Leopard's keyboard-centric approach to switching spaces has been a bit of an annoyance to me at times and I've always liked Xfce's (and probably other X11 window managers) method of switching virtual desktops by moving the mouse, so I came up with a similar solution that makes it possible to switch spaces with just the mouse. Warp is activated just by moving the cursor to the edge of the screen by default, but there are also options for an activation delay and modifier keys in order to minimize accidental switching. Personally, I find it easier to move my mouse to the edge of the screen while holding the command key rather than reaching for a key combination.

Warp is free, but donations are welcomed and appreciated!

38 comments:

osxrulz at 2007-12-22 02:18:24 -0500

Interesting. Will check it out.

Paul Nowak at 2007-12-22 08:01:49 -0500

I will try it and post it on my blog to see what people think :)

Tobsen at 2007-12-22 08:31:05 -0500

This already works if you are dragging something.

Wayne Dixon at 2007-12-22 11:24:59 -0500

There is one flaw with warp. the ability to automatically switch to as space when you click on an application in the dock somehow disappears. I don't know, this could be a weird bug with my setup, but it was working before I installed warp.

Trevin Ward at 2007-12-22 11:54:22 -0500

I've been waiting for someone to make something like this. Heard about it via TUAW. Gnome (I think it was Gnome) has the alternative method of waiting for a certain amount of "resistance" to move between the spaces. Basically it detects if someone is attempting to move the cursor past the screen edge, and only after a certain amount of "pushing." I don't know if that's possible in OS X but such a feature would be a great addition to Warp.

Patrick at 2007-12-22 12:07:18 -0500

Nice application but for me it doesn't work on the bottom screen endge. Mac OS X 10.5.1 with latest updates. Greetings

Kevin P at 2007-12-22 13:06:32 -0500

One of the things i miss most from the previous incarnation of spaces --Virtue Desktops-- was the ability to mouse to a screen edge, and click to effect a change. I would *love* to see warp include that. if I could mouse to a screen edge, have it show me (perhaps a highlight like virtue desktops?) and let me click to change.... that would be awesome

Heath at 2007-12-22 13:15:24 -0500

Dude, I love it! I was sorely missing this feature from Virtue Desktops. An option to wrap around to the opposite side when at one of the outside desktop edges would be icing on the cake. Also, I'm not having any problems with app switching via the dock icons - everything is working perfectly so far. Thanks!

David Macdonald at 2007-12-22 13:27:14 -0500

Great addon! If you don't mind suggestions - a 'wrap around' option would be nice if possible- going in one direction would bring you back to the first space. I have also noticed problems with switching apps via the dock- but only with more than one row. App switching with a 'single row, multiple columns' setup seems to work fine. Thanks!

jk at 2007-12-22 13:33:22 -0500

Thanks for this! The one big feature I would like to see is a "Click Edge to Warp" with the option of a single click or double click. That's the one big thing missing from this in my opinion.

Steve at 2007-12-22 13:36:11 -0500

I love it thanks!!! How will this work with a dual display though?? Anyone try it yet?

DeanDMX at 2007-12-22 13:55:51 -0500

Great app. It's one that should have been included into spaces from 1.0.

Steve Grenier at 2007-12-22 15:00:37 -0500

Aw man, this is great, I find every now and then I try and use just my cursor like I can when dragging windows. Finally it works. Thanks a million bud, btw. Big time Chax user, keep up the great work.

Adam Bell at 2007-12-22 15:24:19 -0500

Warp works on dual screens (I'm using it), but it's a long haul from one edge to the other horizontally so I've moved everything to spaces 1 & 3. Since spaces doesn't distinguish between screens this works, but it would be nicer if it treated the second screeen as a new space.

Mike Rocchio at 2007-12-22 15:57:29 -0500

You have solved the one big problem I have with Spaces! I installed Warp immediately. The only thing is that when you switch between Spaces using Warp the mouse cursor ends up on the other side of the screen. If the cursor could act more like it does when using a key command to switch between Spaces then Warp would be damn near perfect. Thanks!

David O at 2007-12-22 16:08:24 -0500

It does work with dual monitors with one slight caveat. in my setup my two monitors are at different heights. mac os allows you to offset the monitor images to make up for this difference. unfortunately, warp will only go down on the lower monitor and up on the high monitor. would be great if it detected the top or bottom of each display rather than the two of them combined. great program. thanks!

Seth at 2007-12-22 17:41:28 -0500

Great app. the only problem is that when I go down to my dock, I usually overshoot. That triggers Warp to move to a lower Space. Same with the Apple menu. Can you possibly add a way to disable up/down warping?

wal at 2007-12-22 18:15:20 -0500

when warp is enabled, switching spaces by selecting an app on a different space with command-tab doesn't work anymore. is this a feature or a bug? Reason enough for me to disable warp for now. great app though.

Jonathan Stieglitz at 2007-12-22 21:56:30 -0500

Great program. What if it could wrap around. I don't like how when I get to my third space it doesn't go back to my first on the right side of the screen.

rivlinm at 2007-12-22 22:51:00 -0500

Having an option to turn say 25px off near the hot corners, if I am in space 4, and want to go up or left I will mouse toward the top or left, and if its near the top left then dashboard come up for me. also if im going for dashboard itll switch spaces rather then go to DB. I think its a great little app and should have been included in 10.5. Ill donate for sure if you can fix up the hot corner issue. thanks

Pat at 2007-12-22 23:27:16 -0500

Kent, amazing work. Thanks for that. However, a feature that I'm missing is to drag&drop e.g. a image I have picked in Safari in Space 1 into a Word document in another space. Same is with any other programmes, so that I guess it's not a bug but a "feature" of Spaces. Is there a slight chance to have that implemented or is that not possible due to OS limitations? Cheers Pat

Pat at 2007-12-22 23:29:02 -0500

I meant drag&drop without using the F8 key or Apple-Tab of course. I just want to drag something from on Space to another Space when I am using the borders.

fmarcia at 2007-12-23 09:23:29 -0500

Very great extension. I wondered if it would be possible to use alternate ways to change the current space. You could literally knock on a border with the mouse or double-click on a border as well. Thanks for you work Franck.

James Kenney at 2007-12-23 16:25:18 -0500

The problem I encountered was with applications like iTunes (and various other apps) wherein full screen usage requires the user to go to the top or bottom to bring up control devices - at which point Warp implements a Spaces switch. I can see similar problems for users who have their Dock set to Hide/Show. Warp needs an option to exempt selected apps or it needs an option to not use specific edges. I realise this behaviour can be controlled by using a modifier key but it would be smoother if you could simply specify edges.

Pete C at 2007-12-23 21:49:14 -0500

thank you thank you thank you! I was going to try doing something to this effect with Quicksilve+Abracadabra+AppleScript where a mouse gesture motioned a particular desktop. Instead edge-of-screen is neat and tidy and my ideal, but it's probably not implemented by apple because it's really annoying, keeping the user always "on edge" (pun ahem) that they might disappear onto another desktop by accident. Maybe more of a mouse gesture to show it's a deliberate interaction--hitting the edge in a perpendicualar motion a few times maybe? again many thanks--it's seamless on 10.5.1 for me.

Rudy at 2007-12-23 23:04:18 -0500

Thanks for this! Works nicely and should have been standard on Leopard. Two suggestions -- support for Expose and user-assignable edges, ie. up for all windows, down for show desktop, left/right for application windows.

Chris Messina at 2007-12-24 02:17:03 -0500

This is great but the name conflicts with an existing screensaver! http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/icons_screensavers/warp.html How about SpaceSlide?

Nitin at 2007-12-24 14:25:28 -0500

Good app but for one problem. When warping to the next space, the cursor appears on the opposite side of the screen. This means that I have to keep dragging the mouse for a long way in one direction or raise the mouse off the mouse pad and bring it across. This gets annoying after a while.

Nitin at 2007-12-24 14:27:33 -0500

Ok, I just figured out that there is an option to turn that off in the preferences pane. Perfect now!

Michael Long at 2007-12-24 19:36:16 -0500

I echo the requests for a "wrap-around" mode. I understand why Apple didn't do it that way, but believe it would be a great feature for power users who aren't afraid of getting lost. Also posted a quick review/blurb on iSights. http://www.iSights.org/2007/12/navigate-spaces.html

Nick at 2007-12-25 17:16:22 -0500

Hello! Great work! this app fills a great need! I also am suffering from the "no-more-dock-switching" bug, but only after a period of time, possibly after going to sleep and waking. I believe this is the same bug that keeps command-tab from working for other users. I can resolve the issue by disabling warp and rebooting. Also sent you an email with more details.

Robert at 2007-12-27 19:40:20 -0500

Love this! I really appreciate this, thanks! One suggestion: If my spaces are 2 x 2, and I'm in the upper left space and want to get to the lower right space, I have to go right and then down -- what about enabling hot corners that'll jet me diagonally? Thanks again! Robert

Aaargh! at 2007-12-28 13:43:22 -0500

Would it be possible to, instead of moving the mouse to the edges, use two mousebuttons for previous/next virtual desktop. e.g. the scroll-left/right tiltwheel on lots of Logitech mouses would be cool.

Kerry at 2007-12-29 11:18:19 -0500

Great thing, just what I needed. I worked around it until now with "xgestures". What really would be nice and "top of the crop" is instead of the key triggers, a click trigger (just as in VirtueDesktops) to prevent accidential switching.... and prevent the hot corners to be stolen from WARP. :-) THANX!

Chris at 2008-01-01 12:12:49 -0500

Great work. A coworker and I talked about this when Apple first talked about Spaces and we got the initial developer release of Leopard after WWDC. This feature was much needed and I was convinced (until Sept. 26th) that Leopard was going to ship with it and Apple was just hiding it. :) I want to echo a suggestion I saw up above. I use hot corners heavily (for Expose, Desktop, Screen Saver mostly). Can you give us an option to create a "dead zone" around the hot corner so I can use the hot corners without warping? For now, I've cranked the delay up really high, but I'd love it if it just ignored the corners if you have that setting set. Great work.

Nick at 2008-01-01 15:33:24 -0500

Chris, I am getting past the hot corners problem by using a hotkey, instead of a delay on the edges. I have my delay set to 0, and warp spaces by holding Shift when mousing the edge. Works great, is liquid fast, and doesn't interfere with anything else. This also works when vmware is fullscreen in one space!

MarsCleanR at 2008-01-05 16:27:43 -0500

this is a wonderful app. i only have been using it for 2 hours now and i can't even imagine being without it again! bravo! i want to pick three suggestions mentioned above, 'coz i really miss them: 1) the ability to ignore the hot corners. as in fact traveling around spaces means going up/down and left/right, ignoring the hot corners wouldn't hurt traveling much! 2) the ability to ignore "warp" when using fullscreen-modus (i.e. dashboard) 3) the ability to use the dock in the hide/show-mode WITH warp (for now i turned hide/show-mode off, coz i really like warp!) thanx again for the great work! lukas

unixwzrd at 2008-01-16 12:14:44 -0500

This thing is great, a life saver for me! With Warp, MondMouse and Leopard's Spaces, I now have similar abilities I used to have with CodeTek Desktop Pro. Several items I'd like to mention. First, some productivity hints mostly for how to get these three items working nicely together. Mostly having to do with Focus Follows Mouse, Raise on Focus, and Edge Flipping. Some of my favorites. 1. Put Dock.app in the "Application Exclusion" list of MondoMouse. This will prevent inadvertent mouse actions being sent to the dock which can do things like startup a terminal or cause you to switch to another space when not intended when moving to a space beyond the Dock. The Dock application can be found in /System/Library/CoreServices/Dock.app 2. If using MondoMouse, assign Finder.app in Every workspace in the Spaces configuration pane. This will prevent snapping back to a Finder window in another space. 3. Timing is everything... Set the timing faster for Warp than for Mondo mouse. I happen to like things to happen fast, so I have Warp set to .1 seconds and MondoMouse Focus Follows Mouse set to .2 seconds. Getting the timing of these two to work together is key to getting events to happen in a logical manner. I also have the following set from a command line: defaults write com.apple.dock workspaces-edge-delay -float 0.1 This makes the timing of moving windows between spaces the same time frame as Warp. In all I'm very happy to find this add-on. Keeps my workflow the same. I switched to Mac from Solaris/Linux and CodeTek Desktop Pro made my life bearable. Virtue Desktops was good but had a few warts. A couple of suggestions, a few have already been mentioned, but I'll throw my vote in here. 1. Make moving the mouse to the space all the way to the right wraps it back to the first screen on the left. Same with moving from top to bottom, or as someone else called it "wrap-around" mode or would that be "Warp-around? :) 2. A small exclusion zone in the hot corners. I activate my screen lock/saver by moving the mouse to the upper right corner. Now I have to go to the most upper right space (I use a 3x3 set of spaces). 3. Because I use such a small delay in switching, sometimes I go back to the previous space due to the mouse not moving fast enough from one space to the other. Perhaps when the mouse moves into the other space, offset its location relative to the edge far enough to not accidently switch back to the previous space. 4. Possibly add options in the Preferences Pane for the following Dock preferences and an option to restart the Dock: defaults write com.apple.dock workspaces-edge-delay -float [some-floating-point-value] defaults write com.apple.dock workspaces-wrap-arrows -boolean [YES|NO] 5. Possibly outside the scope for Warp, but possibly for some other enterprising developer, would be to have a pager which I could park somewhere on my desktop giving me a tiny view of all my "Spaces". Showing small outline windows would be nice too. Clicking in a a space in the pager would then switch me to the corresponding Spaces desktop. 6. I'd also like to see some way to disable the "snap-back" behavior of Spaces. Again, perhaps outside the scope of Warp. Finally, let me say thank you for such a very useful utility. It's helping me make the transition to Leopard a bit more bearable. I highly recommend it to anyone who is used to this sort of multi-desktop environment. The ability to switch from one space to another with the mouse rather than having to take my hand off the mouse and hit keys, the go back to the mouse interrupts the natural workflow. Much like applications which have no keyboard navigation and force you to use the mouse rather than the keyboard interrupt your workflow in the opposite way. Again, than you and much success!