Highlights
A new window shelf lists the highlighted app's windows under the switcher, Handoff from your other devices can show as a tile, and the switcher can follow your Dock order or sit near the top of the screen. Arc and Dia tabs now show up, and launcher-based apps like Emacs are back on macOS 27.
Added
- Window shelf (Settings › Switcher › Window shelf, off by default, unstable): with Applications only on, the highlighted app's windows show in a second block under the switcher, as a List, Grid View or Previews. (#211)
- In the window shelf, press \ to move into it, step with the arrow keys, and pick a window with Return, a click, or by releasing ⌘. Pointing at a tile picks it too. (#211)
- The window shelf shows only for apps with two or more windows. Turn on Show for a single window to show it for every app.
- Each profile can set its own window shelf under Settings › Profiles. (#211)
- Handoff (Settings › Switcher › Handoff, off by default, unstable): a page or document open on another device on your Apple ID shows as a tile, first or last in the list, with the app's dimmed icon and "from Mac Studio" (or "from another device"). Select it to open it on this Mac.
- Search finds the Handoff tile by app name or device name. The tile takes no letter-jump hint, so the running app keeps its letter.
- New Dock order sort (Settings › Switcher › Contents › Sort order, and per profile): Finder first, then the apps kept in your Dock in Dock order, then other running apps in launch order. (#178)
- New Vertical position setting (Settings › Appearance › Layout): Middle keeps the current placement, Top pins the panel's top edge 20% down the screen so it stays still while search narrows the list. (#175)
- New Hints on the ⌘ side setting (Settings › Controls › One-hand letter jump, off by default, unstable): left ⌘ shows only left-hand hint letters and right ⌘ only right-hand ones, read by key position, so AZERTY and Dvorak work too. Every row still gets a reachable hint. (#198)
- Four new in-panel keys per profile: Move selection left, right, up and down (Settings › Profiles › In-panel keys). Bind keys like [ ] - = to move the selection without leaving the home row. They are unbound by default.
- New Fingers setting for the trackpad swipe (Settings › Shortcuts › Trackpad swipe, 3 or 4, default 3). Pick 4 to keep three-finger drag for moving and resizing windows. (#155)
- config.json accepts the new verticalPosition, windowShelf, windowShelfSingleWindow, handoffPlacement, oneHandLetterHints and swipeFingerCount keys, and dock as a sortOrder value. windowShelf also works in profile overrides.
Changed
- In the window drill and the window shelf, the close, minimize, hide, quit and full screen keys now act on the highlighted window, and the custom move keys step through the windows. This also works while Secure Event Input is on.
- After you close a window from the drill, the drill stays on the remaining windows. It ends when fewer than two windows remain.
- A window you minimize during a drill shows as minimized, and a window you close leaves the shelf at once.
- ↑ and ↓ now step the window drill, the window shelf and the tab drill, like ← and →.
- With browser tabs shown as rows, a pinned tab that the browser shows in every window (like Safari's pinned tabs) shows once instead of once per window. A copy that is its window's active tab stays, and the same page in two Chrome profiles stays two rows. (#195)
- The trackpad swipe setting is now called Swipe gesture.
- Check for Updates in the menu bar menu opens Settings › About, which shows the check's progress and result.
Fixed
- Arc and Dia tabs show up in the switcher, and selecting one switches to that tab. Before, every tab script for these browsers failed. (#201)
- On macOS 27, apps whose launcher starts a different binary, such as Emacs for Mac OS X, show up in the switcher again. (#209)
- BetterCmdTab no longer crashes when two running apps report the same process ID.
- Selecting an app without a bundle, such as Minecraft's Java process, brings it to the front instead of opening its executable in Terminal. (#204)
- Keystroke viewers such as KeyCastr now see ⌘Tab, also when BetterCmdTab starts after them. (#139)
Removed
- The menu bar menu now holds only Check for Updates, Settings and Quit, plus Open Accessibility Settings while that permission is missing. The profiles, Layout, Spaces, Applications only, Show minimized windows, Hide and Show all windows, and Launch at login items from 26.8-beta.5 are gone; all of these stay in Settings.
Full changelog: 26.8-beta.5...26.8-beta.6