SpaceSnap

Instant macOS Spaces switching — no slide animation, no lag after it. A small menu bar app for macOS 26.6+. No SIP disabling, no global Reduce Motion.

Features

• Instant trackpad swipe — the horizontal swipe between desktops is intercepted and replaced with an instant switch. Vertical gestures (Mission Control, App Exposé) are untouched.
• Hotkeys — previous/next desktop (⌃← / ⌃→ by default), fully configurable.
• Jump to desktop 1–10 — modifier + digit (⌃1 … ⌃0 by default). Fullscreen apps are skipped when numbering, just like macOS does.
• Back to the previous desktop — ⌃` by default.
• Empty-desktop guard — about 0.4 s after you land on a desktop with no windows, macOS activates some other app and yanks you to its desktop. SpaceSnap takes focus itself so that never happens.
• Instant jump to an app's desktop (optional) — clicking an app in the Dock, ⌘Tab, opening a link or a notification switches to the desktop with that app's window instantly instead of with the Dock's animation. Works across displays.
• Indicator — current desktop number in the menu bar and a short overlay on every switch; on a fullscreen app's space the overlay shows that app's icon and name.
• Switching always targets the display under the pointer (same as the native ⌃←/→), with no rubber-band bounce at the first/last desktop.

Install

One command

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mettlive/SpaceSnap/main/install.sh | bash

Downloads the latest release, installs it to /Applications (replacing an older version and quitting it first) and launches it. Run the same command again to update.

DMG

Download SpaceSnap.dmg from Releases and drag SpaceSnap into Applications.

If the release is not notarized, macOS blocks the first launch. Open System Settings → Privacy & Security, scroll down and click Open Anyway.

From source

Requires Xcode 26+.

git clone https://github.com/mettlive/SpaceSnap.git
cd SpaceSnap
./scripts/bundle.sh --install

First launch

Grant Accessibility access: System Settings → Privacy & Security → Accessibility → SpaceSnap. macOS ignores synthetic input events from apps without it.

The grant is tied to the app's code signature. Builds signed with a Developer ID keep it across updates. Ad-hoc signed builds (local builds and non-notarized releases) look like a new app to macOS after every update, and re-enabling the old entry does nothing. The install script and scripts/bundle.sh --install reset the stale entry for you, so just grant access again when asked. After a manual DMG update, remove SpaceSnap from the list with − (or run tccutil reset Accessibility dev.mettlive.SpaceSnap) and grant it again.

Settings live in the menu bar icon → Settings…: swipe interception, overlay, empty-desktop guard, menu bar number, launch at login, and all shortcuts.

Uninstall

1. Quit SpaceSnap from its menu bar icon.
2. Delete /Applications/SpaceSnap.app.
3. Optionally remove it from Privacy & Security → Accessibility and clear its settings: defaults delete dev.mettlive.SpaceSnap.

How it works

macOS has no supported way to disable the Spaces slide animation. SpaceSnap posts a synthetic Dock-swipe gesture with near-zero progress and very high velocity. The Dock performs the switch through its own pipeline — focus, wallpaper and Mission Control stay consistent — but the animation has nowhere to travel. On macOS 27+ the event also carries the serialized IOHID payload that the system validates there.

Conflicting Mission Control shortcuts ("Move left/right a space", "Switch to Desktop N") are disabled only while SpaceSnap runs, and only those that match your SpaceSnap shortcuts. This changes the live WindowServer state, not com.apple.symbolichotkeys, and they are re-enabled on quit.

With Instant jump to an app's desktop enabled, SpaceSnap turns off the Dock's own animated follow (the hidden com.apple.dock workspaces-auto-swoosh preference, which requires a Dock restart) and switches itself when an app without windows on a visible desktop is activated. It respects Desktop & Dock → When switching to an application, switch to a Space with open windows for the application. The original Dock preference is restored when the option is turned off or SpaceSnap quits.

Limitations

• Relies on undocumented APIs (SkyLight, private CGEvent fields). Any macOS release can break them; the symptom is that switching silently stops working.
• macOS 26.0–26.5 is not supported: a WindowServer bug there can leave the destination desktop's windows unpainted after an instant switch.
• The macOS 27 path is ported from noswoosh and has not been verified by this project yet.
• With Automatically rearrange Spaces based on most recent use enabled, desktop order keeps changing; turn it off in Desktop & Dock.
• If SpaceSnap crashes, the Mission Control shortcuts it disabled stay off until you log out or relaunch and quit it. With instant app jumps enabled, the Dock also stops following apps to their desktops until SpaceSnap runs again.
• An app jump to a desktop on another display briefly moves the pointer to that display (~0.1 s): the Dock always switches the display under the pointer.
• An app activated within 0.5 s after a desktop switch is not followed; this is what keeps macOS from yanking you off an empty desktop.

Development

swift build
swift test
./scripts/bundle.sh            # build/SpaceSnap.app (universal, ad-hoc signed)
./scripts/bundle.sh --install  # + install to /Applications and launch
./scripts/package.sh           # build/SpaceSnap.dmg + build/SpaceSnap.zip

The app icon is drawn in code: edit scripts/generate-icon.swift, then regenerate Resources/AppIcon.icns:

swift scripts/generate-icon.swift /tmp/AppIcon.iconset && iconutil -c icns /tmp/AppIcon.iconset -o Resources/AppIcon.icns

Layout:

• Sources/SpaceSnapCore/Domain — Spaces model, switch planner, landing prediction, history, hotkeys, settings.
• Sources/SpaceSnapCore/Application — SpaceSwitchService, SystemShortcutCoordinator.
• Sources/SpaceSnapCore/Infrastructure — private SkyLight APIs, gesture synthesis, event tap, Carbon hotkeys, empty-desktop guard.
• Sources/SpaceSnap — SwiftUI menu bar app, settings window, overlay.

Credits

The synthetic Dock-swipe technique comes from jurplel/InstantSpaceSwitcher (MIT). Swipe interception, the macOS 27 payload and the empty-desktop guard are based on mmathys/noswoosh (MIT) and joshuarli/iss (0BSD).

License

MIT. Third-party notices are in THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md; both files ship inside SpaceSnap.app/Contents/Resources.