Show HN: boringBar – a taskbar-style dock replacement for macOS

Posted by a-ve 5 hours ago

Show HN: boringBar – a taskbar-style dock replacement for macOS(boringbar.app)

Hi HN!

I recently switched from a Fedora/GNOME laptop to a MacBook Air. My old setup served me well as a portable workstation, but I’ve started traveling more while working remotely and needed something with similar performance but better battery life. The main thing I missed was a simple taskbar that shows the windows in the current workspace instead of a Dock that mixes everything together.

I built boringBar so I would not have to use the Dock. It shows only the windows in the current Space, lets you switch Spaces by scrolling on the bar, and adds a desktop switcher so you can jump directly to any Space. You can also hide the system Dock, pin apps, preview windows with thumbnails, and launch apps from a searchable menu (I keep Spotlight disabled because for some reason it uses a lot of system resources on my machine).

I’ve been dogfooding it for a few months now, and it finally felt polished enough to share.

It’s for people who like macOS but want window management to feel a bit more like GNOME, Windows, or a traditional taskbar. It’s also for people like me who wanted an easier transition to macOS, especially now that Windows feels increasingly user-hostile.

I’d love feedback on the UX, bugs, and whether this solves the same Dock/Spaces pain for anyone else.

P.S. It might also appeal to people who feel nostalgic for the GNOME 2 desktop of yore. I started my Linux journey with it, and boringBar brings back some of that feeling for me.

170 points | 110 commentspage 3

jonhohle 1 hour ago|

I can’t find it now, but there was a Start Menu/Taskbar for Mac OS 9 era Mac’s as well. It was bizarre.

SpyCoder77 1 hour ago||

It looks really good, what makes this different from uBar?

ricardobeat 3 hours ago||

> I built boringBar so I would not have to use the Dock

Does anybody really use the dock as a an app switcher? MacOS is built around shortcuts, alt-tab, show spaces, etc. The dock is there for starting apps – which you can also do via spotlight, and as a “favorites” list after you remove all the built-ins.

vunderba 3 hours ago||

I personally use Raycast, which has a Switch Windows global hotkey (Opt + W) that brings up a list of all active windows and apps. From there, you can start typing part of the window title and hit Enter to bring the corresponding window to the foreground.

Slightly related but AltTab is also a nice window switcher with built-in thumbnail previews if you prefer being able to tab by "window" and not by "process" (aka more like Windows).

https://github.com/lwouis/alt-tab-macos

hecifato 3 hours ago||

I see a lot of people treat the dock like the Windows taskbar. They have it filled with as many apps as they can fit in it and leave it on-screen. I used to use the dock like that when I first started using macOS. Now it lives off the left edge of the screen and spends most of the time hidden. I can open any app I need with Spotlight and Mission Control, CMD+Tab, and moving between virtual desktops lets me move around my currently open apps.

theonemind 2 hours ago||

I know you’ve received plenty of feedback about the subscription being a dealbreaker. There would be no point in me adding that but I would say that I could see myself paying $50 for one version of this without upgrades. Maybe half price for upgrades if you have an existing license. So I probably wouldn’t necessarily mind paying $25 per year per se if it’s not a subscription. Like any other others here I’m just not gonna go there.

cs02rm0 4 hours ago||

I'm not the target market for a subscription for this, but I found it quite buggy - I had multiple browser windows open and couldn't navigate to more than one. I couldn't navigate to other spaces either (clicking on them did nothing) and scrolling through the apps menu was laggy.

The screenshots on the website look nice though.

heyitsaamir 3 hours ago||

I’m totally a target audience here. I’ve been trying so many different app switcher applications. My latest favorite one is “flashspace”. I would love that kind of functionality be part of this too if possible. Regardless I’ll give it a shot for a few weeks and see if it works for me. Thanks for sharing!

hecifato 3 hours ago||

Personally, I like the macOS dock so this wouldn't be for me. $10/year for a dock replacement is a bit much to ask for too, especially since this is a price per seat model. Maybe $15-20 as a one-time purchase per license? One of my favourite apps in the past few years is antinote and that is a one time fee of $5.

myself248 3 hours ago||

I'm not the target audience for this, but THANK YOU for putting a description in the title, instead of letting me eagerly click it thinking it might be a speeds/feeds/stickout calculator for a lathe boring bar or something.

interstice 3 hours ago|

I'll be trying this! I used uBar for a long time, and more recently taskbar as uBar was too buggy to ignore. My main issue with Taskbar currently is that it sits over non windowed fullscreen apps (eg Steam games). Other than that I prefer the design on yours based on a quick look through the page.

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