Spacepal vs WhichSpace

If you mainly want to see which Space you are on, switch with a click or a key, and style your menu bar exactly how you like, use WhichSpace: it is free, open source and actively maintained. Choose Spacepal if you want more than an indicator, such as an overview with previews of every Space, window search, saved layouts and names in Mission Control, and are happy to pay once for it.

Different kinds of app

WhichSpace lives in the menu bar. It shows the current Space, or all of them, as icons you can style in great detail, and you click or scroll the icons to switch. It is MIT-licensed, installs with Homebrew and updates itself.

Spacepal has a menu bar item too, but most of its work happens elsewhere: a full-screen overview, a window search panel, a launcher and an automation layer. It is a commercial app with a trial.

If your question is "can I tell my Spaces apart at a glance?", both answer yes. If it is "can I manage what is on them?", that is where the two part ways.

Comparison

Competitor details checked 2026-10-27 from the WhichSpace GitHub repository (README and releases).

What you pay for with Spacepal

Since WhichSpace costs nothing, the fair question is what the money buys. In short, the things a menu bar indicator does not try to do:

• Seeing your Spaces. Press ⌥Tab for a preview of every Space with its name and colour, then pick one with a number, the arrows or the mouse.
• Finding windows. ⌃⌥F searches window titles on every Space; Return goes there, ⌘Return brings the window to you on macOS 14.0–14.4 and 26.4 and later.
• Keeping layouts. Spacepal remembers which Space each window was on and offers to put them back after a restart or when a monitor returns. Putting windows back on their Spaces uses the direct move only, so it works on macOS 14.0–14.4 and 26.4 and later; on other versions the drag fallback cannot help, because it only moves the front window, and those windows stay on the Space they are on. See windows on the wrong desktop after restart.
• Labels in Mission Control, if you still use it.
• Per-Space tools: notes, time tracking, actions on entering a Space, a scratchpad app, window marks.

If none of those would change your day, WhichSpace is the sensible pick.

When WhichSpace is the better choice

• You want a free tool, or one whose source you can read and build.
• You live in the menu bar and want fine control over how each Space looks there.
• You want native actions in the Shortcuts app today.
• You do not want to grant Screen Recording. Spacepal needs it for its previews.
• You prefer something mature and actively maintained over a pre-release app.

When Spacepal is the better choice

• You have enough Spaces that names alone no longer tell you what is where.
• You want to move and find windows across Spaces without opening Mission Control. Spacepal moves windows with a direct macOS call that works, with System Integrity Protection on, on macOS 14.0–14.4 and 26.4 and later. On other versions it falls back to holding the window by its title bar while it switches Spaces, the way you would by hand, and that fallback only works for the front window.
• You want layouts, profiles or templates to set up Spaces for you.
• You want to buy through the Mac App Store. That version leaves out four-finger tap, adding and removing desktops, restoring browser tabs and AltTab setup.

You can also use both: WhichSpace in the menu bar, Spacepal for the overview, with Spacepal's menu bar item set to icon-only in Settings, Appearance.

Related

• Keyboard shortcuts for Spaces
• How to rename desktops on a Mac
• Spacepal vs Hyperjump
• Mission Control alternatives
• All comparisons

We make Spacepal, so read this with that in mind. Competitor details come from their own sites and are dated; if something is out of date, email support@getspacepal.com and we will fix it.

Written by Dan Bayer, developer of Spacepal. Last updated 2026-10-27.