Spaceman is an application for macOS that allows you to view your Spaces / Virtual Desktops in the menu bar. Spaceman allows you to see which space you are currently on (or spaces if you are using multiple displays) relative to the other spaces you have. Naming these spaces is also an option in order to organise separate spaces for your workflow.
Also, the menu and statusbar icons enable switching between spaces.
Spaceman requires macOS 11 Big Sur or greater.
Go to the releases tab and download Spaceman.dmg from the latest release.
The above image shows the possible icons that you will see depending on the style you choose.
There are five styles to choose from, from top to bottom:
- Rectangles
- Numbers
- Rectangles with Numbers
- Names
- Names with Numbers
The meaning of the icons from left to right are:
- Active Space
- Inactive Space
- Inactive Fullscreen App
- Gap (The gap denotes that the spaces that follow are on a different display)
- Inactive Space
- Active Fullscreen App
The style and the name of a space can be changed in preferences (shown above). A space is named by selecting the space from the dropdown and editing its name (up to 4 characters).
If the icon fails to update, you can choose to force a refresh of the icon using a custom keyboard shortcut or allow Spaceman to refresh them automatically every 5 seconds by enabling 'Refresh spaces in background'.
Icons in the status bar can be clicked to switch spaces:
The menu shows a list of space names. Selecting one will cause Spaceman to switch to that space.
Spaceman switches spaces by sending a keyboard shortcut to Mission Control using Applescript. Note that only the first ten spaces will have shortcut keys assigned. For extra spaces, switching will not be available; the status bar icon will flash if selected, and the menu option will be disabled.
Switching is also not supported for fullscreen spaces.
For switching to work successfully, the following things need to be configured:
- Spaceman needs authorization for Accessibility:
- Shortcut keys need to have been defined for Mission Control:
- Spaceman needs to know which shortcuts to send:
The list of spaces can also be refreshed using Applescript:
$ osascript -e 'tell application "Spaceman" to refresh'For details on how to maximize usefulness of this, see MikeJL's Comments
If Spaceman does not start, or does not run correctly, after an upgrade: you may need to delete the application defaults:
$ defaults delete dev.ruittenb.Spaceman- This project is based on WhichSpace
- This project uses Sparkle for update delivery
- This project makes use of LaunchAtLogin
- This project makes use of KeyboardShortcuts
- Authors:
- Contributions by: