Every window in one calm line.
Ribbon lines your Mac's windows up side by side and lets you glide between them. Nothing to arrange, nothing to set up, one key to remember.
For macOS 26 and later · Free and open source (GPL-3.0) · Nothing leaves your Mac
You opened one window to check one thing.
Twenty minutes later there are fourteen, and the one you need is under all of them. You click, something jumps to the front, something else disappears. It isn't you. Your Mac was built to stack windows, and stacks are where attention goes to get lost.
Nothing on top of anything.
Ribbon puts your windows side by side on one long ribbon that runs past the edges of your screen. Open something new and it slots in next to what you're working on. There's no grid to plan and no layout to keep tidy, because there's nothing to arrange.
Glide, don't hunt.
Hold ⌃⌥ and press ← or → to slide to the next window. Or swipe with three fingers and the ribbon follows them. That's most of Ribbon, and you'll know it in a minute.
Always know where you are.
Every time you move, a small map shows the whole ribbon with your window lit up: "Terminal · 3 of 7". Then it fades away. You never wonder what's off-screen or where that window went.
Every change can be undone.
Moved the wrong window? ⌃⌥Z puts it back. Pause Ribbon and your windows return to where they were. Quit it, even after a crash, and every window goes back to where you left it.
When it's time for one thing.
Press ⌃⌥B and everything except the window you're in goes soft and blurry. The rest is still there, it just stops calling for you. Click a blurred window and the focus moves with you.
Forgot a key? Just type.
⌃⌥Space opens one search box for every window and every action. Type "slack" to jump there, or "width 66" to make a window wider. You never have to memorise a cheat sheet.
Made for brains that wander.
Ribbon was designed for people with ADHD first. That's why there's one key instead of twenty, a map on every move, undo for everything, and no red warnings or nagging. If your attention wanders too, it's built for you as well.
Working in a minute. No settings needed.
Ask your coding agent to install it, or run one command yourself: the steps are on GitHub and need no Xcode. Ribbon then asks for one permission, Accessibility, so it can move your windows. Running Rectangle, Magnet or Stage Manager? Ribbon notices and offers to take over, or to keep both.
Ask your coding agent
Paste this into Claude Code, Codex or any coding agent. It checks your Mac and asks before it installs anything.
Install Ribbon by following INSTALL.md at https://github.com/mosesgdev/useribbon-wmOr run it yourself
Needs Apple's Command Line Tools and Rust.
git clone https://github.com/mosesgdev/useribbon-wm
cd useribbon-wm && make installFree for good. Plus if you want a little more.
Everything above is free and open source under the GPL-3.0, and it stays that way. Plus is for people who want one extra trick and an app that installs in one click.
Ribbon
- The ribbon, gliding, the map, undo, Focus mode and the command bar
- Nine desktops on every screen
- Build it from the source, or let your coding agent install it
Ribbon Plus Coming soon
- Everything in Free
- Keep your notes or your chat pinned to the side, a fifth, a quarter or a third of the screen wide, and let everything else glide past it
- A signed app that installs in one click and updates itself
Read every line.
Ribbon is free software. The code is on GitHub, and you can read it, build it and change it. It stands on ideas from PaperWM, niri and OmniWM, and it says so in the README.
What does Ribbon need from my Mac?
One permission, Accessibility, so it can move your windows. Screen Recording is optional and only makes swipes smoother. The pictures stay in memory and are never saved.
Does it work with more than one screen?
Yes. Every screen gets its own ribbon, and each has nine desktops of its own.
What happens if I stop using it?
Quit Ribbon and every window goes back to where it was before.
I already use Rectangle, Magnet or Stage Manager.
Ribbon notices and offers to quit the other one, or to keep both running.
Which Macs does it run on?
Any Mac on macOS 26 or later.