Tungsten Edge compared to the other Mac window tools

"Make it easier to find my windows on a Mac" is really three different problems, solved by three different kinds of tool. Working out which kind you want first is more useful than comparing feature lists.

Three kinds of tool

• Persistent taskbars — replace the Dock and keep a window list along the edge of the screen. This is where Tungsten Edge sits.
• Dock enhancers — leave the Dock in place and add abilities to it, such as hover previews.
• Window switchers — a panel you summon with a keyboard shortcut, pick a window, and it disappears again. Nothing on screen the rest of the time.

The table below covers only the first kind. The other two are further down, under "Adjacent tools that do a different job".

Persistent taskbars: five compared

Facts about the others come from their own sites, fetched 2026-08-31: ubarapp.com, mac-taskbar.com, winstrix.app, lawand.io/taskbar. This kind of information changes — treat their sites as authoritative.

ABOUT TUNGSTEN EDGE

The trade Tungsten Edge makes: single-window apps collapse to icons

What all of these share is that every window gets its own place. The real split is elsewhere: should an app with only one window also spend a title slot?

The Windows taskbar says yes. Photoshop has one window, and the taskbar still gives it an icon and a label — so a dozen open apps pack the strip. Tungsten Edge makes the opposite trade: single-window apps stay collapsed as plain icons. You do not need a title to know which app an icon is, so the title slots go to the multi-window apps that actually need telling apart. The strip stays short even with a lot of windows open.

Two related behaviours: a minimized window's card stays where it was — it does not move or disappear, and only closing a window frees the slot; and in apps where tabs are windows (Finder, Ghostty), switching tabs leaves the card stable instead of splitting it into several.

Whether switching actually works is the real dividing line

A feature list is easy to read. Whether a click reliably lands is not. Anyone who has used tools in this category knows that "one click gets you there, cards do not jump around, windows do not flicker" is not a given.

That is where most of the work in Tungsten Edge has gone: 375 of its 1,198 unit tests cover window identification and switching. That is not a promise of perfection, but it does show which part is maintained as the main line rather than as an afterthought.

Adjacent tools that do a different job

These are not substitutes for Tungsten Edge. This section covers what each one does and when to pick it, and deliberately leaves out prices and system requirements — those change, and stale figures are worse than none.

Dock enhancers: they keep the Dock and add to it

ActiveDock fully replaces Apple's Dock and Launchpad, but keeps the icon metaphor: hovering an app icon pops up thumbnails of its windows, alongside app grouping, custom themes and icons, and a Start-menu-style launcher. It is the most feature-dense of these. If what you want is a Dock you can customize rather than a strip organized by window, it suits you better than Tungsten Edge does.

DockDoor is free and open source, and describes itself as "Previews and switching for the Dock you already use" — it does not replace the Dock at all. It adds window previews when you hover a Dock icon, plus a preview-rich replacement for Alt+Tab and Cmd+Tab, and the feature list is long (media controls, calendar, trackpad gestures, per-display Dock locking). If you actually like the Dock and only wish it could preview windows, DockDoor is exactly that, and Tungsten Edge is not.

Window switchers: summoned by a shortcut, nothing on screen otherwise

AltTab is free and open source (GPL-3.0) and is the most widely used of these. It brings the Windows Alt+Tab to macOS: hold the shortcut and pick from a grid of window thumbnails. A Pro tier adds search, more appearance styles and more shortcuts.

Contexts describes itself as a "Radically simpler & faster window switcher for Mac" and takes the search route: summon a panel, type a few characters to filter windows. It also has an auto-hiding sidebar that groups windows by Space.

Witch is the long-running utility from Many Tricks, tagline "⌘-Tab Everything". It switches between apps, windows and tabs, and lets you configure several separate switchers with their own sort order and orientation. It does not show live thumbnails.

When to pick one of the others

• You want to keep the Dock and only wish hovering showed window previews → DockDoor
• You just want a better Alt+Tab and no permanent strip on screen → AltTab; if you would rather type than look at thumbnails → Contexts; if you need tabs switched too → Witch
• You want a more customizable Dock (groups, themes, a launcher) rather than a per-window strip → ActiveDock
• You are on macOS older than 12 → uBar or Taskbar; Tungsten Edge will not install
• Multiple displays, and you want several rows per screen → Mac Taskbar
• You want the whole machine to behave like Windows (Start menu, system tray and snapping included) → Winstrix
• You want a persistent, per-window strip that does not spend a title slot on single-window apps → Tungsten Edge is worth a try

Related: How to see all open windows on a Mac · Is there a Windows-style taskbar for macOS? · Back to home