Why I Created Taskbar
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 it 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 which 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 multi windows per app.
I looked up window-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 require 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 Later I realized that it’s no longer maintained, which is a shame because it seemed like it once was a decent option.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 bring 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
12 responses to “Taskbar ā Intro”
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Thanks for creating the app. It saves my day every day. There are many good things in mac and at the same time in windows too. Window management from all possible end user use cases are well implemented in windows than in mac. After using your app, I am kind of enjoying the benefits of both worlds especially the switching of windows use case.
Task bar actually provides a better mental map of the windows we want to switch without adding any effort to see and search. In Windows this is taken for granted and I never appreciated until I used Mac.
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Thanks for the nice comment. I’m glad you find Taskbar useful. Have a nice day
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Your Taskbar really is great! Especially with the new start menu which looks very promising.
What I kind of miss from the default dock is the ability to see all applications that are currently running but have no open windows. the dock would show a circle under the application logo, and then you can right click and quit the app. maybe you could add a second bar of applications with no open windows on the right side that fills to the left? I don’t know how needed that is for others though.
Some very small issues I have noticed:
- when i fullscreen an app (the real fullscreen, then on this screen moving the cursor to the bottom reveals the mac dock not the taskbar. apple probably has very strict rules around this fullscreen. I rarely use it anyway.
- very small aesthetic issue (advanced / auto-resize): when i use the other fullscreen (not sure how its called like. the one from Fill & Arrange) the window is first resized to also take up the space of the taskbar and then a short but noticeable amount of time later its resized again to not use this space. maybe there is a more native way to realize this? In combination with the taskbar hide feature its additionally a bit problematic as when the hide state changes, filled apps don’t resize. (win11’s taskbar and macs native dock changing state also leads to filled apps resizing). This is probably also very hard to do and maybe technically unfeasable as I understand it, you would need to change the visibleFrame but for this you would need privileged access to the WindowServer.
- some apps still show hidden window such as discord, you have added a feature to not show this hidden image. I think other applications do something similar (e. g. Ollama [for local AI-Models])
I hope I don’t sound too negative, as i really love your product. Those are mostly just really small quirks.
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Hello, thanks for the kind words, Iām glad you find my app useful. Also thank you for the feedback, some of those points have already been requested and some of them have not so I will keep them in mind, and when I get a chance I will add those points to the request repository so you can keep track of them there: https://github.com/lawand-dot-io/taskbar
Thanks again and have a nice day
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Thank you very much for this app.
I am like you. I changed the first time to Mac this year after working for years with Windows and Linux as a developer. I was astonished by the stability and efficiency, but Window Management and the Dock are simply not very user friendly.
With Taskbar and Alt-Tab I am now very happy to use the Mac for work.
You write about a version 2 and that it is paid. But I cannot see any way of downloading or paying it?
Thank you very much and keep it up
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Hello Kristian, thanks for your kind comment š version two is not yet available, I will keep extending version one until then, so the app will remain free in a way. In the meantime, if you donate the price of a license, I can guarantee you a free license when version two comes out and this way you would help support the development of this app. You don’t have to do this, I just thought I would mention it. Thanks and have a nice day
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Thank you so much for this Lawand! I have been using this for almost a year now I think and it has really improved my productivity by a lot! It’s very polished and you can tell it has been very well thought out and developed meticulously. Legend š
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Hello. Thank you very much for the positive comment. I’m happy you find my app useful š
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I’ve been using Taskbar for 6 months now, and am loving it! I definitely love being able to quickly switch between windows of the same app and ACTUALLY SEE what windows I have open! Keep up the good work and I’ll be happy to purchase whenever v2 comes out š
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Hello Jay. Thanks for the nice comment, I always feel good when I see that my app makes people more productive. Have a nice day. Lawand
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Just switched from windows and I had the same issues as you. I love mac and macos overall, but the dock seems like an ancient unproductive beast. After finding your app I can finally enjoy mac with the only good thing about windows, the taskbar. Thanks for making this and looking forward to supporting when V2 comes. Cheers
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Hello Joe. Thanks for the comment, I’m happy you find Taskbar useful. By the way have you seen the start menu beta: https://x.com/lawand_dot_io/status/1993360744251789538
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