I got my first MacBook in 2021 after using Windows and Linux for a long time. I was impressed with how stable it is. At first I was planning to no longer do things as I used to and instead adopt the macOS way of thinking and this was going well initially. Then I realized that the Dock is very limited for multi-tasking. If there are multiple windows of the same app, clicking the app icon would simply switch to the most recently used window of that app. What if you wanted to switch to another window? Then you need to right click the app icon and look through a list of window titles whose order changes when opening or closing some of the app’s windows. This felt like a puzzle or mini-game that you had to go through to find the window you need xD There are obviously other options such as mission control, but it also felt like a puzzle, especially when having many windows open, because it shows small window thumbnails that you need to look at for a bit before knowing which one belongs to the window you’re trying to switch to, and their order also changes when opening or closing windows. Another option is the touchpad gesture which works like mission control but only for the windows of the current app, but using this option means that when switching to a window, sometimes command+tab is enough and sometimes you additionally need this gesture. This works but the problem with it is consistency. When doing a lot of multitasking and switching between windows, this takes up a small (but not insignificant) amount of mental energy because you’re thinking about which steps you’ll need to take to get to the window you’re after. All those options led me to the conclusion that perhaps the Dock works for many users but it doesn’t work for the subset of users that like to do a lot of multi-tasking especially while having multiple windows per app.
I looked up Windows-style taskbars for macOS since a taskbar would show individual items for app windows that hopefully stay in the same location, which makes window switching very consistent and only requires one click. I obviously found uBar which is the most popular option. I used it for a while but found many bugs. Later I realized that it was barely being updated anymore, which is a shame because it seemed like it once was a decent option. That’s when I decided to create my own alternative.
It has been a great couple of years because I started by learning how to create macOS apps for the first time, then I spent about a year and a half developing it, and I enjoyed every day of that because I felt like I am creating something I really believe in and also something that I hope people will find useful and will allow them to be more productive with whatever they use their macOS computers for. Also, since I was very motivated, I came up with and continuously kept improving a very comprehensive quality assurance process that I now perform before making each release. This manual process is so extensive since it includes going through every possible feature in the app and checking that it works in every possible use case, and also checking every possible interaction between any two or more features in the app. This crazy process takes me about 8 hours to perform at this point, especially after adding multi-monitor support.
I feel very lucky that I came up with the idea for this app because it has never ceased to be a great motivator for me since the beginning and I don’t see an end point anytime soon. Even though I have a day job, I continue to work on Taskbar whenever I have any free time and it brings me a lot of joy. Thanks for reading if you got this far, and thanks for using Taskbar and I hope its quality makes you feel more comfortable and more productive. Cheers
Published on 2025-06-14
Lawand Dalatieh
Haven’t tried it yet? Taskbar is free until 19 December 2026.
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