Introducing Ribbon: your Mac's windows on one long strip

What is Ribbon?#

Ribbon is a window manager for macOS that places your windows side by side on a horizontal strip. The strip is wider than your screen, and a three-finger swipe on the trackpad glides you along it.

Nothing overlaps and nothing hides behind anything else. Every window has its own place on the strip, at the width you gave it.

Why a strip?#

I made Ribbon to get the feeling of separate workspaces without the fiddly parts. On a normal Mac desktop, windows pile up and you dig for the one you need. On a strip, each window sits next to the last one you used, one swipe away.

The idea is not new. niri on Linux and PaperWM on GNOME arrange windows on a scrolling strip, and Ribbon's three-finger gesture was inspired by PaperWM.spoon for Hammerspoon. Ribbon brings the idea to the Mac as a native app with its own Settings window.

How do you move around?#

With four gestures, and with the ways you already switch apps.

• Three fingers sideways move the strip. It follows your fingers and settles with a spring when you let go. You can line windows up with the edge of the screen, or scroll freely and let snap assist catch an edge that stops close to it.
• Three fingers up open the switcher: your windows shrink into one row, like the iPhone app switcher. Drag a window to a new place, drop it on another to stack them, or click it to go there.
• Four fingers up step the strip aside. It parts like a curtain to show the desktop and any floating windows behind it. Four fingers down bring it back.
• The Dock and Cmd-Tab work as before: choose an app and the strip glides to its window. Click it again in the Dock to cycle through its windows.

What happens when you open or close a window?#

A new window opens next to the windows of the same app and slides into the middle of the screen. When you close a window, its neighbors close the gap.

Windows that can't be resized, such as settings panels and dialogs, float above the strip instead of being squeezed into it.

Can windows have different widths?#

Yes. Resize a window by hand and it keeps that width; the windows beside it move to make room. There are no fixed columns.

Double-click a title bar and the window fills the screen inside the strip, keeping the gaps you set. Full screen also works inside the strip.

Does Ribbon work with more than one display?#

Yes. Each display gets its own strip, and you choose which displays Ribbon manages.

Drag a window by its title bar onto another display: the old strip closes up, the new one opens a gap under the pointer, and the window lands there at its own width. A swipe moves the strip of whichever display the pointer is on.

How do you get your normal desktop back?#

Quit Ribbon or choose Stop Managing, and every window is put back on screen, ready to use. If you restart your Mac, the apps that are still open come back to the same places on the strip.

What does Ribbon need?#

• macOS 14 Sonoma or later.
• An Apple silicon or Intel Mac. Ribbon is one universal app.
• A trackpad for the gestures. Without one, clicking a window, the Dock or Cmd-Tab still moves the strip.
• The Accessibility permission, to move and resize windows. Screen Recording is optional: it adds live window pictures to the switcher.

Ribbon's interface is available in English, Vietnamese and 14 more languages.

When can you try it?#

Ribbon is in development and not released yet. When it launches, every copy starts as a 14-day free trial with every feature and no account. One license covers two Macs, and the price will be announced at launch.

The Ribbon facts page lists every hard fact in one place, and the changelog shows what changed and when.