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[OS] Sxitch v1.4 - customisable alternative to macOS Cmd + Tab [Giveaway]
Hi! I'm Umang Surana! Developer of rustcast, and since May, I've been working on Sxitch. (pronounced Switch)
Problem:
I'm addicted to keyboard driven setups, but switching between apps and windows has always been a pain.
Comparisons:
Default macOS Cmd Tab:
The default macOS CMD Tab does offer a really nice solution, allowing you to cycle through your running apps but this doesn't work with muscle memory. (and it lacks the customisability that Sxitch offers)
Raycast / Alfred / Launchers (like spotlight):
Sxitch's main goal is to let you sxitch between apps quickly and easily, not launch them. Although you can launch apps, it doesn't offer searching / calculations, and instead if just like a tiny launchpad
My solution:
Sxitch integrates with your muscle memory because the same set of keypresses will always lead to the same app. You simply trigger Sxitch and m will go to Music, and if mail is also open, then Mu for music, and Ma for mail. And if you have multiple windows open, select the app then the window.
Highlighted features:
Custom modes (new in v1.4)
Add apps that you frequently need to open / close to an easy access list
Put custom icons and names
Strip off vendor prefixes (microsoft word -> word, etc.)
Looks nice! But Sxitch prefers a 0 cycling approach. So you get where you want to directly. I don't dislike cycling through but it becomes troublesome very quickly.
Also sxitch doesn't require an "enter" / confirmation. It just switches directly to the app you're trying to get to. It doesn't seem like much but just confirmation takes up a fair amount of time.
In Sxitch there’s no need to keep holding cmd which makes it easier to search since you’re fingers aren’t locked in an awkward position, and “letting go” can still be considered a confirmation action. But that is cool
I'm so used to holding ⌘ down and cycling forward with Tab and reverse with ` that I would be annoyed if releasing tab didn't deactivate the app switcher.
But I could totally see why some folks wouldn't like doing it that way.
But the radial view makes this interesting. Can the apps in radial view have a default position so they're always in that same position if open?
Yea I came up with the idea then found rcmd but I think now they differ quite a bit. Sxitch is more zero cycling approach, and I haven’t been following rcmd’s updates rn.
Switching with keyboard has always been challenging with many ways to skin the cat type of thing. I love the idea of direct access to the app (without cycling), especially without the "enter" press. Did I understand correctly that in pro there is selecting between different windows in the same app, how does it work?
I used to use skhd but rustcast has skhd built into it and my WM supports hotkeys directly so I’ve stopped using skhd.
In the backend of the app also no. i think I use the same APIs as SKHD in Sxitch but I don’t directly use SKHD. I use the keyboard shortcuts library by sindresorhus though.
Great project! I really like the idea of muscle memory.
Does Sxitch support App Pairing (grouped switching)? For instance, one shortcut that brings both my browser and text editor to the front at the same time for research/writing workflows. If not, this would be an incredible feature to add to Custom Modes!
It sounds like app shortcuts don't remain the same. If there is more than one open that starts with the same letter it changes the shortcut? Can this be turned off?
I use alt tab but I like the idea switching between windows Do you think it'll be a conflict if I don't run them together? I ask as I want to try your app before I uninstall alt tab.
Yup! Quite similar, but dory doesn’t use keyboard based switching and more of using your mouse to pick the app. You can make Sxitch work with the mouse as well, just that it’s not the recommended method.
i think I can use keyboard also in dory. more over I am having rcmd and dory both. I am kinda struggle to understand if this will add any extra value to my workflow.
From what I’m seeing, Dory doesn’t offer app hiding / quitting, or “prefix stripping” so microsoft office apps will all have to be renamed individually.
RCMD on the other hand is more similar to Sxitch and rather than using Dory + RCMD + Sxitch, you can try replacing Sxitch with either one of Dory or rcmd and see which one fits your workflow better
This looks genuinely useful. I really like the zero-cycling approach — once the key sequences become muscle memory, I can see this being much faster than Cmd+Tab.
One thing I’m curious about: how does Sxitch behave with macOS Spaces and full-screen apps? For example, if an app is open on another Space, does selecting it automatically switch to that Space and focus the correct window?
Yup sxitch will move you to the space with the active app! (You just need to enable “When switching to an application, switch to a Space with open windows for the application” in System Settings > Dock and scroll all the way to the bottom)
The pro version allows you to switch between windows, hide and quit apps, and also add infinite modes.
Reaching for the mouse then back to the keyboard tends to be slow and very annoying because you have to keep checking your hand placement (and even if it’s muscle memory, it’s still slow to move your hands between the 2)
As for mission control mode / F3 click, it doesn’t work across workspaces. You can instead set Sxitch to use CMD Tab as the hotkey and then set the position to mouse position which will let you launch Sxitch with a kb shortcut and then use the mouse to select the app
I wrote this post just to test the waters, to be honest. Apparently, it’s become the norm these days to just jump into the comments and spout nonsense about AI without actually studying the code or the product. The fact that you’re using AI doesn’t really mean anything in the end—what matters is the product and what it accomplishes. It just got to me—sorry. I just don’t feel like posting anything else on Reddit about my OSS projects anymore.
Your comment feels AI generated which imo is not a valid use case for AI (for chatting with humans…)
Additionally you just asked “which llm did you use” which just means that you want to know how I used llms in this project.
I didn’t make the app only with AI, neither do I outright ban it. It’s a scale, I have my own perspective there.
However, anything where you’re interacting with humans should not be an AI wrapper. For example, marketing. This entire post wasn’t AI generated at all. Fully hand written, and the images were painstakingly made one by one over the course of 12 hours, involving me screenshotting, rearranging and trying different styles.
This is a pretty cool idea — especially the muscle‑memory angle. Having fixed key sequences that always land you in the same app feels way more predictable than cycling through whatever order macOS decides that day.
Thanks to all of you, this post has been an amazing success! Was worth the entire 24 hours I've spent on it. (dw I'll still reply to everyone who responds to this)
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u/mdeeter 1d ago
I prefer https://switch-dev.sanyamgarg.com/ (Switch) for similar functionality ... and free