessibility permission — required

System Settings → Privacy & Security → Accessibility → enable Lattice

macOS will prompt on first launch. Required because Lattice uses AXUIElement to raise anchor windows across spaces.

3. Enable "Displays have separate Spaces" — required for multi-monitor

System Settings → Desktop & Dock → Mission Control → Displays have separate Spaces → on

Only relevant if you have more than one monitor. With this off, all displays share a single linear space list and per-display grids are meaningless. With it on, each display has its own independent space list, which is what Lattice's per-display grid model assumes.

4. Enable "Reduce motion" — strongly recommended

System Settings → Accessibility → Display → Reduce motion → on

macOS's space-switch animation is hardcoded to a horizontal slide regardless of direction. Going "down" in a 2D grid playing a left/right slide looks wrong. Reduce Motion replaces all space-switch animations with instant snaps. This also minimizes the brief overview flicker during transitions.

5. Grant Screen Recording permission — recommended

System Settings → Privacy & Security → Screen & System Audio Recording → enable Lattice

macOS will prompt the first time Lattice tries to capture a thumbnail. Without it, thumbnails will only show the wallpaper, not actual app windows.

6. Create your spaces — required

Lattice doesn't create spaces — it navigates the ones macOS already has. You need to add spaces yourself before Lattice has anything to navigate.

Enter Mission Control:

• Hot key: Ctrl+↑, or
• Trackpad: swipe up with three or four fingers, or
• Launchpad / Mission Control app: open it.

At the top of the screen you'll see the Spaces bar with your current spaces (Desktop 1, Desktop 2, ...). Hover near the top edge if it's hidden. Click the + on the right to add a new space. Repeat until you have the count you want (e.g. 4 spaces for a 2×2 grid, 9 for a 3×3).

Do this per display if you have multiple monitors.

When you next launch Lattice (or click Reload Config), it will detect the new spaces and auto-fit the grid to match.

Build from source

git clone https://github.com/bryancostanich/lattice.git
cd lattice
./build.sh
open Lattice.app

Requires Swift 6 (Xcode Command Line Tools). build.sh produces Lattice.app and ad-hoc codesigns it.

Config

Optional. Lives at ~/.config/lattice/config.json. Without it, Lattice auto-fits grids to your space count.

{
  "defaultGrid": { "cols": 3, "rows": 2 },
  "displays": {
    "37D8832A-2D66-02CA-B9F7-8F30A301B230": { "cols": 4, "rows": 2 }
  },
  "wrap": false
}

• defaultGrid (optional): fallback grid for any display without an entry in displays. Omit to use auto-fit.
• displays (optional): per-display grid, keyed by display UUID. Display UUIDs are logged to /tmp/lattice.log on launch.
• wrap (optional, default false): when true, navigating past an edge wraps to the opposite edge.

Click Reload Config in the menu bar after editing.

How it works

• Reading state: private SkyLight.framework APIs (CGSCopyManagedDisplaySpaces, CGSCopySpacesForWindows, etc.) via dlsym. No SIP changes.
• Switching spaces: Lattice creates one invisible 1×1 NSWindow per macOS Space ("anchor") and pins each to its space via CGSMoveWindowsToManagedSpace. To jump to space N, Lattice raises anchor N. macOS's built-in "follow focus to the window's space" behavior does the rest. Same mechanism AltTab and yabai use.
• Overview thumbnails: captured per-display with CGWindowListCreateImage when you visit a space. Cached in memory and excluded from re-capture via sharingType = .none on the overview window itself.
• Hotkeys: Carbon RegisterEventHotKey.

Known limitations

• Overview flickers during transitions. macOS reserves the transition compositor for system-owned windows (menubar, Dock); third-party windows can't render through it even at .screenSaver level with .canJoinAllSpaces. With Reduce Motion on the flicker is minimal.
• Thumbnails populate lazily. A space's thumbnail isn't captured until you've visited it at least once. First-time use shows blank cells; coverage builds with use.
• Lattice doesn't manage Spaces themselves. It navigates the spaces you've created in Mission Control. It won't create, destroy, or reorder spaces — those operations need Dock injection (SIP off), which Lattice deliberately avoids.
• Menu bar status reflects only the main display. Multi-display navigation works per-display, but the [col,row] indicator shows position on whichever screen has focus.

License

Apache 2.0. See LICENSE.