# ChainYourMac changelog

Release notes for every version of ChainYourMac, newest first. HTML version: https://chainyourmac.com/changelog

## 2.4.5

- Each monitor gets its own windows back after sleep. With two monitors, waking the Mac could leave windows on the wrong monitor, stacks pulled apart, and ChainYourMac repeatedly rearranging things. While the Mac wakes, macOS can briefly list one monitor's desktops under the other, and ChainYourMac moved the windows across. Windows now wait for their own monitor to come back, and a desktop split between two monitors is put back together, with its columns, stacks and tabs as they were.

## 2.4.4 (2026-10-29)

- The ChainYourMac window always comes back. Sometimes, after it was closed, clicking the menu bar icon, the Dock icon or Settings… did nothing until ChainYourMac was restarted. It now always reopens, and appears on the desktop and screen you're using, even if it was last on another desktop or on a monitor that's no longer there.

## 2.4.3 (2026-10-23)

- Apps that take a while to start are no longer left out. An app that wasn't ready within a few seconds of launching (LibreOffice's first start, apps that begin in the menu bar) was given up on, and its windows stayed outside the strip for as long as it ran. ChainYourMac now waits for such apps and takes them on as soon as they're ready.
- A window that opens behind its app's welcome or tip dialog is shown. LibreOffice opens a new document together with a "Welcome" window; the document could land out of view, leaving only the dialog. It now comes into view.

## 2.4.2 (2026-10-22)

- No more gaps or overlaps when an app can't take a width. Some windows have a fixed width (System Settings) or can't be made narrower than a certain size (Preview). When you picked a width such an app couldn't take, the strip briefly left a gap, or let the next window overlap it, until the app answered. ChainYourMac now learns each window's limits the first time and lays it out at a width it can take straight away.

## 2.4.1 (2026-10-22)

- No more blinking with windows shown on every desktop. A window set to appear on all desktops (Options > Assign To > All Desktops, common for web apps) was laid out by every desktop's strip at once, and they kept moving it between them, so the strip flickered back and forth for good. Such a window now belongs to the strip you are looking at.
- No more small twitch after moves. Some apps (Dia, Chrome and others) report a window a few points short of where it was just moved, a moment late; ChainYourMac took that for news and nudged the window back. It now recognises those late reports and leaves the window where it is.
- Windows that stopped following the strip move again. An app can change the handle macOS gives other apps for one of its windows (seen after minimizing and restoring a window), so moves silently went nowhere and the window stayed on screen. ChainYourMac now notices and finds the window again.

## 2.4.0 (2026-10-21)

- Smoother with apps that resize in their own time. Some apps (Blender among them, and others that draw their own windows) apply a new window size a moment late. ChainYourMac took the delay for a refusal and kept correcting it, so the strip jittered back and forth and the window could end up at a size that didn't fit. It now gives such apps a moment to catch up: no more jitter, and Blender tiles like any other app.

## 2.3.9 (2026-10-21)

- Stacked and tabbed columns survive sleep. When a Mac wakes, macOS often reports a display as gone for a moment; ChainYourMac used to rebuild that display's columns as single windows. They now come back exactly as they were.
- Waking with fewer screens than you went to sleep with (a MacBook taken off its monitors) no longer leaves ChainYourMac unresponsive until a restart. A display that wakes up late is picked up on its own, and the windows from a monitor that's gone move over with their stacks and tabs intact.
- Clearer Mac Setup advice for the trackpad: turning off "Swipe between full-screen applications" also turns off the 3-finger desktop swipe, and Mac Setup now says so and shows how to keep it.

## 2.3.8 (2026-10-21)

- File dialogs that slide down from a window (Open, Save, Upload in a browser) stay on screen. Dragged wider than a narrow window, one could run off the edge of the screen; the strip now moves just enough to keep all of it in view, and settles back once it closes.
- Preset window widths can be changed in Settings: click a width to edit it, or + to add your own (10–100%). Before, + always added 50% and the widths couldn't be edited.

## 2.3.7 (2026-10-20)

- Pinned columns stay put without the jumpy animation: windows moving out of view beside a pinned column no longer slide across it, and they wait until the next window has slid in, so no gap opens up.
- You can see which column is pinned: a thin blue line beside it and a pin on its tile in the strip minimap. Switch it off with Pin Indicator in Settings.
- Hold ⌃⌥ and scroll to move through the strip: one window per notch of a mouse wheel, or per short trackpad scroll. Pick other keys (⌥⌘, ⌃⌘) or turn it off in Settings › Gestures & Mouse.
- New shortcut ⌃⌥S shows the strip minimap, and keeps it up while you hold the keys: click a window in it to jump there. It works even with the automatic minimap turned off.

## 2.3.6 (2026-10-20)

- Tabbed columns now have a real tab bar: each window gets a tab with its app's icon and title, the one in front highlighted. Click a tab to bring that window forward (⌃⌥↑ / ⌃⌥↓ still work too). The windows in a tabbed column are a little shorter to make room. Prefer the old thin bar? Set tab_bar_titles = false in the configuration.
- Clicks on a tab bar could fall through to the window behind on some Macs (the Dock keeps an invisible full-screen window that was mistaken for one in the way). Tab clicks now register reliably.

## 2.3.5 (2026-10-19)

- Closing a PDF in Preview on macOS 27 could leave an empty space in the strip until Preview was quit. Preview doesn't announce that the window closed, so ChainYourMac kept its place. ChainYourMac now notices a window that has disappeared and closes the gap within about a second.

## 2.3.4 (2026-10-17)

- Windows of some apps (Microsoft Teams, Claude, Orca and others) could glide in diagonally from a corner of the screen and trail behind the rest of the strip. A macOS accessibility setting, switched on for those apps by tools such as dictation or grammar apps, makes them animate every move themselves. ChainYourMac now turns it off while it moves their windows and back on right after, so they slide straight into place and your other tools keep working.

## 2.3.3 (2026-10-16)

- Some apps (Electron apps like Orca, among others) briefly report their old hidden position just after ChainYourMac brings them back on screen. ChainYourMac took that as the window being moved, rearranged the strip around the corner, and the window crawled out of it after a pause. Those late reports are now ignored, so windows slide straight into place.

## 2.3.2 (2026-10-16)

- Native tabs: opening several tabs quickly (⌘T in Finder, Terminal and others) could leave a tab with a column of its own, which showed as an empty space in the strip. Every new tab now joins its window's column.

## 2.3.1 (2026-10-16)

- Keyboards outside the US (Italian, German, French and others): Stack Left, Unstack, Stack Right and Unstack to the Left now work. Their shortcuts use "]" and "[", which these layouts only type with Option, so they were skipped. They now use the two keys to the right of P, like on a US keyboard. Nothing to change on your side.
- The settings window no longer keeps using CPU after you close it.

## 2.3.0 (2026-10-15)

- Pin a column: ⌃⌥P keeps the focused window at the left edge of the screen, ⌃⌥⇧P at the right, full height, while the rest of the strip scrolls beside it. Press the same shortcut again to unpin. Your own shortcuts stay as they are; these two are added where the keys are free.
- The strip indicator is interactive: hold ⌃⌥ to keep it on screen, click a tile to jump to that window, or drag a tile to reorder columns.
- Native macOS tabs (Finder, Terminal, TextEdit…) take one column instead of one column per tab.
- Dialogs, Quick Look and image previews float on their own instead of joining the strip.
- New option, Keep Original Height (Settings → Layout): windows keep the height they opened with instead of filling the screen top to bottom.
- Smoother swipes: windows coming in from off-screen glide in with the strip, and a quick change of direction keeps following your fingers, also at the first and last window.
- After sleep, a locked screen or displays waking up, ChainYourMac sets itself up again on its own. No more restarting it after a wake.
- Click a tab in a tabbed column's bar to switch to it.
- An app that keeps refusing a window size no longer makes the strip twitch: ChainYourMac now lets it have its size.
- Windows that wrongly stayed floating (seen with Chrome and Slack) join the strip once they're ready.

## 2.2.5 (2026-10-13)

- Licensing groundwork; no changes to how ChainYourMac works for you.

## 2.2.4 (2026-10-13)

- New strip indicator: when you move around, a frosted bar shows every column of the strip as a tile with its app's icon, in order. The focused one is outlined in your accent colour, columns out of view are faded, and a stacked or tabbed column shows its windows' icons together.
- Shortcuts sent by other apps now work: BetterTouchTool, Keyboard Maestro, Raycast and AppleScript can drive ChainYourMac exactly like keys you type.
- Dim Inactive Windows fades smoothly from one window to the next, and no longer flashes off while the strip slides (or leaves a window undimmed afterwards).

## 2.2.3 (2026-10-12)

- Fixed: windows of an app you hid (⌘H) or a window you minimized could glide diagonally out of the bottom corner of the screen when they came back. They now slide in from the screen edge like every other window.
- Fixed: dragging a file to a window that is out of view. Switching to that app (⌘-Tab) while you hold the file now brings its window into view right away, so you can drop onto it.

## 2.2.2 (2026-10-12)

- Smoother slides with apps like Xcode, browsers and terminals: the window now starts gliding instantly, and its app is brought to the front once it lands. Switching apps at the start of a slide made apps pause their windows for a few frames, so slides could stutter.
- Fixed: clicking a window could lose focus to another one. A click during a slide now always wins, and with Focus Follows Mouse a window that slides under a resting pointer no longer takes focus.
- New: Swipe Settles (Settings → Gestures & Mouse). "Snap" (default) brings the strip to a clean resting position after a swipe, a window flush left, centred or flush right; "Free" leaves it where your fingers left it.
- New: Show in Dock (Settings → General). Turn it off to keep ChainYourMac in the menu bar only; the Dock icon appears while its window is open.

## 2.2.1 (2026-10-12)

- Updates install themselves: new versions download in the background and install at a quiet moment (when your Mac has been idle for a while and the ChainYourMac window is closed), keeping your windows where they are. "Restart to Install Update" in the menu bar does it right away.
- ChainYourMac now checks for updates every 6 hours.

## 2.2.0 (2026-10-12)

- Twice as smooth on ProMotion: windows now move at 120fps on 120Hz displays (they ran at 60fps whenever a 60Hz monitor was the main display), and slides finish faster, without the slow crawl at the end.
- New: Animation setting (Settings → Configuration → Appearance): Smooth, Fast or Instant.
- Resizing (⌃⌥R, Full Width, Wider/Narrower) happens in one step: the window gets its new size and place at once and its neighbours glide out of the way. Shrinking the last window no longer scrolls the strip.
- Fixed: a window sliding off screen could flash at the screen edge for a moment before it was tucked away.

## 2.1.5 (2026-10-12)

- Fixed: a centred window stays centred while you work on another display. With "Center focused column: Always", or after ⌃⌥C, the strip you left used to slide flush with its first or last window a moment after you clicked a window on your other monitor.

## 2.1.4 (2026-10-12)

- Fixed: with monitors stacked one above the other, the edges of windows scrolled out of view showed on the other monitor. Hidden windows now stay on their own display, as a 1pt sliver in a bottom corner (it used to be a 40pt tab), and come back at the right size.

## 2.1.3 (2026-10-11)

- New: jump straight to a window by its place in the strip, like a browser's tabs. ⌃⌥1 to ⌃⌥8 go to that window, ⌃⌥9 to the last one. Add ⇧ (⌃⌥⇧1…9) to move the focused window to that place. Change them in Shortcuts → Jump by Number.
- Fixed: windows stacked in one column stay the same width. When an app has a minimum width (GitHub Desktop, for one), the column no longer gets narrower than it, so nothing sticks out over the next column. Narrower, Wider and Resize now always size the whole stack together.
- Fixed: closing a floating window (a dialog, the ChainYourMac window) left an empty slot in the strip that ⌃⌥← / ⌃⌥→ could land on.

## 2.1.2 (2026-10-11)

- Fixed: some apps (Figma among them) were let go a few seconds after they opened. Their window floated on top of the strip and no shortcut could reach it. Every app you open now joins the strip and stays.
- Fixed: after closing the ChainYourMac window, Settings… (in the menu bar), ⌘, and the Dock icon couldn't open it again. They all do now.
- The strip minimap is smaller and less in the way.
- The About screen now credits Paneru, the open-source engine ChainYourMac is built on, with its MIT license.

## 2.1.1 (2026-10-07)

- Fixed: with "Mouse Follows Focus" on, clicking a window moved the pointer to the middle of the screen, away from where you clicked. The pointer now stays exactly where you click; it only follows focus when you switch windows with the keyboard or a swipe.

## 2.1.0 (2026-10-06)

- Fixed: apps in the background no longer take over your screen. A chat app or editor opening a window behind you used to steal focus and scroll the strip away from what you were working in. Their windows now join the end of the strip quietly.
- Fixed: a window you just opened is always shown straight away (it could land hidden off screen), and ChainYourMac now starts in step with the window macOS really has focused.
- Fixed: windows come back to the right place. Unhiding an app (⌘H) keeps the order and keeps floating windows floating; leaving full screen and un-floating put a window back in its own slot; minimizing or hiding no longer scrolls the strip to a guessed window.
- Fixed: Resize and Full Width work on every press (they sometimes needed two), and windows no longer end up at ragged, short heights.
- Fixed: you can drag a window that is partly off screen; it no longer slides out from under the pointer.
- Fixed: Restart no longer flies every window on and off the screen, and windows you floated stay floating after a restart. Quitting puts hidden windows back on screen tidily instead of in one pile.
- Two displays side by side: a window that would hang over onto the other screen now snaps flush with the edge.
- New: switch ChainYourMac off for any display (Configuration › Displays). Windows on that display are left exactly where you put them.
- Fixed-size windows (like Calculator) and ChainYourMac's own window now float instead of being squeezed into the strip. Window rules also apply when a window's title changes after it opens.
- Tabbed columns show a small tab bar, and every tab fills the column.
- New default shortcuts for new installs use ⌃⌥ (Control-Option), so ⌥← / ⌥→ and ⌥ + a letter keep working for typing. Your own shortcuts are kept; the Shortcuts page offers a one-click switch. Focus follows mouse is now off by default.
- New first-run guide that teaches the strip and the five shortcuts you need. Redesigned Overview, Actions, Configuration, Shortcuts and Help: Actions now act on your last window, the rule editor has an app picker, the shortcut editor warns before taking a macOS shortcut or one already in use, and Help answers "How do I…" questions.
- Mac Setup now warns when another window manager or snapping app (Rectangle, Magnet, OneMenu, Loop and others) is running.

## 2.0.4 (2026-09-24)

- Fixed: trackpad swipes that barely moved and snapped back, so that only a very fast flick changed windows. On Macs where macOS's own desktop swipe is turned off, about four in ten trackpad events arrive without any finger data, and each of those was taken as the hand lifting, which cut every swipe into 40 ms pieces. Now only fingers actually lifting end a swipe: the strip follows the whole motion, slow or fast, then glides to the nearest window.
- New: Mac Setup. ChainYourMac now checks the macOS settings it depends on and shows, for each one, why it matters, exactly where to change it and a button that opens that page in System Settings. Items tick green by themselves as you fix them. It covers Accessibility, where the app is installed, trackpad swipes that macOS also uses to switch desktops or go back a page, Three Finger Drag, Mission Control, Stage Manager, macOS window tiling and multiple displays. Find it in the sidebar, in the menu bar and during first-time setup.
- The swipe setting now warns you live when macOS would grab the same swipe, and can switch the strip to the free finger count in one click.
- "Open Configuration" is now "Settings…" (⌘,) and opens the app's settings. Hold ⌥ in the menu bar menu to reveal the raw config file.

## 2.0.3 (2026-09-23)

- Fixed: with a second display arranged below the main one, windows came back from off screen shorter than the screen (they no longer filled it top to bottom, and Option-F only fixed one at a time). Hidden windows were parked in a bottom corner that sat on the other display, where macOS shrank them to fit, and that size was then kept as if the app had insisted on it. Windows are now parked in a corner with nothing under it, a size macOS forced on a hidden or moving window is never taken for the app's choice, and a window sent to another display is sized once it has arrived there.

## 2.0.2 (2026-09-23)

- Fixed: trackpad swipes moved the strip a little and then snapped it back, or lagged behind the fingers. Two causes: the strip's own moves were being mistaken for someone else moving the windows and "corrected" mid-swipe, and a finger briefly reading as lifted (or a resting thumb) ended the swipe. Swipes now follow your fingers until you lift your hand, extra fingers ride along, and nothing re-tiles while you swipe.

## 2.0.1 (2026-09-23)

- Fixed: the 3- and 4-finger trackpad swipe did nothing. Swipes arrived but their fingers could not be read, so every swipe was ignored. The strip now follows your fingers again. (Thanks, Muhannad, for the detailed report.)
- Vertical swipes stay with Mission Control, as before.

## 2.0 (2026-09-17)

A free update for everyone who owns ChainYourMac. Your licence, your settings and your Accessibility permission all carry over — drag the new app into Applications, replace the old one, open it. That's it.

### The short version

ChainYourMac 2.0 is a ground-up rebuild of the engine. Switching windows is immediate, the animation is locked to your display's refresh, multi-monitor setups behave, and there is a long list of new things you can do with your strip: stacks that work in both directions, tabbed columns, gaps, a minimap, trackpad swiping, drag-to-reorder, session restore, launch at login and automatic updates.

### Faster and smoother

- Shortcuts respond instantly. Previously a shortcut pressed after a few seconds of not touching the mouse could take a noticeable moment to register. That delay is gone.
- The slide starts the moment you press the key, instead of waiting for macOS to report that focus changed.
- Animation is synchronised to your display's refresh and follows an exact spring curve, so motion is even instead of slightly juddery — and it keeps its momentum if you press another shortcut mid-slide.
- A slow app can no longer stall everyone else. Heavy apps (Electron apps such as Discord or Slack, big IDEs) used to freeze the whole strip for a moment whenever they were moved; now each app is driven independently.
- Near-zero CPU when idle.

### Multiple monitors

- Each display has its own strip, and windows stay on their own display.
- Fixed: windows that had scrolled out of view peeking out at the bottom of the screen.
- Fixed: minimizing, restoring, floating or opening a window acting on the wrong display's strip.
- Changing resolution, re-arranging displays, plugging/unplugging a monitor and waking from sleep now re-tile cleanly.
- Drag a window to another display and it joins that display's strip.

### New: layout

- Stacks in both directions. Put the focused window into the column on its left (Option ]) or on its right, pop it back out to either side, and move it up and down inside the stack.
- Adjustable stack heights: taller, shorter and equalize.
- Tabbed columns: several windows share one full-height column; move between them with focus up / down.
- Finer width control: wider / narrower, in addition to the preset widths (Option R) and full width (Option F).
- Gaps: choose the space between windows and at the screen edges.
- Dock-aware: windows no longer slide underneath the Dock.
- Centre the focused column: never, only when it would not fit, or always.
- The strip no longer comes to rest showing empty desktop past its ends.
- Minimized and hidden windows return to the slot they came from. Upgrading? Your existing shortcuts are untouched, and nothing new is bound behind your back: open Shortcuts and assign keys to the new actions you want. (Fresh installs come with a full default set.) An action can now have several shortcuts, and a shortcut that is already in use can be re-recorded without deleting it first.

### New: see where you are

- Strip minimap: a small overview of all your columns appears while you navigate and fades away afterwards.
- Focus border: an optional coloured border around the focused window (off by default; colour, width and corner radius are adjustable).
- Dim inactive windows (optional).

### New: mouse and trackpad

- Trackpad swipe: swipe sideways with three or four fingers and the strip follows your fingers, then glides to the nearest window.
- Drag to reorder: drag a window by its title bar and drop it where you want it in the strip.
- Resizing a window with the mouse is respected: neighbours close up around the new size when you let go.

### New: the app

- Settings apply instantly — there is no Save button to forget.
- Launch at login, and start the window manager automatically.
- Automatic updates: from now on ChainYourMac can update itself (ChainYourMac > Check for Updates…).
- Session restore: your column order, stacks and tabs survive a restart of the window manager.
- If the window manager stops unexpectedly the app now tells you why, shows the log, and restarts it for you.
- Saving settings keeps your comments and any custom keys in the config file, and window rules with special characters no longer break it.
- Automation: a chainyourmac:// URL scheme, ready-made Raycast script commands, and a `chainyourmac` command-line tool (Help > Integrations).
- Quitting or stopping the window manager brings every off-screen window back onto the screen.
- ChainYourMac is now notarized by Apple: it opens with a normal double click, no right-click > Open needed.

### Fixes

- Stacked windows overlapped by the height of the menu bar.
- Apps that refuse a size (fixed-size windows like System Settings, terminals that snap to their character grid) no longer leave the layout and the focus border out of step with the real window.
- An occasional endless re-arranging loop that used CPU in the background.
- Shortcuts did nothing when no window had focus.
- A shortcut with an unrecognised key name was silently bound to the A key.
- Newly launched apps are picked up more reliably, including ChainYourMac's own window.
- Many smaller stability fixes.

### Good to know

- Requires macOS 13 or later on a Mac with Apple silicon (M1 or newer).
- macOS never lets another app push a window completely off screen, so a small tab of a hidden window can be visible in a bottom corner of the display. That is a system limit, not a bug; setting "Gap at Screen Edges" to 0 tucks almost all of it behind your windows.
- Fresh installs use Option-based shortcuts (Option H/J/K/L or Option + arrows) so that Command H, Command L and the arrow keys keep working in your apps. Existing setups keep their shortcuts.
- ChainYourMac no longer pulls windows out of macOS full screen. Full-screen video, games and presentations are left alone.
- Shortcuts are recorded by the character on your keyboard, so they work on AZERTY, QWERTZ, Dvorak and other non-US layouts.