insanearts.github.io/Spacewalk
macOS moves between Spaces with one slow slide you cannot change. Spacewalk replaces it with a transition you choose, or with none at all, on plain macOS Spaces. No window manager, no SIP changes, no code injection.
It works by freezing the current picture in an overlay, asking the Dock to switch with nothing left to animate, grabbing the new picture and playing the transition between the two. The menu bar, the Dock and floating panels stay live above it. When the transition ends the overlay is gone and the real windows are already there.
Twelve effects, each one tuned to hold a 100 Hz frame: instant, slide, depth, tilt, carousel, fade, zoom, cube, flip, swap, reveal and stack. The preview in Settings plays the one you select, with your speed and easing.
Speed is Slow, Normal, Fast or a duration in milliseconds. Easing is a curve or a spring with bounce. The new Space can arrive from its side in the list or always from the same side, on a horizontal or a vertical axis. Slide can let the wallpaper drift behind the windows, stay still or travel with them. Every Space keeps its own wallpaper through the transition.
Pick Instant and there is no transition: the Dock switches with nothing left to animate, and
the new Space is simply there. On a Space you have not visited through Spacewalk yet, its picture
is on screen 60 to 110 ms after the key; once Spacewalk has seen a Space, it keeps the last picture
and shows it in 12 to 13 ms, then fades the live frame in. macOS's own slide takes about half a
second and cannot be shortened. The counters above run at one fifth of real time; the numbers are
the ones measured in docs/AUDIT.md.
Turn on the trackpad in Settings > Shortcuts and a three-finger swipe plays your transition instead of the system slide. With Follow my fingers, the transition tracks the gesture in real time, whatever the effect: lift past a third of the way or fling to switch, swipe back to cancel. A haptic tick marks the point where lifting will switch; its strength is adjustable.
Side buttons 4 and 5 on a mouse, and scrolling against the top edge of the screen, can switch Spaces too.
A hotkey, or the Mission Control swipe if you give it to Spacewalk, zooms the screen out into a card among all your Spaces, each a real picture with its name and the icons of the apps on it. Arrows, digits, typing a Space or app name, scrolling or a click pick one; the view zooms back in and the switch happens underneath. Columns are configurable: one row, a vertical stack, or a grid with row-up and row-down shortcuts.
Spaces can be named. Names show in the menu bar indicator, the Overview and the optional Spaces bar, a thin strip at the top or bottom of the screen listing Spaces with their apps. A shortcut can be bound to an app, so one key goes to whichever Space holds its window.
With Homebrew:
brew tap insanearts/spacewalk https://github.com/InsaneArts/Spacewalk
brew install --cask spacewalkRead the cask first if you would rather see what it does. It installs
the app and puts the spacewalk command on your PATH. The cask is also published to
tornikegomareli/tap with every release.
Or with one line, which downloads the latest notarized release, checks it with Gatekeeper,
copies it to /Applications and links the command into ~/.local/bin:
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/InsaneArts/Spacewalk/main/install.sh | bashOr grab Spacewalk.dmg from the latest release.
Requirements:
- macOS 26.6 or newer on Apple Silicon. 26.0 to 26.5 have a WindowServer bug that blanks the screen on a zero-travel switch, so the app refuses to run there.
- Two permissions, asked for on first launch: Screen Recording, to see your Spaces, and Accessibility, to switch them.
On first launch Spacewalk asks how you want to switch: with ⌃1 to ⌃9, by taking over ⌃← and ⌃→ from the system, or with three-finger swipes. All three can be combined later in Settings > Shortcuts.
Updates arrive through the app. It checks once a day, and every update is verified against an EdDSA signature before it installs. Settings > General has the switch and a Check Now button.
brew uninstall --cask spacewalk # if installed with Homebrew
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/InsaneArts/Spacewalk/main/install.sh | bash -s -- --uninstallOr quit Spacewalk and drag it to the Trash. Your settings in ~/.config/spacewalk stay either
way; delete the folder for a clean slate. If you let Spacewalk take over ⌃← and ⌃→, turn that
off first in Settings > Shortcuts so the system shortcuts come back.
- The menu bar item shows where you are, "2 ⁄ 3", and lists Spaces to click. It also opens Settings and the Overview, and can pause transitions.
- Shortcuts are recorded by clicking a field and pressing the keys. Spaces are numbered the way Mission Control shows them.
- If macOS is set to reorder Spaces by recent use, which is the default and makes numbered shortcuts drift, Settings > General says so and turns it off in one click.
- With "Displays have separate Spaces", an option switches every display to the same position.
- Two extras, off by default: a small pill naming the destination, and a short whoosh.
The spacewalk command drives everything from a terminal or a script:
spacewalk switch <n> | next | prev | back-and-forth
spacewalk overview show every Space as a picture
spacewalk effect <name> instant | slide | depth | tilt | carousel | fade | zoom | cube | flip | swap | reveal | stack
spacewalk duration <ms> transition duration
spacewalk name <n> <text> name the n-th Space
spacewalk bind arrows|digits|swipes and unbind, for the three onboarding choices
spacewalk set <key> on|off pill, sound, haptic, interactive, predictive, wrap, bar, …
spacewalk export|import <file> all settings as TOML
spacewalk status state and recent timings as JSON
spacewalk preview play the current effect on screen without switching
spacewalk settings open the Settings window
spacewalk --help lists the rest.
Everything lives in ~/.config/spacewalk/config.toml. The app writes it with comments whenever a
setting changes and applies the file when you save it by hand. Keys use AeroSpace's spelling.
[transition]
effect = "cube" # instant, slide, depth, tilt, carousel, fade, zoom, cube, flip, swap, reveal, stack
duration-ms = 240
easing = "smooth" # smooth, snappy, easeOut, easeInOut, easeIn, linear, spring
[shortcuts]
space-1 = "ctrl-1"
next = "ctrl-right"
overview = "ctrl-alt-space"
[shortcuts.apps]
"com.apple.Safari" = "ctrl-alt-s"
[trackpad]
swipe = "follow" # off, instant, follow
haptic = "strong" # off, light, medium, strong, double
[spaces.names]
# Space uuid = name; easier to set in Settings > GeneralSettings > Advanced shows the path, reloads the file, and exports or imports a copy, handy for sharing a preset. Any key it does not understand is reported there rather than ignored.
- A hotkey, swipe or command arrives. The latest frame from a persistent ScreenCaptureKit stream of app windows (about 1% CPU idle) goes into an overlay panel over a cached capture of the wallpaper.
- Spacewalk posts a synthetic Dock swipe with near-zero progress and a strong fling. The Dock commits the switch through its own pipeline, so its state stays consistent, but there is nothing left to animate. Spacewalk waits for the Dock to report the new Space.
- The first frame that arrives after the switch becomes the incoming picture and the animation starts. Fresher frames keep replacing it while the overlay is up.
- Core Animation plays the effect in the render server. On completion the overlay hides.
A Space you have left through Spacewalk keeps its last picture, and the next switch back starts moving from it before the Dock answers. Spaces never left through Spacewalk get a picture composed in the background from captures of their windows. Each Space's wallpaper is captured from the Dock's own wallpaper windows without visiting it.
Space bookkeeping comes from a few private SkyLight calls that AltTab, yabai and Hammerspoon have
relied on for years. The synthetic swipe uses undocumented CGEvent fields first mapped by
InstantSpaceSwitcher and noswoosh. If Apple changes the gesture format, switching stops until
Spacewalk is updated; nothing else on the system is touched. Measurements and the per-frame
budget are in docs/AUDIT.md.
git clone https://github.com/InsaneArts/Spacewalk.git
cd Spacewalk
swift build
swift test
Scripts/install-from-source.sh # build, sign, install to /Applications, link the CLI, launchScripts/package_app.sh signs with the certificate in APP_IDENTITY when it is in your keychain
and ad-hoc otherwise. A real certificate keeps the Screen Recording grant across rebuilds.
Two diagnostics need no permissions: spacewalk render <dir>|scrub|36 writes 36 frames of the
current effect rendered offscreen, and spacewalk snapshot <path>|settings captures the settings
window alone. Scripts/make_icon.sh redraws the app icon from Scripts/make_icon.swift.
Releases are cut with Scripts/release.sh <version>: it builds, signs with Developer ID,
notarizes a DMG, signs the Sparkle update, regenerates appcast.xml, updates the cask and
publishes the GitHub release. Scripts/setup-sparkle-keys.sh manages the update-signing key.
Read CONTRIBUTING.md before opening a pull request.