Is there a Windows-style taskbar for macOS?
Not built in. The strip at the bottom of a Mac is the Dock, and while it looks like a taskbar, it does a different job. Here is where the two differ, how far System Settings will take you, and what the options are if you want taskbar behaviour.
How the Dock differs from a taskbar
1. The Dock is organized by app; a taskbar is organized by window
Open three folder windows on Windows and the taskbar shows three entries, each with its own title. On a Mac the Dock shows one Finder icon no matter how many windows are open. The small dot under the icon only means "this app is running" — not how many windows there are, or what they are.
2. The Dock does not show window titles
To read a title you have to right-click the icon and open a menu. A taskbar prints the title on the entry itself.
3. The Dock mixes running apps with shortcuts
The Dock does two jobs at once — shortcuts to apps you use often, and apps that are currently running — in a single row. A taskbar is mostly about what is open right now.
How far System Settings will take you
Under System Settings → Desktop & Dock (System Preferences → Dock & Menu Bar on macOS 12) you can change the Dock's position (bottom, left, right), its size, magnification and auto-hide, and you can turn off "Show recent applications in Dock".
All of that is appearance and placement. There is no setting that makes the Dock list entries per window, or show window titles.
Mission Control and Stage Manager are not replacements
They are Apple's answer, but they tidy your desktop rather than your switching: once they are done, you still have to look, think, and then click. Both are temporary views that do not stay on screen.
ABOUT TUNGSTEN EDGE
If you want taskbar behaviour, there are third-party tools
Several macOS tools keep a window list pinned to the edge of the screen. They all have one thing in common: they need the macOS Accessibility permission, which is the only way to read and manage other apps' windows.
Tungsten Edge is one of them. The idea is to combine the per-window clarity of a Windows taskbar with the compactness of the Dock:
- Multi-window apps split into individual labeled cards; one click takes you to that window
- Single-window apps stay collapsed as plain icons — this is the main departure from the Windows taskbar. Windows gives a single-window app an icon and a label, so a dozen open apps fill the strip; but you do not need a title to know which app an icon is
- A minimized window's card stays where it was — it does not move or vanish; only closing a window frees the slot
- In apps where tabs are windows (Finder, Ghostty), switching tabs leaves the card stable instead of splitting it
Things worth knowing first
- It needs the Accessibility permission, granted under System Settings → Privacy & Security → Accessibility.
- You can set the system Dock to auto-hide to free up the bottom edge, or keep both.
- It requires macOS 12 or later.
Try it
Tungsten Edge is free to download right now. It needs macOS 12 or later, runs natively on Apple Silicon and Intel, and is signed and notarized by Apple. It requires the macOS Accessibility permission to read and manage windows — every window-management tool on macOS needs that.
Download Tungsten Edge