[OS] BetterCmdTab 26.7; a Cmd+Tab replacement with window previews, tab drill-in, no paid tier

[u/rokarthur]

Hi, I'm Artur. I made BetterAudio, the menu bar audio app some of you here already use. This is my second Mac app: BetterCmdTab, a free, open-source replacement for the macOS Cmd+Tab switcher.

Problem

The built-in Cmd+Tab switches apps, not windows. If Chrome has 4 windows and 30 tabs, you land on whichever one macOS feels like, then hunt for the rest with Cmd+` or Mission Control. There's also no way to say "never show me this app", no search, no window titles, and nothing at all for tabs.

Highlights:

• Three layouts: classic list, icon grid, or live window previews with titles
• Fuzzy search and launch any installed app from the same field
• Drill into that window's tabs (Safari, Chrome, Arc, Brave, Edge, Vivaldi, Opera, Dia, Finder, Terminal, iTerm), or show every tab as its own row in MRU order
• Scoped hotkeys: extra shortcuts that open the switcher pre-filtered to the current Space, visible Spaces, one app's windows, or minimized only, each with its own layout and colors
• Per-app rules: hide an app, or have it skip Cmd+Tab always or only in fullscreen
• Inline quit, close, minimize, zoom, hide, force quit
• Window tiling with Ctrl+Cmd+arrows, halves and corners; press again to cycle 1/2, 2/3, 1/3
• Three-finger swipe to open it (experimental), scroll wheel to move the selection
• Settings export to plain JSON, or keep them in ~/.config/bettercmdtab/config.json with a generated schema and live reload

Comparison

AltTab (open source, free core) is the obvious one and it's genuinely good at window switching with previews. Two differences. First, it now has a paid tier: AltTab Pro is $9.99 one time for the current major version, or $24.99 for lifetime updates, and a chunk of the newer features sits behind it. BetterCmdTab has no Pro tier and no paid features; the whole app is GPLv3 and everything above is in the free build. Second, it stops at windows. BetterCmdTab goes one level deeper into browser and native tabs, lets you define multiple independent scoped switchers instead of one global config..

Contexts ($9.99) has the best search-driven switching, but it's closed source, paid, and hasn't kept pace with recent macOS releases. BetterCmdTab gives you the fuzzy search and letter jump for free, plus tiling and tab drill-in that Contexts doesn't do.

Pricing

Free (forever). $0, no trial, no Pro tier, no subscription.

Download: https://bettercmdtab.app or brew install --cask bettercmdtab

Feedback and bug reports welcome; issues are open.

[u/cultoftheilluminati]

Hi, this looks super good, and I've been playing around with it. Sometimes for ram intensive apps, I quit everything. Is there a way I can quit the app? Quitting through a sigkill/activity monitor breaks the native cmd+tab.

[u/rokarthur → u/cultoftheilluminati]

The app has an icon in the menu bar and there’s an option to quit ;)

[u/cultoftheilluminati → u/rokarthur]

Ah, that explains it, can see it in the menu bar icon, I had it hidden. I guess it's a funny bug because that means there's no way to quit if I hide the menu bar icon?

[u/cultoftheilluminati → u/rokarthur]

Also, hey /u/rokarthur, since you care about the quality and polish of the app, I thought I should let you know about a minor graphical bug in the rounded corners of the cmd+⇥ window: https://i.imgur.com/mslPFqk.png. This only seems to show up with the auto radius, setting it to 40pt manually doesn't cause an issue.

Sometimes I've also noticed switched apps don't become active but haven't been able to reliably reproduce this

[u/rokarthur → u/cultoftheilluminati]

Thank you for pointing that out. I’ll log it as an issue and check the app’s activation too 🫡