Native Instant Space Switching on macOS

Native Instant Space Switching on MacOS

The worst part about the MacOS window management situation is the inability to instantly switch spaces, and that Apple has continuously ignored requests to disable the nauseating switching animation. Sure, it’s not that long, but I switch spaces often enough to the point where it becomes very noticeable and drives me insane.

I believe to have found the best solution to instant space switching!

But before I show you, of course, other people share the same sentiment. I claim that none of the surveyed contemporary solutions, except for what I bring up at the end of this article, suffice for what I want:

• Enable the “Reduce motion” setting: This is always the default answer to this question online, and it doesn’t even solve the problem, but rather replaces it with an equally useless fade-in animation. It also has the side effect of activating the prefers-reduced-motion media query on web browsers.
• Install the yabai tiling window manager: It works pretty well, but there are two problems: yabai does this by binary patching a part of the operating system, which requires disabling System Integrity Protection (SIP). Secondly, it forces you to adopt its entire tiling window management philosophy.
• Use third-party virtual space managers: Options like FlashSpace and AeroSpace are available. They are not native to MacOS and feel unnecessary given that all we want to do is disable an animation.
• Pay for BetterTouchTool: You can enable “Move Right/Left Space (Without Animation)”, but it requires a paid license.

Introducing InstantSpaceSwitcher

I managed to find InstantSpaceSwitcher by jurplel on GitHub. It is a simple menu bar application that achieves instant space switching while offering none of the aforementioned drawbacks.

InstantSpaceSwitcher does not require disabling Security Integration Protection; it works by simulating a trackpad swipe with a large amount of velocity. It additionally allows you to instantly jump to a space number and provides a command line interface.

Installation Instructions

To install, run the following commands in your terminal:

$ git clone https://github.com/jurplel/InstantSpaceSwitcher
$ cd InstantSpaceSwitcher
$ ./build.sh

InstantSpaceSwitcher should now be available as a native application. The command line interface is available at:

$ .build/release/ISSCli --help
Usage: .build/release/ISSCli [left|right|index <n>]

I want more people to discover InstantSpaceSwitcher and consider it trustworthy; hence, please consider giving it a star on GitHub if you find it helpful.