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retro⊞spaces

About retro⊞spaces

retro⊞spaces is a small native macOS app with one job: keep every desktop in order at once and let you work with them efficiently.

Why this exists

The first Exposé & Spaces in Mac OS X Leopard showed every desktop at once, in a grid you could see into and work with windows in. Modern macOS with Mission Control quietly replaced that overview with a one-dimensional strip, where you can only hope you remember which desktop is which. As developers we need to keep order across tons of code, desktops and apps — and when we ran out of patience, retro⊞spaces was born, the app you're looking at now.

Standing on the shoulders of Spaces

This project is a tribute to the developers who kept this idea alive even after Apple moved away from it — above all the team behind Total Spaces at binaryage, whose private-API archaeology this project uses and learns from. retro⊞spaces isn't a replacement for TotalSpaces, but its own attempt at the same problem — with its own grid, drag & drop moves and transitions between desktops.

Built at blob.team blob.team

retro⊞spaces is built and maintained at blob.team — and that means more than a logo in the footer. Thanks to that it's a real, signed app with automatic updates and a CI/CD pipeline, instead of a weekend hack on someone's laptop.

Built together with AI

Version 0.1.0 of the app was built in 4 days in intensive collaboration with the AI tool Claude Code — from the first Swift file through the private SkyLight/Accessibility bridges and the drag & drop grid to the CI/CD pipeline and this website. We say it here plainly: it's a real and nowadays common way to build software, and a big part of why a proof of concept could get from an idea to an installable app so quickly.

Where it stands

This is deliberately a proof of concept: it relies on private macOS APIs that can change at any time, isn't distributed through the App Store, and its README has an honest list of limitations. It works, it's used daily, and it grows release by release — see the changelog. It's a fan project with no monetization ambitions, so keep your fingers crossed for us.