Give every window room to breathe.
Install, allow Accessibility, and press ⌃⌥→.
Ribbon lines your windows up as full-height columns on a strip that keeps going sideways. Opening a window adds a column; nothing else gets smaller. Your screen just slides to whatever you’re working on.
Free · macOS 14+ · Apple silicon & Intel · needs Accessibility access · How to open it the first time
Grid tilers keep slicing the screen thinner. Ribbon lets each window keep a useful width and moves the view instead.
Every window is a full-height column. New ones appear right of the one you’re using, and the strip grows.
Cycle a column through a third, half, two thirds and full width. Drag a window edge and Ribbon keeps your size.
Fold a window into the column on its left to share the height, and pull it back out when you need the space.
One shortcut shows the whole strip with app icons and titles. Arrow to a column and press Return, or just click it.
A tiny strip in the menu bar shows your columns and which one has focus, so you always know where you are.
Column order and widths are saved per display and put back when Ribbon or your apps start again.
Dialogs, sheets, panels and full-screen windows float. System Settings and Calculator float by default; add any app you like.
Hold the modifier keys and swipe sideways with two fingers to slide the strip freely.
One shortcut freezes Ribbon so you can arrange something by hand. Resume and it picks up from there.
A new window lands just right of the focused column at your default width. Everything else keeps its size.
Move focus left or right and the view scrolls with a short eased slide, just far enough to show the whole column.
Short on room? Stack two windows in one column, top and bottom, then split them apart again later.
Columns that scroll off the display are tucked against its edge with a sliver showing, because macOS won’t always let a window go fully off-screen. With a second display on that side, they tuck along the bottom edge instead.
Shown with the default ⌃⌥. You can switch to ⌃⌘, ⌥⌘ or ⌃⌥⌘ in Settings.
Moving and resizing other apps’ windows goes through the macOS Accessibility interface, and macOS asks you to allow that once. Ribbon only reads window positions, sizes, titles and which window has focus.
Yes. Each display has its own strip, and the commands act on the display that holds the focused window. Drag a window to another display and it joins that display’s strip.
Ribbon arranges the windows on the Space you’re looking at. Full-screen windows are left alone. When you switch back to a Space, Ribbon puts its windows back in their remembered order.
Add it under Settings → Excluded Apps, or press ⌃⌥F to float a single window.
Press ⌃⌥P or use Pause in the menu bar. Windows stay put until you resume.
Ribbon is distributed directly from this website. Here’s how to open it the first time.
Install, allow Accessibility, and press ⌃⌥→.