macOS's built-in window switcher stops at the edge of the current Space. OptTab switches between windows of the current app — across Spaces, fullscreen, and minimized — with a thumbnail HUD that feels native.
this is a live demo — press ⇥ tab to cycle, ⏎ to switch
Cycles windows inside the current Space only. That second browser window on another desktop? Fullscreen terminal? Minimized editor? Invisible. You end up in Mission Control, hunting with the trackpad.
One keystroke reaches every real window of the active app — other Spaces, fullscreen, minimized. macOS jumps to the right Space for you. App-to-app switching stays where it belongs: Cmd+Tab.
Reaches windows on other desktops and fullscreen Spaces. For apps whose windows
hide from the Accessibility API (hi, Chromium), it drives the app's own
Window menu instead.
Live window previews via ScreenCaptureKit, centered on the display your cursor is on. Never steals focus — the panel is non-activating by design.
Deliberately scoped: OptTab cycles windows of the app you're in.
⌘Tab keeps switching apps. Two keystrokes, two clean jobs.
Native-tab apps (Ghostty, Terminal…) leak background tabs into the window list. OptTab filters out anything you can't actually switch to.
No private CGS calls, no injected code. CGEventTap + ScreenCaptureKit + Accessibility. Survives macOS updates like a good citizen.
No screen-recording permission? It still works — app-icon cards instead of thumbnails. Accessibility granted late? It picks itself up automatically.
Everything is boring, documented macOS API — arranged in a fallback chain so the switch lands even when an app hides its windows.
$ brew install konaito/tap/opttab $ brew services start opttab # launchd service — no menu bar icon # or build from source: $ git clone https://github.com/konaito/opttab.git && cd opttab && ./Scripts/install-local.sh
| ⌥ + ⇥ | open the HUD / cycle forward |
| ⌥ + ⇧ + ⇥ | cycle backward |
| release ⌥ | switch to the selected window |
| esc | cancel |
| quick tap | toggle to the previous window — like ⌘⇥ muscle memory |
macOS's built-in "Move focus to next window" shortcut only cycles windows inside the current Space. Windows on other Spaces, fullscreen windows, and minimized windows are skipped entirely — that's an OS behavior, not a setting you can change. OptTab exists precisely to reach them.
AltTab is great — it recreates Windows-style Alt-Tab across all apps. OptTab is deliberately smaller: it replaces ⌘` (same-app switching), keeps ⌘⇥ for apps, and uses only public macOS APIs — no private CGS calls to break on OS updates.
Yes. Pick a window on another Space or in fullscreen and macOS jumps there automatically. For apps whose windows hide from the Accessibility API — Chromium browsers are the big one — OptTab presses the app's own Window-menu item, which crosses Spaces reliably.
Only for thumbnails. Decline it and OptTab still works with app-icon cards. Accessibility permission is required — that's what makes a global ⌥⇥ hotkey possible.
macOS 14 Sonoma and later (Apple Silicon and Intel). Built with Swift and ScreenCaptureKit; the release build is notarized by Apple.