FAQ & Support

Download the app, unzip the archive and open it. Every build is notarized by Apple, so all Gatekeeper shows is its standard confirmation for downloaded apps – click Open. AWM then offers to move itself into Applications; accept, because apps that keep running from Downloads are treated as temporary by macOS, and that's what breaks permissions for most Mac utilities. After that, a guided setup walks you through the one permission the app needs, and the window strip appears. The whole thing takes a couple of minutes.

AWM isn't on the Mac App Store because the App Store sandbox forbids controlling other apps' windows – the very thing a window manager does. It's the same reason tools like Rectangle and BetterTouchTool distribute directly. Instead, every build is notarized by Apple, and updates install only after the app cryptographically verifies them.

AWM needs the macOS Accessibility permission – it's the system API for listing, raising, moving and closing other apps' windows, which is the whole job. A guided setup walks you through granting it. During setup the strip stays pinned on screen, so you see it come alive the moment access is granted. What AWM reads through that permission – and where it goes – is covered under Privacy & permissions.

That's by design: AWM is a menu-bar utility, so there's no Dock icon and no main window. Its icon sits in your menu bar, and the menu covers the essentials – the app it's tracking, hide or show the strip, move, fit or maximize all windows, pause automatic adjustments, check for updates, open Settings, quit. An optional gear button at the end of the strip jumps straight to Settings too. The version line at the bottom of the menu is the one to quote when you write to us.

Yes – turn on Launch at login in AWM's Settings. From then on the strip is on duty from the moment you sign in: no windows open, nothing bounces, it's just there.

No account, no analytics. Window titles and positions are read through macOS Accessibility and processed entirely on your Mac. The app's only routine network request is a cryptographically signed update check. That check fetches a static file describing the latest version – a plain download with no query parameters and no identifiers, so it isn't tied to you or your Mac. The full plain-English policy, app and website both, lives at /privacy.

No – it never even asks, unless you enable live previews. Screen Recording permission is requested only if you turn on live previews. Everything else works without it. When previews are on, the frames are rendered on your screen and nowhere else – nothing is saved and nothing is sent.

No. AI title shortening runs on-device with Apple Intelligence – window titles never leave your Mac. It's the feature that turns a noisy tab title like "(3) Inbox – Gmail – Google Chrome" into just "Inbox", and it's a toggle you can leave off entirely. Requires macOS 26 (Tahoe).

A window switcher gets clicked hundreds of times a day, so this is the part we obsess over. Engineered to feel instant – native Swift, no animations to sit through. Optimistic UI: the strip reacts the moment you click, not after macOS catches up. 100 minimized windows? Not a problem. And it all runs as one small native menu-bar app.

Requires macOS 14 (Sonoma) or later. Runs natively on Apple Silicon and Intel Macs. Three extras are version-gated: the Liquid Glass and Clear Glass panel looks and AI title shortening. Requires macOS 26 (Tahoe). On older systems you keep the Solid and Frosted looks and regular titles; everything else behaves the same.

Yes to all three. Every display gets its own strip, with two optional filters to keep each one honest: list only windows on that monitor, and hide windows living on other desktops. The right-click menu drives Spaces directly – switch to any desktop or send windows there without opening Mission Control – and Dock Mirror can put a live copy of your Dock on secondary displays. When an app goes fullscreen, the strip can auto-hide or switch to a dark look for video, per display.

It replaces nothing – AWM lives alongside your setup. When placing itself it auto-detects the Dock, the menu bar, the notch and even third-party bars, and positions the strip so nothing overlaps. Your Dock keeps working exactly as before, and AWM's window-positioning features account for all of these areas too.

Cmd-Tab and Stage Manager think in apps: one icon or one pile per application, however many windows hide behind it. Overlay switchers work at the window level, but only exist while summoned – they appear, you pick, they vanish. The window strip is different on both counts: it lists individual windows by title, and it's persistently on screen, in a fixed spot your muscle memory can rely on. Nothing to summon, nothing to wait for – the strip is already there. And it acts, too: close, pin, rename, color and move windows without switching to them first. macOS shows you apps. AWM shows you windows.

The app speaks 32 languages, including right-to-left Arabic and Hebrew – switchable in-app, independently of your system language. This website is English-only for now.

Two global hotkeys today: Ctrl + Option + Z moves the frontmost window into the safe area, Ctrl + Option + Shift + Z maximizes it there. The safe area is the part of your screen that avoids the Dock, the menu bar, the notch and the strip – so a hotkey press is enough to un-bury a window. Both hotkeys are fixed defaults today.

They stay in sight. Minimized windows collect in their own minimized section at the far end of the strip, so they never just vanish into a corner. Past a threshold you choose (anywhere from 1 to 30), they consolidate into a single "N minimized" button – hover it for a list of every window, click a row to restore it. Minimize freely; the strip stays tidy.

Stash Space is a parking lot for windows. Turn it on and clicking an already-focused window's button parks that window on a desktop AWM creates on demand, out of sight – the app keeps running untouched, and the button shows a badge while the window is parked. One more click brings it back exactly where it was. You'll find it in Settings as one of the choices for what a re-click does (the others: nothing, or minimize).

The app is paid, but the whole 1.x series is free – every Lite, Plus and Pro feature unlocked, no license key. Version 2.x (expected in 2027) will be a paid upgrade. The 1.x on your Mac keeps working. And there's no trial – when nothing is locked, there's nothing to trial.

They're the planned split for version 2.x – you'll see them as small badges on a few Settings rows, and the pricing page shows exactly which feature lands where. During 1.x everything is unlocked, so today the names are a preview, not a limit.

Not yet – a Homebrew cask is planned. Once it lands, this will work:

Until then, download the notarized build directly – it keeps itself current either way.

AWM updates itself. At most once a day it checks a static update feed; when a new version is out you get a quiet prompt, and installing is one click – the app swaps itself atomically and relaunches. Before anything installs, the download is verified three ways: the feed's cryptographic signature, Apple's notarization and the developer's signing identity. Impatient? Check for Updates… sits in AWM's menu-bar menu.

The usual cause is two copies of the app – say, one in Downloads and one in Applications – where macOS granted the permission to the copy that isn't running. Open AWM's Settings → Accessibility: it shows whether the running copy actually has access, and clicking the "Accessibility" heading five times in quick succession reveals a Show developer diagnostics switch – turn it on to see the exact path and signing identity of the running binary. Keep the copy in Applications, delete the other one, and grant the permission again. If System Settings insists the toggle is on but AWM still reports no access, use Reset Permission in those diagnostics – it clears the stale permission entries, relaunches the app and lets macOS ask cleanly.

Every display gets its own strip automatically, so if one is missing it's almost always a visibility feature doing its job. Auto-hide slides the strip off-screen – push your pointer to that screen's strip edge to reveal it. A fullscreen app on that display hides or auto-hides the strip by design, and the "hide the panel when the app has just one window" option keeps it away when there's nothing to switch to. Also check the per-monitor filter: with "Only show windows from this monitor" on, a strip lists only the windows that live on that screen. All of these live in Settings, searchable by name.

Open AWM's menu-bar menu and flip "Pause automatic window adjustments". Every automatic tidying behavior stops – fitting windows at launch, nudging new or moved windows out from under the panel, reshaping zoomed windows – while everything manual keeps working. Each behavior also has its own toggle in Settings if you'd rather turn off just one.

Quit AWM from its menu-bar menu, then delete Active Window Manager from your Applications folder – that's the uninstall. For a spotless exit you can also remove its app data folder at ~/Library/Application Support/ActiveWindowManager, its preferences file com.frees.active-window-manager.plist in ~/Library/Preferences, its entries in Keychain Access (search for com.frees.active-window-manager) and the Accessibility and Screen Recording entries in System Settings → Privacy & Security. None of these leftovers run anything; they're just files.

Yes – in Settings, use Export Settings… to save your configuration as a JSON file (or copy it to the clipboard), then Import Settings… on the other Mac. One honest footnote: pinned windows and custom window order aren't exported, because they're tied to the windows of the Mac they were made on. There's also Reset Settings if you ever want to walk everything back to the defaults.