Mac os windows on top

How to Keep Your Application Window “Always on Top” in Mac

Most, if not all, Linux distros come with a way to keep application windows “always on top” and pinned to the screen. Despite sharing the same architecture, macOS makes this more difficult, but it’s possible with some work.

In this post, we show you how to keep application windows always on top using native functionality on the Mac and third-party window managers. We also mention Afloat – a common way to achieve this on Mac but an approach that has a lot of caveats.

Using Afloat to Keep Your Application Window “Always On Top”

The traditional way, and probably the only way to keeping your Mac application window always on top is to use Afloat. For many years, this has been a top-notch solution that many users rely on.

Even so, there are a few negatives about Afloat in 2021:

• It hasn’t been updated in six years, which means it may not work with current Mac models or Apple Silicon chips.
• It requires dependencies such as SIMBL. In fact, there are many sources for it, and some go in and out of favor depending on the Operating System (OS) and compatibility.
• The setup takes some work and relies on two apps working well on your machine.
• You have to disable certain security settings on your Mac, which for an end user, is too much of a hurdle (and dangerous to boot).

Despite this, you may want to give Afloat a try. Though, user beware – Afloat is an outdated and complex piece of software to install on your Mac.

Other Ways to Keep Your Application Window “Always On Top”

If you use macOS Catalina or later, there’s a solution that keeps your windows visible but not necessarily on top.

You’re able to use Split View to tile windows and switch between them as needed. First, though, head to the System Preferences screen and choose Mission Control.

Here, check that “Displays have separate Spaces” is active, then open some apps. With the toolbar of one app, hover over the green window button. You’ll see a pop-up asking you to choose a tile format.

Once you choose one, it will be replicated within your Spaces.

It’s not the best approach, and we can see how it may not be the best option for you. Instead, you may want to consider a dedicated window manager.

Using Dedicated Window Managers to Keep Your Application Window “Always On Top”

The unfortunate news is that there is no native way to pin elements to the screen in the way Afloat does. This is disappointing, but there are some great alternatives to help keep windows visible rather than always on top.

The kicker is that you have to be disciplined in order to keep a window within a specific part of the screen. Though, you get lots more choice than Apple’s native functionality.

Popular paid options are BetterSnapTool and Magnet.

Though, there’s a free, open-source solution that mimics almost everything both of these apps can do: Rectangle.

It sits in your toolbar and lets you add windows to a number of different areas of the screen. In fact, there are a wealth of locations at your disposal.

Each also has a quick shortcut available to give a power user an instant way to organize windows. For further control, you can set windows into areas of the screen divided by fourths and sixes too. This means you can create unique layouts based on your situation.

Of course, you need some discipline here in that to keep a window always on top, it would need to be within its own part of the screen with no other windows near it. It’s more correct to say that this approach lets you keep a window visible at all times rather than pinned to the screen.

Wrapping Up

It seems strange for macOS not to have a way to keep windows always on top given that this is available within Linux and both have the same core architecture. Still, there are ways to keep windows visible, and with some discipline, you can still act as though windows are always on top. If you’re feeling brave, you could try to install Afloat. Though, note that it’s tough to get working, and buggy at the best of times.

Here are a few other ways to manage your windows on Mac – check them out! How do you keep application windows always on top, and will any of our suggestions help you? Let us know in the comments section below!

Tom Rankin is a quality content writer for WordPress, tech, and small businesses. When he’s not putting fingers to keyboard, he can be found taking photographs, writing music, playing computer games, and talking in the third-person.

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Question: Q: Keep window on top

Please help me, I want to use something like Alfoat, to keep windows on top, how can I achieve this?

Posted on Feb 16, 2019 11:01 AM

Helpful answers

The contrary, don’t want to be rude but, after having magnet, split screen, Fenêtre, and others, I was asking/being/wondering for 100% the same as Afloat keep the window I want the size I want on top of all the others for the time I want. Thanks for letting me know you don’t know of any like that, every thing else is changing the target

Feb 16, 2019 12:12 PM

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I’m not aware of any replacement for Afloat. Your best bet is to use «Command + Tab» to bring the app you want in focus.

Feb 16, 2019 11:40 AM

The thing is that sometimes I need to have a full desk window and for a brief moment compare, copy, read, interact with a small window, let’s say notes and keeping on top of the full desk app

Feb 16, 2019 11:44 AM

You may not be able to do exactly what you want to do. Split View would allow you to compare and interact with two apps side by side.

Feb 16, 2019 11:53 AM

Really appreciate your time, but again IMHO this would be a super nice implementation or app, split view is kind of usles with big screen and multiple windows that you want in the same desk not in different spaces

Feb 16, 2019 11:56 AM

Actually you keep changing the target and I’m not really into trying to chase it. You can have multiple apps in one screen using an app like Magnet. http://magnet.crowdcafe.com/index.html

Feb 16, 2019 12:03 PM

The contrary, don’t want to be rude but, after having magnet, split screen, Fenêtre, and others, I was asking/being/wondering for 100% the same as Afloat keep the window I want the size I want on top of all the others for the time I want. Thanks for letting me know you don’t know of any like that, every thing else is changing the target

Feb 16, 2019 12:12 PM

The contrary, don’t want to be rude but, after having magnet, split screen, Fenêtre, and others, I was asking/being/wondering for 100% the same as Afloat keep the window I want the size I want on top of all the others for the time I want. Thanks for letting me know you don’t know of any like that, every thing else is changing the target

Yes. That’s what I said in my first post. I was offering alternatives to what you wanted.

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Question: Q: make a window stay on top

I’ve written a small terminal process (Pascal command level program running under Terminal ) that I would like to have remain on top of all other app displays on the screen, at least until I terminate/quit it. Is there a script or something that can set the environment to cause that behavior?

iMac (21.5-inch, Late 2012), OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.5)

Posted on Nov 1, 2013 8:27 PM

Helpful answers

You could put the terminal window in its own space then switch to that space to view the program. It will always be on top in its own space.

Otherwise there is no way in OS X to keep a window on top. There is a third party app, Afloat, that gets mentioned when you search for this but it seems like it’s source only and gets mixed reviews.

This Google search mac os x keep window on top will bring up discussions about it and links to the developers site.

Nov 2, 2013 2:31 PM

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If you mean that you want the script to run in a Terminal window when you log in, add it to your Login Items in the Users & Groups preference pane.

Nov 2, 2013 11:43 AM

You could put the terminal window in its own space then switch to that space to view the program. It will always be on top in its own space.

Otherwise there is no way in OS X to keep a window on top. There is a third party app, Afloat, that gets mentioned when you search for this but it seems like it’s source only and gets mixed reviews.

This Google search mac os x keep window on top will bring up discussions about it and links to the developers site.

Nov 2, 2013 2:31 PM

AFAIK, nope. Barring full-screen, which probably isn’t what you want.

In 10.8 and later, one common approach for putting up a notification of the status of some long-running activity would be the use of Notification Center and NSUserNotificationCenter (or an add-on that allows notification center messages or via Automator), or using the Growl tool (available via the App Store) and either a Growl API call or growlnotify.

FWIW, here’s the Human Interface Guidelines, which is how applications on OS X are intended to be designed. Pinning a modal dialog or an alert or panel at the front of all windows isn’t part of the preferred design for OS X applications, and you won’t find much in the way of system-wide modal APIs to do that short of some hackery — these sorts of alerts and the closely-related «splash screens» just aren’t common on OS X, and intentionally (and thankfully) so. OS X very intentionally defers to the user preferences here; the user decides what’s on the top of the displays.

Nov 2, 2013 4:08 PM

Thanks for the tip to Afloat. I’ll check it out. Source code does not deter me. If Afloat can work for me, I’ll post the news here.

Nov 2, 2013 7:13 PM

I appreciate the Human Interface Guidelines, and I agree they are a good approach to app design. That said, my use for a persistent interactive process would be a huge help in the activity I’d use it for. To wit, video editing. While editing, one needs a full screen presentation for all of the various elements that are continually bounced between to get the job done. Of great assistance will be a simple calculator for doing timecode math. Timecode is an expression for a single frame of video identified as hour:minute:second:frame. This is not a trivial math element, yet vital to the editing process. I have writen the math program and it work svery well, except for the need to move the cursor to, and then click into the timecode math terminal window, and go back similarly. I have been making the editing window smaller and placing the math window underneath. Moving back and forth with those extra clicks like that every couple of minutes is quite irritating. Floating the the math window on top of a little used area of the editing window would help a lot. It would be even better if the floating window automatically took the user input without requiring the intro mouse click, and gave it up when the cursor moves off, thus behaving as though it were an integral part of the editing app.
So, nice as the interface guidelines are, they are apparently inadequate to provide this functionality. Or, am I wrong?

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How to pin a window on top of other windows in OS X? [duplicate]

I used to use an app called Afloat that let me pin windows on top of all other windows on the Desktop. However, Afloat stopped being maintained at some point and it doesn’t work with more recent versions of OS X.

I then used an app called Compulsion, which installed as a SIMBL plugin but then that stopped working with OS X El Capitan.

Is there a way to get either of these apps to work with OS X El Capitan? Or is there another solution I can try?

2 Answers 2

Try using Helium. It uses a ‘customizable translucency’ to keep a window on top of other windows. Plus, it won’t intercept mouse clicks on top of it unless you want it to.

As of now, it only supports a browser window but the question doesn’t indicate if that’s a requirement of the OP or not.

From my experience, the whole intention of having one window always on top is to read/compare/reference to it while working on another app.

«Tiled window manger» solutions works much better for this purpose. After having tried Athethyst https://github.com/ianyh/Amethyst, I came to kwm . I find kwm offers a better way of configuration. It relies on a config file. After installation, which takes a bit more work then Amethyst, and reading through the sample config file, you already feel yourself a poweruser already. So It’s worth to try.

A note though, when I start doing advanced fancy configuration, kwm starts having quite some hiccups.

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How To Keep Windows Always on Top in Mac OSX

It boggles the mind that a simple feature like the Always on Top for windows is still not part of the core Mac OS system. After all, in a way, the Mac OS is the premium version of the open-source Linux platform. And, this feature is not missing from the open-source platform.

Now, just because Always on Top is not an option when you right-click your application window on your Mac, it doesn’t mean there aren’t some workarounds. Here’s how you can implement the Always on Top for windows on Mac OS.

To start things off, you need to download the latest mySIMBL version. Extract the master.zip file and access the mySIMBL app.

This process may seem a bit straightforward, but some users report that it doesn’t always work this easily. If you encounter issues with the installation, there is something you can do.

You can disable the System Integrity Protection before attempting to install SIMBL again. To do this, you have to restart your machine and then press and hold Command-R during startup. This action will help you enter Recovery Mode.

–Don’t worry. You’ll enable the System Integrity Protection once SIMBL is installed.–

From the recovery screen, access the Terminal through the keyboard shortcut or from Utilities. In the Terminal, type “csrutil disable.” This command will disable System Integrity Protection.

Restart your machine again and log in normally.

Now you’ll want to move SIMBL to the applications folder. You can do this when prompted by a message which should read:

Once SIMBL is on your system, you get the Afloat collection from the Github page. Use Finder to navigate to the Bundle folder. You’ll notice two files: ‘SIMBLE-0.9.9.pkg’ and ‘Afloat.bundle.’

You want to pull the ‘Afloat.bundle’ file into your mySIMBL window. Just drag and drop the file.

Once you complete the above step, make sure that you receive a notification that Afloat is listed among the plugins, which is represented by a green dot next to it.

Restart your machine. When you log back in, open the Afloat app. From there, go to the window options and click “Keep Afloat” within the list. This process should give you the Keep Afloat option for some of your applications.

Don’t expect it to work on all your apps. The Keep Afloat option will only work with apps that are compatible with SIMBL. For apps that recognize Keep Afloat , it should appear like this:

Depending on how you installed SIMBL, you may need to do one more thing. Yes, you’ve guessed it, re-enabling System Integrity Protocol. Go back to the Recovery Mode’s terminal, and type “csrutil enable.”

Restart your machine, and you’re good to go.

Final Word

Although it seems like Afloat solves the Always on Top problem on Mac OS, do remember that it only works with SIMBL-compatible applications. For example, you won’t be able to keep your Firefox browser always on top.

Even Google Chrome showed mixed results depending on the version of the OS and the version of the SIMBL package. For the best results, always keep both up to date.

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