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The gestures, the ribbon, the mouse, every setting and the menu bar.
The app has no window of its own to work in: it lives in the menu bar, and everything it does happens while you hold a shortcut.
brew install --cask n0sfer/tap/humane-space-tab, or open the disk image from
Releases and drag Humane Space Tab.app onto the Applications shortcut — and launch it.The menu bar icon is the only proof the app is running: ⇄ when it works, a warning triangle
when it cannot. macOS ties an Accessibility grant to the code signature, so the grant has to be
given again after every update.
Hold ⌘ and tap Tab. What you get depends on how long you hold it:
While the ribbon is open:
| Key | What it does |
|---|---|
| Tab | one step forward |
| ⇧Tab | one step back |
| Escape | cancel — nothing is switched |
| release ⌘ | switch to the selected application |
The selected application is the icon that is bigger and brighter, with its name under it; its neighbours are dimmed. From five applications on, the ribbon becomes a carousel: the selection keeps its place and the icons turn under it, so a step is always the same distance for the eye and the list has no ends. Below five, every icon keeps its place and only the selection moves. The panel stops growing at ten slots.
On a Space with nothing open the ribbon still answers, saying that there is nothing there, rather than handing the keystroke back to the system switcher.
Hold ⌘ and tap **** (the key above Tab). The ribbon lists the windows of the application in front — only the ones on the current Space, in stacking order, each with its own title. The gesture is the same: ⇧` reverses, Escape cancels, releasing ⌘ raises the window.
The system shortcut counts windows on every Space at once, which is how it throws you onto another desk. This one cannot: a window that is not here is not in the list, so it never switches Space and never un-minimises anything.
While the ribbon is open the pointer works on it:
Open them from the menu bar icon → Settings….
| Setting | What it is |
|---|---|
| Applications | the shortcut that opens the ribbon. Click the field, type the combination, or press Restore default for ⌘Tab. |
| Windows of the front app | the second shortcut, ⌘` by default. |
| Show the ribbon on | the screen with keyboard focus, or the screen the pointer is on. |
| Language | the language of the interface. System follows macOS. |
| Reveal delay | how long the shortcut must be held before the ribbon appears — 0 to 500 ms. |
| Open at login | registers the app with macOS as a login item. |
| Switch between windows, not applications | makes ⌘Tab list windows, the way Windows and Linux do. Off by default: two documents of one editor are then two entries. |
| Use the private Space layer | the private layer knows which Space a minimised window belongs to, but it is undocumented. Off, the app uses on-screen windows only. |
The app carries fifteen languages — English, Russian, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese (Brazil), Italian, Dutch, Polish, Turkish, Ukrainian, Japanese, Korean and both Chinese scripts — and answers in English for anything else.
A shortcut needs a modifier to hold, and the recorder refuses what the design cannot honour — a
combination without a modifier, one that already contains ⇧ (that is the reverse
direction), Escape, ⌘Q and ⌘W — and says which of those it was. The shortcut is drawn
with the keys of your current input source, so a Russian layout shows ⌘Ё where an English one
shows ⌘`.
The second tab of Settings… is the ribbon’s looks, kept in profiles. Default is the built-in one and cannot be edited: Duplicate makes a copy that can, and Name gives it one of your own. Five profiles beyond the built-in one is the ceiling; deleting the active one leaves Default active.
| Setting | What it is |
|---|---|
| Icon size | how large an icon is drawn at most — a crowded ribbon still shrinks below it to fit the screen. |
| Icon opacity | how strongly the icons are drawn. 100 % is as strong as they go; under it the selection still stands out, because the preset dims everything that is not selected. |
| Ribbon padding | the room between the icons and the panel’s edge, as a share of the icon. |
| Space between icons | the room between two icons, in the same share. |
| Corner radius | how round the panel’s corners are. |
| Frame around the icon, Frame padding | an outline drawn around an icon, and how far from it. |
| Background | Glass is the system’s own material; Shade darkens it, and at 0 the ribbon is bare glass with the desktop showing through. Transparent and Background colour carry no material and are set by Opacity alone. |
| Carousel | with Turn the row under the selection off the row holds still and shrinks to fit; on, Slots is how many icons it turns in — 5 to 12. |
| Selection | how the selected icon is told apart: like the system switcher, grown, standing alone, or framed. |
Every number is a slider and a field showing the same value, and the ranges answer to each other. Show a sample… draws the ribbon with as many placeholder applications as you pick, for four seconds, without disturbing the Space you are on.
| Item | When it is there |
|---|---|
| Grant Accessibility… | while the permission is missing — asks again |
| Open Input Monitoring… | when macOS is withholding key presses |
| Settings… | always |
| Copy Inventory | always — copies the current Space’s application list to the clipboard, which is what to attach to a bug report |
| Quit Humane Space Tab | always |