FAQ & Support

Download it, open it, and let it move itself into Applications – a couple of minutes, start to finish.

1. Download the app and unzip the archive.
2. Open it. Every build is notarized by Apple, so all Gatekeeper shows is its standard confirmation for downloaded apps – click Open.
3. Accept when UltraDock offers to move itself into Applications. Apps that keep running from Downloads are treated as temporary by macOS, and that's what breaks permissions for most Mac utilities.
4. Walk through the guided setup for the one permission the app needs – then the window strip appears.

Where it shows up: in your menu bar, not your Dock. UltraDock is a menu-bar utility, so there's no Dock icon and no main window. The menu covers the essentials – the app it's tracking, hide or show the strip, move, fit or maximize all windows, pause automatic adjustments, check for updates, open Settings, quit – and the version line at the bottom is the one to quote when you write to us. Turn on Launch at login in Settings and the strip is on duty from the moment you sign in.

A Homebrew cask is planned but not published yet. Once it lands, this will work:

Until then, the direct download keeps itself current either way.

UltraDock isn't on the Mac App Store because the App Store sandbox forbids controlling other apps' windows – the very thing a window manager does. Instead, every build is notarized by Apple, and updates install only after the app cryptographically verifies them.

So UltraDock updates itself. At most once a day it checks a static update feed; when a new version is out you get a quiet prompt, and installing is one click – the app swaps itself atomically and relaunches. Before anything installs, the download is verified three ways:

• the feed's cryptographic signature
• Apple's notarization
• the developer's signing identity

Impatient? Check for Updates… sits in UltraDock's menu-bar menu.

No – they're simplified illustrations of the interface, drawn right in your browser instead of captured from the app. What they show is accurate: the layout of the strip, its buttons and what a click does. The app itself looks a little different – native macOS materials, your own wallpaper and your real window titles. The quickest way to see the real thing is to download it; the 60-day trial needs no card.

UltraDock needs the macOS Accessibility permission – it's the system API for listing, raising, moving and closing other apps' windows, which is the whole job. A guided setup walks you through granting it.

During setup the strip stays pinned on screen, so you see it come alive the moment access is granted. What UltraDock reads through that permission – and where it goes – is covered under what UltraDock can see.

Very little, and none of what it sees leaves your Mac.

No account, no analytics. Window titles and positions are read through macOS Accessibility and processed entirely on your Mac. The app's only routine network request is a cryptographically signed update check. That check fetches a static file describing the latest version – a plain download with no query parameters and no identifiers, so it isn't tied to you or your Mac.

• Screen recording: Screen Recording permission is requested only if you turn on live previews. Everything else works without it. When previews are on, the frames are rendered on your screen and nowhere else – nothing is saved and nothing is sent.
• AI titles: AI title shortening runs on-device with Apple Intelligence – window titles never leave your Mac. It's a toggle you can leave off entirely. Requires macOS 26 (Tahoe).

The full plain-English policy, app and website both, lives at /privacy.

No. A window switcher gets clicked hundreds of times a day, so this is the part we obsess over. Engineered to feel instant – native Swift, no animations to sit through. Optimistic UI: the strip reacts the moment you click, not after macOS catches up. 100 minimized windows? Not a problem. And it all runs as one small native menu-bar app.

Requires macOS 15.7 (Sequoia) or later. Runs natively on Apple Silicon and Intel Macs.

• Older systems: the app may launch there, but macOS window-management bugs degrade the experience, so anything below 15.7 is unsupported.
• Version-gated extras: the Liquid Glass and Clear Glass panel looks and AI title shortening. Requires macOS 26 (Tahoe). On older systems you keep the Solid and Frosted looks and regular titles; everything else behaves the same.
• Languages: The app speaks 32 languages, including right-to-left Arabic and Hebrew – switchable in-app, independently of your system language. This website is English-only for now.

It replaces nothing – UltraDock lives alongside your setup, and Cmd-Tab and Stage Manager keep working exactly as before.

When placing itself the strip auto-detects the Dock, the menu bar, the notch and even third-party bars, so nothing overlaps – and UltraDock's window-positioning features account for all of those areas too.

It doesn't compete with the system switchers, because it answers a different question:

• Cmd-Tab and Stage Manager think in apps – one icon or one pile per application, however many windows hide behind it.
• Overlay switchers work at the window level, but only exist while summoned – they appear, you pick, they vanish.
• The window strip lists individual windows by title, persistently on screen, in a fixed spot your muscle memory can rely on. Nothing to summon, nothing to wait for – the strip is already there.
• And it acts – close, pin, rename, color and move windows without switching to them first.

macOS shows you apps. UltraDock shows you windows.

Yes to all three – every display gets its own strip, automatically.

• Monitors: two optional filters keep each strip honest – list only windows on that monitor, and hide windows living on other desktops. Dock Mirror can put a live copy of your Dock on secondary displays.
• Spaces: the right-click menu drives them directly – switch to any desktop or send windows there without opening Mission Control.
• Fullscreen: when an app goes fullscreen, the strip can auto-hide or switch to a dark look for video, per display.

If a strip is missing on one display, it's almost always a visibility feature doing its job. Auto-hide slides the strip off-screen – push your pointer to that screen's strip edge to reveal it. A fullscreen app there hides or auto-hides it by design, and the "hide the panel when the app has just one window" option keeps it away when there's nothing to switch to. Check the per-monitor filter too: with "Only show windows from this monitor" on, a strip lists only the windows that live on that screen. All of these live in Settings, searchable by name.

Nowhere out of reach – both minimized and stashed windows keep their button in the strip.

• Minimized: they collect in their own minimized section at the far end of the strip. Past a threshold you choose (anywhere from 1 to 30) they consolidate into a single "N minimized" button – hover it for a list of every window, click a row to restore it.
• Stashed: Stash Space is a parking lot for windows. Clicking an already-focused window's button parks that window on a desktop UltraDock creates on demand, out of sight – the app keeps running untouched, the button shows a badge, and one more click brings the window back exactly where it was.

Stash Space is one of the choices in Settings for what a re-click does; the others are nothing, or minimize.

Two global hotkeys today: Ctrl + Option + Z moves the frontmost window into the safe area, Ctrl + Option + Shift + Z maximizes it there.

The safe area is the part of your screen that avoids the Dock, the menu bar, the notch and the strip – so a hotkey press is enough to un-bury a window. Both hotkeys are fixed defaults today.

Yes, to start – and Lite stays free.

Every download begins a 60-day free trial with everything unlocked – no license key, no account, no card. Plus ($9) and Pro ($19) are one-time purchases with 3 years of updates included.

When the trial ends, UltraDock switches to Lite on its own – your settings stay, and there's no card on file, so nothing can be charged. Plus and Pro features switch off until a license unlocks them; Lite is free forever – no trial clock, no license key.

Lite is what stays free after the trial; Plus and Pro add the automation and the power features.

• Lite – the window strip, click-to-switch, multi-select and bulk actions, Stash Space, every look and layout option.
• Plus – a panel that manages itself: a strip on every display, auto-hide, minimized-windows grouping, per-monitor and per-desktop filters, the global hotkeys.
• Pro – the power set: Dock Mirror, live previews, color markers with keyword rules, inline rename and on-device AI title shortening.

The pricing page has the three side by side. During the trial, all of it is unlocked.

Pay once and the app is yours for good: a Plus or Pro license never expires, covers up to 3 Macs, and every update released within 3 years of purchase is included. After that, the app keeps working exactly as it is.

• Getting the key: it arrives by email right after checkout and activates in UltraDock's Settings → License – no account, validated on your Mac, offline.
• Refunds: the 60-day trial is there so you never have to buy blind – but if you buy and change your mind, write to us within 14 days of purchase and you'll get your money back. Refunds are processed by Polar, our merchant of record.
• Lost your key? Write to us from the email address you bought with – the contact form goes straight to a human – and your key will be resent.

Almost always two copies of the app – macOS granted the permission to the copy that isn't running.

Say one in Downloads and one in Applications: System Settings shows the toggle on, and the running copy still has no access. To sort it out:

1. Open UltraDock's Settings → Accessibility – it shows whether the running copy actually has access.
2. Click the "Accessibility" heading five times in quick succession to reveal a Show developer diagnostics switch, then turn it on to see the exact path and signing identity of the running binary.
3. Keep the copy in Applications, delete the other one, and grant the permission again.

If System Settings insists the toggle is on but UltraDock still reports no access, use Reset Permission in those diagnostics – it clears the stale permission entries, relaunches the app and lets macOS ask cleanly.

Open UltraDock's menu-bar menu and flip "Pause automatic window adjustments". Every automatic tidying behavior stops – fitting windows at launch, nudging new or moved windows out from under the panel, reshaping zoomed windows – while everything manual keeps working. Each behavior also has its own toggle in Settings if you'd rather turn off just one.

Both take a few clicks – Export/Import Settings for the move, drag-to-Trash for the uninstall.

Moving to another Mac: in Settings, use Export Settings… to save your configuration as a JSON file (or copy it to the clipboard), then Import Settings… on the other Mac. One honest footnote: pinned windows and custom window order aren't exported, because they're tied to the windows of the Mac they were made on. There's also Reset Settings if you ever want to walk everything back to the defaults.

Uninstalling completely:

1. Quit UltraDock from its menu-bar menu.
2. Delete UltraDock from your Applications folder – that's the uninstall.
3. Optional, for a spotless exit: remove the app data folder at ~/Library/Application Support/UltraDock, the preferences file com.frees.ultradock.plist in ~/Library/Preferences, the Keychain Access entries (search for com.frees.ultradock) and the Accessibility and Screen Recording entries in System Settings → Privacy & Security.

None of these leftovers run anything; they're just files.