Documentation

How Deckz works

Short, because there is not much to learn. Deckz has four arrangements, a set of workspaces and a handful of keys.

Getting started

Deckz needs the Accessibility permission to move another application's windows, and macOS will ask for it the first time you use a shortcut. Nothing else is required: there is no account, no menu bar clutter and no launch agent.

  • Grant Accessibility when asked, in System Settings → Privacy & Security
  • Press ⌥1 to land in your first workspace
  • Everything else is discoverable from the menu bar

Workspaces

A workspace is a set of windows shown together. Switching to one brings its windows forward and moves the rest off-screen — they are not closed, minimised or touched, only parked, and their positions are recorded before they move.

  • A workspace is named by the key that reaches it
  • Pin an application and its windows follow the workspace
  • Send a window to an unused key and that workspace comes into being

Arrangements

Each workspace carries one of four arrangements. The grid works its own shape out from how many windows are open; the cascade fans them out leaving a corner of each; blocks are rectangles you draw; keeping positions groups windows without moving them.

  • Change the arrangement on the workspace's own page in settings
  • Click a block in the preview to keep it for one application
  • Drag a window low to ask the grid for another row

When something goes missing

Hidden windows are parked in the corner of the furthest display, and every position is written down before a window moves. If a window ever ends up somewhere you cannot reach — a display was unplugged, an application crashed — Recover All Windows brings it back.

  • ⌘⌥R, or Recover All Windows in the menu
  • Deckz also sweeps for stranded windows when it starts
  • Configuration lives in ~/Library/Application Support/Deckz

The keys themselves are on the shortcuts page.