Every feature, explained.

Type a question mark in keytide's search and describe the task in your own words: “set me up for a client call”, “writing mode”, “coding on github.com”, “plan my week”. keytide answers with a proposed workspace: the apps you'll need, any links you mentioned, and how the windows should sit, such as the first two apps side by side or one big window in the middle.

With Apple Intelligence turned on, keytide asks the on-device model what the task needs (a video call, a calendar, somewhere to take notes), and then its own index of your apps picks the installed app for each need. The model never names apps itself, so it can't suggest one you don't have. If you already have a workspace or saved layout that fits, it's offered first.

Without Apple Intelligence (or with it switched off for Ask), keytide matches your words to what your apps do, using each app's own category and the files it opens, plus a set of task templates for calls, writing, coding, design, email, research, photos, video, music and planning.

Most of us have rituals: mail, chat and the calendar every morning, the editor, terminal and browser after lunch. keytide notices them. When the same three or more apps open within about ten minutes of each other, on at least three different days, at a similar time of day, that's a habit.

keytide then suggests it as a workspace, named after the apps and the time (“You often open Inbox, Chat and Planner around 9:00”). Save it and it's an ordinary workspace: one key opens all of them. If you like, keytide can also open it for you at that time on the weekdays it saw you do it.

Groups that a workspace already covers, suggestions you dismissed, keytide itself, Finder and the apps you protect are skipped, so you only see something new.

Every 15 minutes while you're using your Mac, keytide quietly notes which apps are open, which are hidden, where their windows are and which workspace is active. It also takes a note just before a workspace opens and before a restore, so whatever you had a moment ago is never lost.

The Time machine window shows those notes on a 24-hour ruler for each of the last seven days. Scrub along it and a to-scale preview shows your desk at that moment. Restore it and keytide opens the apps that were open and puts every window back where it was, optionally hiding everything that wasn't there. Or save that moment as a workspace.

Snapshots are skipped while you're away (more than 15 minutes idle) and when nothing changed within the hour, so the history stays short and useful.

When keytide opens, every icon springs into place from a point pulled toward your pointer, each one a moment after its neighbour, nearest first. The whole wave takes under a third of a second, so it feels alive without ever slowing you down.

Paging is physical too. Two fingers on the trackpad move the pages one to one; let go and your finger's speed carries on into a spring. A flick turns a page, a really strong flick turns two, and the first and last pages stretch a little and bounce back instead of stopping dead.

Shake to open: move the pointer quickly left and right, three or four times, and the grid opens wherever you are. Pick how much shaking it takes: gentle, normal or firm.

Voice: hold ⌃⌥K and talk. Say an app (“keytide, open Safari”, “open Notes”), a workspace (“open my Writing workspace”), a search (“search for invoices”), “show the grid” or “close the workspace”. Let go and keytide does it. A small badge shows that it's listening and what it heard.

Speech is recognised on your Mac: with macOS 26's speech engine when your language's model is installed (keytide downloads it in the background), otherwise with the older recogniser set to on-device only.

macOS Focus modes can now shape keytide. For each Focus you choose some folders and workspaces, or “only this workspace's apps”. While that Focus is on, the grid, the workspace bar, the menu bar menu, the menu bar launcher and ⌘1–9 all show just that. When the Focus ends, everything comes back on its own.

Distractions don't disappear from your Mac, they just aren't one click away while you're trying to concentrate.

keytide puts your workspaces and folders into Spotlight. Press ⌘Space, type “Writing” and your Writing workspace is a result: Return runs it. Search for a folder and it opens in the grid. Change a workspace and Spotlight follows.

Siri and the Shortcuts app understand keytide too: “Open my Coding workspace in keytide”, “Ask keytide”, “Open the desk time machine in keytide”, “Start a focus session in keytide” and “Close the workspace in keytide”. Every keytide action is also in the Shortcuts app for your own automations.

macOS 26 replaced Launchpad with an Apps view that sorts itself. keytide brings back the grid you arrange: drag an icon anywhere, across pages, and it stays there. New apps you install appear on their own at the end.

Pages turn with a two-finger swipe, a mouse wheel, the arrow keys or the dots underneath. Drag an icon to the left or right edge and hold for a moment to carry it to the next page.

Drag an app onto the middle of another and they become a folder, already named from what they are (two design apps make a Creative folder). Drop more apps on it to add them. There's no limit on folders or on what goes in them.

A folder opens in a glass panel. Click its name to rename it, drag apps to reorder them, or drag one out of the panel to take it out. Folder style gives it a colour (glass, teal, blue, purple, pink, orange, green, graphite), an emoji instead of the mini icons, or a cover picture of your own. Break up folder puts its apps back on the grid.

Tidying a big Mac one icon at a time is slow. Hold ⌘ and click apps to select them (each gets a check mark), then right-click any of them for Put 3 apps in a new folder or Hide 3 apps.

Selection works across the page and inside search results, so you can type “game”, ⌘-click the five results that are games, and file them together without hunting through pages. The new folder appears on the grid ready to rename; hiding several at once is the quickest way to clear helper apps out of the grid. Either action is a single step in Layout history, so one Restore undoes it.

Three one-click tidy-ups: Alphabetically, By Use (most opened first, counted on your Mac), and Into Folders by Category, which reads each app's own category and makes folders such as Developer, Creative, Productivity and Utilities. The result is an ordinary grid: move things, rename folders, change your mind.

The welcome window offers the same choices the first time, so a fresh Mac starts tidy.

If your Mac still has the Launchpad database from before macOS 26, keytide reads it and rebuilds your grid: the same pages, the same folders with the same names, in the same order. Your years of arranging aren't lost.

Coming from another launcher instead? keytide finds the layouts of popular launchers on your Mac and reads them, and it can read the JSON or property-list backup files they export, as long as they list apps by path or bundle ID.

Every Mac has apps you never launch from a grid: updaters, helpers, uninstallers. Right-click › Hide and they're gone from keytide (not from your Mac). Settings › Apps › Hidden apps lists them with a Show button.

Rename… changes only the name keytide shows. Leave it empty to go back to the app's own name; Settings › Apps › Renamed apps lists every rename with Reset.

keytide notes each change you make to the grid (made a folder, sorted A–Z, imported, moved out of a folder) with the date and time. Settings › Backup & History › Layout history lists them, and Restore takes the grid back to that moment. The clean-up that went too far is never permanent.

Saved layouts are whole grids you keep by name: one for work, one for the weekend, one for presenting. Switch with a click, from the grid's right-click menu, or with a keytide://layout/<name> link.

Above the grid sits a small row of apps. By default it's Suggested for now: keytide ranks your apps by the time of day, the day of the week, the workspace you're in and what you opened recently, so the morning row looks different from the evening one. On day one it starts from macOS's own record of when you last used each app.

Prefer something simpler? Switch it to Recently opened, Most used or Newest apps, or turn it off.

Under the name matches, keytide lists Apps for “…”: apps that do what you typed. It knows this from each app's own information: its App Store category, the kinds of files it opens and whether it handles web links or mail. So “web browser” finds every browser you have, and “open pdf” every app that opens PDFs.

It works for tasks as well as categories: “write code”, “take notes”, “listen to music”, “edit video”, “budget”. Matches by name always come first, then the apps for what you typed, under their own heading, so a typo-tolerant name match never gets pushed down by a purpose match.

Type maths into the search and the result shows straight away. keytide has its own calculator: + − × ÷, powers (^), percentages, brackets, square roots, sin, cos, tan, log, ln and pi. Return copies the answer to the clipboard.

There's no mode to switch into: if what you type is a sum, the answer appears above the files, and app matches still show if any name fits. It's handy for the quick sums you'd otherwise open a calculator app for, without leaving the keyboard.

Type a colon and a word (:rocket, :party, :heart) and keytide shows matching emoji. Click one, or press Return for the first, and it's on your clipboard.

Names come from the Unicode standard, so the word you think of usually works: “:heart”, “:fire”, “:thumbs”, “:coffee”, “:party”. Matching emoji show in a row as you type, and Return copies the first, so a colon, a word and Return is all it takes. The emoji goes on the clipboard, ready to paste into any app.

When you type, keytide also asks Spotlight for matching files in your home folder and lists them under the apps. Click one to open it. Each row has Quick Look, Show in Finder, Copy and Move to Trash (Put Back in Finder restores it). If no app matches, Return opens the first file.

Results update as you type, a moment after the app matches, and show the folder each file lives in so you can tell two “Invoice” files apart. Folders are listed too and open in Finder. Because it reads Spotlight's index rather than scanning your disk, results are quick.

Letter hints make any app on screen two keystrokes away, with no searching and no mouse. Press Tab and every visible icon (on the page, in an open folder or in search results) gets a yellow label. Labels start on the home row (AA, AS, AD, AF…), so most apps are under your fingers already.

Hints follow what's on screen: on page two they label page two; with a folder open they label the folder; after a search they label the results, so “Tab, A, S” always means the second thing you can see. A wrong second letter simply resets, and the yellow label greys out on icons that no longer match what you've typed.

keytide can be used without ever touching the trackpad. The arrows move a highlight through the grid and turn the page at its edges; Return opens; Esc steps back one level at a time (clears a selection, closes a folder, clears the search, then closes keytide).

Workspaces are on ⌘1–9, ⌘0 shows every app while a Focus filter or focused workspace narrows the grid, ⌘Y opens the desk time machine, ⌘S saves an Ask proposal, ⌘⇧S saves a suggested workspace, ⌘, opens Settings and ⌘W closes keytide.

Arrange a workspace's windows once, the way you like them: halves, thirds, a big main window with helpers beside it, across two displays. Then Save current window positions. Next time the workspace opens, keytide puts every window back in that spot.

keytide saves each window's position and size, app by app, in the workspace. When the workspace opens, the apps' windows are put back into those frames, across displays if that's how you arranged them. Change your mind later? Arrange again and save again; Clear forgets the layout and lets apps open wherever they like.

Got everything perfect for a task? Capture it. From what's open makes a new workspace with every app open now, and optionally their window positions, the Finder folders you have open, and the tabs open in Safari, Chrome, Brave, Edge or Arc.

Everything goes into an ordinary workspace you can edit afterwards: drop an app, add a link, set a shortcut or a trigger. Browser tabs come back as the workspace's links and Finder folders as its folders. It's the quickest way to make a workspace: set things up once by hand, then capture it.

A focus session is a workspace with a timer. Start one and a countdown shows in the grid's workspace bar (and in the hovernotch island, if you use it). When it ends, keytide closes the workspace the way you chose and brings back what it hid.

The countdown runs in the workspace chip under the grid, and you can close early at any time with Close. If you use hovernotch, the notch shows a ring counting down too. The Shortcuts action takes any length from 1 to 600 minutes, so a session can be part of a morning routine or a calendar-driven automation.

When you're done, Close the workspace from the chip in the workspace bar, the menu bar or the notch. keytide quits the apps the workspace opened (or hides them, or leaves them, your choice), shows again the apps it hid, and reopens the ones it quit. Switching to another workspace closes the previous one first.

keytide remembers what it changed when the workspace opened: which apps it launched, which it hid and which it quit. Closing reverses exactly that and nothing else, so apps you opened yourself in the meantime stay as they are. Apps quit normally, which means any app with unsaved work asks you first.

A workspace can open itself. Schedule: pick days and a time (weekdays at 9:00). Display: when a display whose name contains what you typed is connected, such as your desk monitor. Focus: when a Focus such as Work turns on.

Focus works through a one-step Shortcuts automation (“When Work turns on” › Open URL keytide://focus/Work; the editor shows the exact link), or directly if you give keytide Full Disk Access.

keytide always opens on the display with your pointer. Turn on per-display layouts and each display keeps its own grid: creative tools on the big studio display, the essentials on the laptop.

With per-display layouts on, each display's grid is its own file with its own Layout history, named after the display. Plug the laptop into a different monitor and that monitor gets its own grid the first time; the layout you made for your desk monitor is waiting whenever you're back at your desk.

The fastest way in. ⌥Space works in every app; press it again, Esc or ⌘W, or click outside the grid to close. Record any other shortcut you like.

The shortcut is a system-wide hot key, so it works whatever app is in front, including full-screen apps, with no permission to grant. It toggles: the same keys close keytide again. Pick something your hands find without looking; ⌥Space is the default because it sits right where your thumb already is. Ask keytide, the desk time machine and voice have their own optional shortcuts too.

Older Apple keyboards have a Launchpad key on F4. keytide claims it, so the key that opened Launchpad now opens keytide. It also works with plain F4 when your F-keys act as standard function keys.

keytide registers the key the same way it registers its hotkey, so there's no Input Monitoring prompt. Switch it off in Settings if you'd rather keep F4 for something else.

Choose a corner. Push the pointer into it on any display and keytide opens. A short pause (under a fifth of a second) means passing through the corner by accident doesn't fire it, and it won't fire again until you leave the corner.

It watches the pointer position only, on every display, with no special permission. Leave the corner and come back to open it again. keytide's corner is separate from macOS's own hot corners, so if you already use top left for Mission Control, choose another corner for keytide.

The Launchpad gesture, back. Pinch in with four fingers on the trackpad to open the grid, and spread them to close it.

keytide listens for the four-finger pinch the trackpad already recognises and opens or closes the grid in response, like Launchpad did. It's marked experimental because it reads raw trackpad input to spot the gesture, and some two-finger zoom pinches can look similar. If it ever misfires, switch it off: every other way of opening keytide is unaffected.

Click the Dock icon and the grid opens, like Launchpad. Click the menu bar icon for the mini launcher: a small panel with search (start with ? to ask), suggested and recent apps, a suggested workspace, your workspaces with Close, and Open the grid. For when full screen is too much.

Right-click (or ⌥-click) the menu bar icon for the menu: Open keytide, workspaces, suggestions, Ask keytide…, Time Machine…, Workspaces…, Settings…, keytide Pro… and Quit keytide.

hovernotch turns the MacBook notch into a small island. With the link on, it shows a keytide card: a button that opens the grid, the active workspace with a Close button, and a ring that counts down a focus session.

The card is live: when a workspace opens or closes, the notch updates, and a focus session's ring counts down in real time. keytide talks to hovernotch through hovernotch's own local connection on your Mac, with a token kept in your Keychain; nothing goes over the internet.

Connect a game controller and it drives keytide: the Menu or Home button opens and closes it (even when another app is in front), the d-pad or left stick moves through the grid, A opens and B goes back.

It works with the controllers macOS supports: Xbox, PlayStation and MFi pads. Movement repeats at a steady pace while you hold a direction, and moving off the edge of the page turns to the next one. It's ideal for a Mac connected to a TV, where reaching for a keyboard to open an app breaks the moment.

The Shortcuts app has keytide actions: Show keytide, Open Workspace, Start Focus Session, Close Workspace, Ask keytide and Open Desk Time Machine. Use them in your own shortcuts and automations.

Anything that can open a URL can drive keytide: keytide://open, toggle, close, settings, workspace/<name>, focus/<Focus name>, focus-session/<name>?minutes=25, search?q=…, layout/<name>, ask?q=… and time-machine.

For people who live in the Terminal. Install a small keytide command and type keytide workspace Coding, keytide focus Coding 50, keytide search notes, keytide ask writing mode, keytide layout Work, keytide time-machine or keytide workspaces to list them.

The command is a short shell script that turns its arguments into keytide:// links and opens them, so everything it does is exactly what a link or a Shortcut would do. Workspace and layout names with spaces work as typed (keytide workspace Client calls). Use it in shell aliases, git hooks or project start-up scripts.

Right-click any app in the grid and the menu adapts to it. Open Recent lists the documents macOS remembers for that app, so you skip the app's own start screen. If the app is running: Windows (bring one specific window to the front), Hide / Show, Quit and Force Quit.

Always there: Open, Show in Finder, Copy Path, Rename…, Choose Icon…, Hide, Add to Workspace and Uninstall….

Not every file should open in its default app. Drag one from Finder or your desktop onto an app's icon in keytide and it opens there. You can also drag an app out of keytide to the Dock or a Finder window.

While you hold a file over an icon, the icon grows and gets a ring so you know where it'll land; drop it elsewhere and nothing happens. Several files at once open together in the same app. keytide closes after the drop, so the app comes straight to the front with your file.

Dragging an app to the Trash leaves its preferences, caches and support files behind. keytide's uninstaller finds them (in your Library: app data, caches, settings, saved windows, sandbox containers, web data, cookies and logs), shows each one with its size and the total, and moves the app and its leftovers to the Trash together.

Nothing is deleted outright: until you empty the Trash, Put Back in Finder restores any item.

keytide asks macOS when each app was last opened and lists the ones untouched for 90 days, with the date (or “No record of it being opened”). Each has Hide and, where possible, Uninstall….

macOS keeps the date each app was last opened; keytide reads it the moment you ask, nothing is tracked in the background for this. Apps with no record at all are often ones you've never launched since installing, which makes them the best candidates for a clean-up.

keytide checks each app that has its own update feed against that feed, and Homebrew apps with brew outdated. Optionally it also asks the App Store about the App Store apps. You get one list: the version you have, the new one, and a button to open the app, open the App Store, or copy the brew command.

keytide doesn't install anything itself: it tells you what's out of date and takes you to the right place, the app (whose own updater takes over), the App Store's Updates page, or a ready-to-paste brew upgrade command. It's a check you run when you like, not a background service.

The grid shows the same red notification badges as the Dock, and a small dot under every running app, so you can see at a glance what's open and what's waiting.

Badges show the same count the app shows on its Dock icon, so you see that Inbox has 12 new messages without opening it. A count too long to fit becomes a dot. Running dots sit under the icon exactly like the Dock's, which is handy when deciding what to quit. Turn both off for a calmer grid.

Next to the search there's a windows button. It swaps the app grid for your running apps and every window they have open, hidden ones marked. Click one to bring exactly that window to the front.

Windows are grouped under their app, with their titles, and hidden apps are marked so you know clicking will show them. It's a calmer alternative to cycling through windows with ⌘` when an app has many open. Esc returns to your apps.

keytide looks everywhere apps live: /Applications (and Utilities and Setapp inside it), ~/Applications, the system apps and apps on external drives. Add any other folder you keep apps in. New installs appear in the grid on their own, and uninstalled ones disappear.

There's nothing to refresh: an app you install shows up in the grid on its own, at the end, ready to drag where you want it. Apps that disappear (uninstalled, or on a drive you unplugged) leave the grid without disturbing the rest of your arrangement.

Full screen covers the display (and the menu bar and Dock, unless you turn that off). Compact window is a floating panel in the middle of the screen, with your apps still behind it. The compact window keeps its own columns, rows and icon size, so it never feels cramped.

The compact window opens on the display with your pointer and closes like the full grid: Esc, a click outside, or the hotkey again. Everything works the same inside it: search, folders, letter hints, the workspace bar. You can switch between the two at any time; each keeps its own size settings.

Make the grid fit your eyes and your screen: 3 to 12 columns, 2 to 9 rows, icons from small to huge, with or without names underneath. Pages, or one long scrolling list.

Your arrangement adapts to the new size: icons keep their order and flow into the new number of columns and pages. Hiding names makes room for more icons per page; the scrolling list suits big screens where you'd rather scroll than page.

Choose the Liquid Glass look of macOS 26 or a Classic one, and what's behind the icons: your desktop blurred (like Launchpad), a calm dark backdrop, or any picture you pick, softly blurred so icons stay readable.

Blurred desktop keeps a sense of where you are; Dark gives the calmest, highest-contrast backdrop for reading names; Picture lets the grid feel like yours. The style and background are part of a theme, so you can save a combination you like and switch back to it later.

Four icon styles change every icon at once: Standard, Dark, Tinted (one calm colour) and Clear (see-through). Give a single app a different icon in keytide with Choose Icon…, and give folders cover pictures.

Styles are applied by keytide on the fly, so they never touch the apps and change back instantly. A custom icon can be any image file you choose; folder cover pictures work the same way.

A theme is the whole look in one click: style, background, icon style, grid size and labels. Six come with keytide: keytide Glass, Classic Launchpad, Midnight, Monochrome, Big and simple and Dense. Export your own as a .keytidetheme file to keep it or share it.

Applying a theme changes the look and the grid size together but never your arrangement, folders or workspaces. A .keytidetheme file is a small, readable file you can send to a friend or keep with your dotfiles; importing one applies it in one step.

Turn on sync and keytide keeps a setup file in iCloud Drive › keytide. Your other Macs with keytide pick up the same grid, folders and workspaces. The newest change wins; earlier versions stay in Layout history, so nothing is lost.

Sync covers what makes keytide yours: the grid, folders, hidden and renamed apps, and workspaces. If two Macs change things at nearly the same time, the newest change wins and the other is still in Layout history.

A .keytide file holds your grid, folders, hidden and renamed apps, and workspaces. Export it as a backup, or to set up a new Mac in seconds.

Importing replaces the current setup, so it's worth exporting first if you might want it back. It's also a good thing to export before trying something drastic.

keytide's menus, settings and messages are in English, Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish and Ukrainian. It follows the language you've set for your Mac or for keytide in System Settings.

Dates and times follow your region's format too: the time machine's ruler, Layout history and suggestion times read naturally wherever you are.

Every icon, folder, button and page dot has a VoiceOver label (“Open Notebook”, “Folder Developer, 4 apps”, “Page 2 of 3”). With Reduce Motion on, the 3D fly-ins and the tide wave become simple fades. And every feature, including the new ones, has a keyboard path.

Keyboard focus is always visible, letter hints mean any app is two keys away without pointing, and the menu bar launcher offers a small, simple alternative to the full-screen grid.