New

• rcmd Exposé: every window across every Space, on one screen (Pro)

  Press your trigger key + . to spread every switchable window over the desktop, Mission Control style, with live thumbnails. Apps sit where their switch key sits on the keyboard, so the layout teaches the keys. Type a letter to zoom into one app, place a window with the bracket and quote keys, drag or send it to another Space or display, all without leaving the overlay.

• If another app turns on Secure Keyboard Entry and hides the keyboard from rcmd, a notification now names the culprit, and rcmd doctor reports it.

Improvements

• Menu bar apps that open a real window (a settings panel, a file browser) become switchable the moment the window appears.

Fixes

• rcmd no longer stops responding to the trigger keys. If an unresponsive app stalled the system long enough, rcmd's key handling could quietly switch off until relaunch. It now recovers on its own and steps around apps that keep hanging.
• Apps holding both a letter and a number key no longer show up twice in the App Switcher.
• The menu bar Spaces indicator keeps its number on multi-display setups.
• Fix a crash and erratic behaviour on macOS 27 beta 3.

Fixes

• Fix macOS 27 window moving on new Spaces in specific scenarios

Fixes

• Scrollbars no longer cover the switcher rows when macOS is set to always show scrollbars

  With "Always show scroll bars" turned on, every switcher (apps, windows, search, and the tab / backtick cycles) keeps a lane for the scrollbar, so the keys and titles on the right edge aren't hidden behind it

• Holding an arrow keeps moving the highlight in app search, window search, and the window cycle, instead of stepping only once
• Fixed several multi-second freezes (App Hangs)

  Saving a browser or terminal window for "recently closed" no longer waits on a stuck app to answer, discovering installed apps no longer reads each app's info on the main thread, and the first app scan at launch no longer freezes when you have a lot of apps installed

• Fixed a rare crash when switching to or launching one of the few apps whose bundle macOS can't turn into a valid executable path
• Clicking the menu bar icon closes the menu when it's already open, instead of flickering shut and immediately reopening
• On a narrow switcher, the search bar's two prompts ("press a letter to switch" and "type or Space to fuzzy search") gently fade between each other instead of getting cut off, so both stay readable
• Fix macOS 27 window moving after Space creation

Improvements

• Hold-to-cycle follows your Key Repeat speed: holding Tab, the window-cycle key, or an arrow advances at the same rate, and after the same initial delay, as a held key anywhere else, set by System Settings > Keyboard > Key Repeat
• Show only the active Space in the menu bar Spaces indicator, handy if you keep more than nine Spaces

  Turn it on in Settings, and the indicator shows just the Space you're on instead of the whole row

• The config file follows symlinks: link ~/.config/rcmd/config.yaml, or the whole ~/.config/rcmd folder, into your dotfiles and rcmd reads and writes the real file instead of replacing your link
• Make the config file the source of truth with the new overrideUserDefaults: true option, so your config is reapplied on every launch even if a setting changed in the app since
• Windows hidden off-screen come back where they were: a Stage that hides windows off-screen now remembers each one's real position, so Restore off-screen windows puts them back exactly, even after you quit rcmd or it crashes mid-stage

  rcmd only ever restores windows it hid itself, so a window you parked off-screen, or one on a display that went to sleep, is left alone

Features

• Anchored app matching decides which app a letter jumps to by word starts instead of any substring

  Typing a letter now favors apps whose name (or a word inside it) begins with that letter, skipping common prefixes like "The" or "Microsoft". Pick between Anchored and Contains in Settings, and edit the ignored-prefix list to taste.

• Launching… pill appears when a cold app launch is slow, so a one-letter press that starts an app no longer looks like nothing happened
• Hands-free search: hold the app trigger and tap Space to open a search list seeded from what you typed; it stays open after you release the keys so you can keep typing

  Tap the trigger and Space again to close it

• Window keys pick how the window switcher labels each window: Mixed, Numbers only (the same 1-9 as the app switcher), or No numbers (a letter from the title)
• Window title patterns are now editable in Settings, grouped by app family instead of buried per bundle id

  Each group (Code editors, JetBrains IDEs, Safari, Xcode) lists the apps it covers plus two patterns: one picks the window switcher key, the other pulls a cleaner name (like the project, without the file name) that shows in the window switcher and gets saved into a Stage.

  Add or drop apps from a group, tweak a pattern, start a new group, or reset everything back to the built-in defaults.

• Pin a query to an app makes a multi-letter query always open an app, even one that search can't surface for it (like tt for Tailscale)

  Create one in Settings (App switcher > Fuzzy search): type the query, pick the app.

  Or do it in the switcher: type a query, tap Pin "…" to an app, then choose the app from the list that follows.

• Menu bar icons open straight from the switcher: press ⌥+Return on a highlighted app to open its menu bar icon (the same as clicking it), even when the icon is hidden behind the notch or scrolled off screen

Fixes

• Holding the trigger and pressing several assigned keys in a row now launches every app in the batch, not just the last one
• Fixed a crash during app discovery and a crash while resolving an app's executable path
• Fixed multi-second freezes caused by window enumeration stalling on an unresponsive app

  Window refresh now caps its total time, times out per app, and skips an app that went slow until it recovers. Ignoring an app now also skips its window scanning entirely, so an unresponsive app you've ignored can't freeze switching or drop your keypresses.

• You can now assign a letter to an app even when a Stage already uses that letter
• With the All windows focus behaviour, switching to a background app whose windows are all closed now opens a new window instead of bringing nothing forward
• The window switcher no longer shows a key on an app's only window, since that letter only becomes a shortcut once the app has more than one window

Improvements

• The double-tap-and-hold search OSD shows up about as fast as you can release the keys
• With the panel hidden, pressing assigned letters at a relaxed pace keeps switching apps instead of quietly building a search query
• With On Press activation, assigned keys launch their app the instant you press them (number keys too), without waiting for you to release the trigger
• Focus behaviour remembers a separate choice for single-Space and multi-Space, each with its own default: Main window in single-Space, Same-Space window in multi-Space
• A single-letter press no longer focuses or launches a running menu-bar app when its OSD never appeared
• Refreshed the fuzzy-search list: app icons now sit at the leading edge with quick-pick numbers on the right, plus cleaner window-row glyphs and recently-closed entries
• Window rows in search read at full brightness like the app rows, and the window-frame icon is rounder with a darker frame in dark mode

Hotfix

• Wait for two-letter queries with the app panel hidden and Adaptive activation mode instead of focusing the dynamic-letter app always
• With the app panel hidden, backspacing a query down to a single assigned letter no longer blanks the panel

Features

• Show/hide windows toggle in the App Switcher and fuzzy search

  A window button in the search bar flips whether windows appear at all. Hide them to keep search and switching to apps only.

Fixes

• Number keys as app shortcuts now work properly in Single-space mode
• Switching to an app reliably brings it to the front, including while rcmd's Settings window is open

Improvements

• Rapid app switching stays smooth, no stutter when cycling through apps quickly
• Switcher OSDs visual pass: keycaps centered in their rows at every density, tighter row spacing, and a frosted-glass search bar (Liquid Glass on macOS 26) that stays legible over any desktop

  Running apps are marked by a green key instead of a separate dot.

  Window results in fuzzy search sit at the top level instead of indented under a small header, and the footer hints fold onto one line when the OSD is wide enough.

Features

• Activation timing chooses when an app key acts, set in Settings under Mode (or search settings for adaptive)

  On press focuses the moment you press the letter. On release waits until you release the keys. Adaptive, the new default, decides per key.

  Adaptive focuses instantly in the everyday case and pauses for a moment only when your next key could change the outcome: an app with several windows, or a letter that also starts a saved multi-letter search. Release during the pause and it focuses right away; a quick tap never waits.

  On release works even with the switcher panel hidden, for navigating by memory or with a screen reader.

• Window numbers reach a specific window in one shot: press an app's key, then its number

  Each window keeps its number for as long as it stays open, and the numbers show on the window rows in the switcher next to the letter.

• Apps only keeps the app switcher and search to apps, no window rows mixed in. On by default in Switcher mode

  Windows stay one keystroke away: Cmd-Tab and double-tap-and-hold still search every open window

  Turn it off in Settings to bring window rows back

Fixes

• All windows focus brings every window of the app to the front when you switch to it, not just the main one. Your last-used window keeps the keyboard and cursor, and windows that are minimized or on another Space stay put

• Menu-bar app windows you close (like a Settings window) stop lingering in the window switcher and window list, instead of leaving a phantom entry behind

Improvements

• Sharper app search matches the letters you typed in order, so apps that only share a stray letter stop showing up (searching tg no longer lists Tailscale or Grila)

  Type a multi-word app's initials to jump to it: fcp for Final Cut Pro, vsc for Visual Studio Code

  Spelling an app's name reaches the app, not one of its open windows (xcode lands on Xcode, not a project window)

  The Settings window stops appearing in results for unrelated letters

Features

• Search bar in Settings that can fuzzy search and surface most important settings

Fixes

• Menu bar apps' windows appear in the switcher when they open a real window
• While cycling across displays, the switcher stays on the screen you started from

Improvements

• Menu bar Spaces indicator shows the rcmd icon when you only have one Space, instead of a lone 1

Features

• Hands-free search: summon the app or window switcher search without holding the trigger, via rcmd osd app / rcmd osd window
• Sticky switcher: keep the switcher open after you let go of the keys, so you can browse and pick hands-free

• Move a window to the next Space with the window switcher trigger and [ / ]: send the focused window one Space to the left or right and follow it

  The same [ / ] keys that switch Spaces with the rcmd, except the window travels with you

Fixes

• App freeze that left rcmd unresponsive and pegged at 100% CPU

  Could strike in the background while the menu bar Spaces indicator refreshed the stage letters shown on each Space

• Apps that moved while running will still focus correctly instead of opening a second copy
• Quickly typing a multi-letter search no longer breaks while a Space is switching

  A busy Space switch could misread fast typing as separate per-letter app switches or slip keystrokes through to the wrong app

• Switching to a second app right after a cross-Space switch no longer snaps focus back to the first
• Tab cycling with a quick tap-release no longer flashes the switcher after you let go

Improvements

• Arrow-key navigation: Down and Up move the highlight in the switcher, like Tab and Shift+Tab
• Widen the Cmd-Tab scope on the fly: with the adaptive cycle scope, press the right arrow to move from seeing only Current Space windows to All windows
• Lower input overhead: rcmd only intercepts keystrokes while a trigger is held

Features

• Switcher vs. Launcher: pick how rcmd behaves on the new Mode pane at the top of Settings

  Switcher is the classic zero-UI experience: apps switch the instant you press a key, and search covers only running and assigned apps. Launcher shows a Spotlight-like panel that finds and launches any installed app

• Pinned searches: press ⌘P on a search result to lock the typed query to that app

  Assign multi-letter queries so sp always opens Spotify or ff always opens Firefox

• Query pills on search results show the short queries each app already answers to; click one to pin or unpin it, including the query you just typed
• Learned searches in Settings: everything rcmd learned from your search picks, grouped per app, with controls to pin, forget, or clear stale entries
• Manage learned and pinned queries from the terminal with rcmd search learned, pin, unpin, learn and unlearn

Fixes

• Fixed Instant Space Switching on macOS 27
• Pressing an assigned letter no longer shows the App Switcher before your configured appearance delay

  A lone assigned letter was treated as a typed search, which capped the delay at 150ms

• Typing a fast search while holding the trigger no longer flickers the switcher and no longer opens the top result before releasing the keys

  Focusing an app mid-search could make rcmd read the trigger as released, committing a half-typed search as if you had let go

• Newly installed apps show up in search within seconds

  rcmd now follows the Spotlight index live instead of checking once and possibly losing the race against indexing

• Trashed apps no longer linger in search results or launch from the Trash

Improvements

• Pressing an assigned letter keeps the App Switcher up, instead of showing search results

  Search results now appear only for unassigned letters or multi-letter queries

Fixes

• Saved windows assigned to Xcode now open even if you only have Xcode beta installed

  A window saved for Xcode opens in whichever Xcode is running, and the other way around, no matter which one you originally saved it from

• Instant space switching no longer works on macOS 27

  macOS 27 changed the system gesture it relied on, so it (and the instant window-moving option) is hidden there, and Spaces switch with the standard animation instead

Features

• Recently closed windows ^Pro: reopen windows you closed recently from a new section at the bottom of the window cycle

  Only windows whose state can be captured reliably are kept, and they fade out after a day. Highlight one in the cycle and press ⌫ to forget it without reopening it.

• Refresh in the app switcher and window cycle: press ⌘R to re-scan every open window without closing the switcher

  Useful if there are leftover windows in the list or if rcmd can't see specific windows

• Only search running apps setting: makes search work more like a switcher instead of a launcher

Fixes

• Apps focus instantly when the App Switcher OSD is off, even if "Wait for releasing the keys before activating" was left on

  That option only matters when the OSD is visible to watch, so it no longer delays the switch in UI-less mode

Improvements

• Hold Tab or ⇧Tab to walk through the window cycle instead of tapping repeatedly
• Close, quit, hide, and refresh now flash a quick confirmation in the switcher
• A hint under the switcher points out whether to hold the left or right Command for the ⌘W / ⌘Q / ⌘H actions

Features

• Disable symbol keys: the QWERTY key grid in General now lets you turn off symbol keys (`, [, ], -, =, and more), not just letters

Turning off a key stops every action bound to it, and passes the key through to the frontmost app instead.

• UI-less search: when OSD is disabled, search UI can be delayed so you can switch to multi-letter apps without seeing any OSD

Fixes

• Turning off Enable action keys now also disables the hide and Mission Control keys, not just the menu key

Improvements

• Ignored apps now stay hidden everywhere: their windows no longer show up when cycling or searching windows
• Moving a fullscreen window to another Space now shows a notice that it can't be done, instead of silently doing nothing
• App search rows without an assigned key now line up with the numbered ones
• Cleaner App Switcher settings: removed a duplicate style picker, and the Ignored apps header now collapses the whole list

Improvements

• CPU usage decrease: improved caching of window metadata and running apps

• Clickable OSDs: the window switcher and Stage switcher respond to mouse clicks

• Proportional OSD offset: the vertical position scales with each screen's height

• Snappier cycling: the highlight of ⌘Tab / ⌘` moves instantly instead of having a small lag

• Quiet quick-switch: a fast single ⌘Tab or ⌘` switches with no OSD flash

  Tap and release to switch instantly. Keep the modifier held after releasing the key to reveal the cycle OSD and keep cycling.

• Ignore key repeats: holding Tab, the backtick cycle key, or other action keys will not cause the action to fire continuously

• Dynamic OSD height: OSD will now shrink to fit the number of apps and windows

Fixes

• Cycle OSD no longer shifts under the pointer as it appears
• Cycle windows (the when already focused action) no longer stalls on the second letter that opens the OSD
• Window switcher (ralt) can again cycle same-letter windows in multi-space mode
• Badge-less rows in a same-letter group indent so their titles line up under the keyed row, in every theme and density
• Single-window Spaces let ⌘Tab work when Cycle Through is Adaptive
• ⌘` (same-app window cycle) could appear unresponsive in some apps

Features

• Cycle windows action for app keys: assign it under "When already focused" to walk through that app's windows by tapping the same letter
• Last-focused time indicator (now/Nm/Nh/Nd/Nw) on the right of tab cycle and open-windows search rows, optional toggle in their settings
• Saved windows editor under Window switcher in Settings: review and edit every per-app letter assignment in one place, grouped by app
• Themes and styling support for the switcher OSD

Improvements

• New rcmd window focus-last CLI command, same MRU toggle as <rcmd>+0

Fixes

• Same-app backtick cycle and app-switcher indented window rows now work even with no window switcher trigger configured
• Pressing an assigned letter for an app that isn't running waits for trigger release before launching, so typing past it into a search picks the search result instead
• Window switcher no longer assigns numbers to windows in Multi-space mode

Fixes

• Fix a search results regression where the selected result could be at the bottom of the list

Features

• Instant window moving between spaces which skips the slide animation and can work with windows that have no titlebar
  • optional, needs to be manually enabled in Settings -> Spaces
• Scrollable and clickable switcher/search OSD
• Switch to left/right space optional setting using rcmd + [/] in Settings -> Spaces
• Redesign of the switcher and search UIs

Fixes

• <rcmd>+0 remembers last window/space correctly after opening and closing Mission Control in a fullscreen app
• Stage windows land in the saved position, even on apps that overwrite their window layout on launch.
• Saving a stage onto a letter that already holds one now asks before overwriting.

Improvements

• Performance improvements on caching windows and search results
• Lowered energy impact in rendering the switcher and search OSD
• App switcher and search feel quicker with many running apps.
• A frozen or busy target app can no longer stall switching for seconds.
• Key event handling is now aware of input-sources, no longer tied to QWERTY layout
• Improve search results adaptive learning on mnemonics

Fixes

• Backtick cycling now stays on the app you just focused instead of occasionally pivoting to the one you switched from.
• Stages saved by a newer rcmd version no longer disappear when opened in an older one.

Fixes

• Toggling "Also Include → Minimized Windows" takes effect right away in Tab and backtick cycling.
• Search now always finds minimized and hidden windows, even when they are excluded from the cycle. Both the typed Tab cycle filter and the double-tap window search are covered.
• The Keylume keyboard peek gets out of the way when you start Tab or backtick cycling.

Caps-lock and fn as trigger keys

Use your HyperKey or fn key for app switching, window switching, stage opening etc.

Window jumping, without Hammerspoon ^Pro

rcmd can now jump between the windows of an app on its own.

Hold the window trigger key (Right Option by default) and press a letter to focus a specific window, or type to search window titles. Earlier versions leaned on the Hammerspoon helper app to work around App Store sandbox limits. That dependency is gone, and window jumping is no longer marked experimental.

Fuzzy search apps and windows ^Pro

Hold the trigger and type to fuzzy-search across installed apps, running apps and open windows in one ranked list. Picks are remembered per query, so your next "f" lands on the same app without re-ranking from scratch.

Stages ^Pro

A Stage is a set of apps and windows saved under a single key.

Recall a stage and rcmd focuses, launches and arranges everything in it at once, with each window placed where you left it. Use them to jump between contexts, like a writing setup or everything you need open for one project.

Closing a stage can close its windows, minimize them, or move them off screen, and rcmd can reopen anything it closed the next time you recall the stage.

New Stages section in Settings for trigger keys, the close action and per-stage editing.

Replace Command-Tab

rcmd can take over ⌘Tab and ⌘` and run its own window cycle instead.

Each Tab press moves to the next most recently used window. Typing during the cycle filters by fuzzy match on app name and window title.

Move around Spaces

rcmd can switch to a Space by number straight from the keyboard. With instant switching ^Pro, you land on the target Space without the macOS slide animation.

Small Space indicators sit next to the rcmd icon in the menubar so you can see which Space you are on and which number takes you elsewhere. Windows can also be sent to another Space ^Pro with ⌥ Right Option + 0-9.

Mouse follows the focused app ^Pro

The cursor warps to the app rcmd just brought forward, so the pointer is already inside the window you are about to use. Especially handy on multi-display setups.

Companion: Keylume on-screen keyboard

Hold the trigger and rcmd can summon Keylume to overlay your live key bindings on an on-screen keyboard, with light and dark themes that follow your system appearance. One-click install from the Keylume settings tab; everything stays in sync as you reassign keys or focus different apps.

The rcmd command-line tool

rcmd now ships a companion rcmd command that drives every feature over a local connection to the running app.

rcmd status
rcmd app focus safari
rcmd window place left-half
rcmd stage activate w
rcmd space switch 3

Every command accepts --json for scripting.

Configuration file

All of your assignments, stages and settings now live in a readable YAML file at ~/.config/rcmd/config.yaml.

Edit it by hand, keep it in a dotfiles repo, or move it between machines. rcmd config export and rcmd config import handle backups and transfers.

Redesigned onboarding

The first-run flow was rebuilt. It walks you through picking a trigger, granting permissions, resolving key conflicts, and trying out app switching, window switching and the Tab cycle before you start.