MoveItHere — bring the app to you

The picker

It's Spotlight, but for rounding up strays.

Apps that aren't on your current Desktop float to the top — those are the ones you're reaching for. Everything else is one keystroke away anyway.

⌕term

Terminal

2 windows · all gather here

Desktops 2, 7

Xcode

1 window

Desktop 4

🐳

Docker Desktop

1 window

Desktop 7

Google Chrome

4 windows

Desktop 7

↑↓ Navigate↩ Bring hereesc Cancel

Install

Two ways in. Both quick.

There is no permissions dance. No Accessibility prompt, no Screen Recording, no disabling System Integrity Protection. Open it and press the hotkey.

📦 Download the app

Grab the zip, unzip, drag to Applications.

Latest release

Gatekeeper will complain once. The build is ad-hoc signed but not notarized, so macOS says the developer can't be verified. Right-click the app ▸ Open ▸ Open and you'll never see it again.

🔨 Build it yourself

Thirty seconds, and nothing to take on trust. Needs Xcode or the Command Line Tools.

git clone https://github.com/davidgeller/moveithere.git
cd moveithere
./build.sh
open build/MoveItHere.app

Produces a universal binary plus a distributable zip.

Configure

Four things to know, then forget.

Press ⌃⌥Space. That's the default hotkey. Control-Option combinations were chosen because macOS claims almost none of them — and plain ⌥Space types a non-breaking space, which surprises people.
Prefer a different key? The menu-bar icon offers ⌃⌥D, ⌃⌥G, ⌃⌥J and ⌃⌥M. All laptop-reachable — no F13 nonsense on a keyboard that stops at F12. Forgotten which one is active? Run MoveItHere.app/Contents/MacOS/MoveItHere --hotkey, or --reset to go back to the default.
Turn on Launch at Login from the same menu, so it's there after a restart.
Pair it with a system setting. In System Settings ▸ Desktop & Dock ▸ Mission Control, switch off "When switching to an application, switch to a Space with open windows". That stops ⌘Tab swiping you away in the first place.

One honest quirk: MoveItHere moves apps, not single windows. Pick an app and all of its windows come over. When an app's windows are scattered across several Desktops, the picker warns you with "all gather here" on that row. This isn't laziness — it's the only relocation macOS permits across process boundaries. The receipts are below.

Under the hood

Everything macOS said no to.

Apple has never shipped a public API for moving anything between Spaces, so this leans on the private SkyLight framework. Most of it refuses to cooperate. Here is what was actually measured on macOS 26.5 with SIP enabled, moving a real window off a real Desktop:

Approach	Own window	Another app's window
SLSMoveWindowsToManagedSpace	works	refused
SLSSpaceAddWindowsAndRemoveFromSpaces	works	refused
Either, via the owner's connection ID	—	refused
Window tags (the sticky bit)	—	refused
SLSProcessAssignToSpace	works	works

"Refused" is the cruel part: the call returns success and quietly does nothing. This is exactly why tools like yabai need a scripting addition and a disabled SIP for per-window moves — the addition injects into the other process so the call comes from the window's rightful owner.

The one survivor, SLSProcessAssignToSpace, works process-wide. Hence app-level moves. It leaves no permanent Dock "Assign To" binding behind, so nothing you pull over gets pinned there — verified by diffing com.apple.spaces before and after.

Security

It uses private APIs. So here's the full accounting.

Reaching into undocumented system internals earns scrutiny. The codebase is about 1,000 lines of Swift and every line is public. Here is what it does not do:

Network access	None. There is no networking code in the project — no telemetry, no update check, no analytics. It works entirely offline.
Keystroke capture	None. The hotkey uses Carbon's `RegisterEventHotKey`, which asks the OS to report one specific combination. It is not an event tap, so it never sees your typing — which is why macOS never asks for Input Monitoring.
Reading your screen	None. It reads window numbers, owners and sizes — never titles or contents. Titles would need Screen Recording permission, which it deliberately doesn't request.
Permissions	None requested. No Accessibility, no Screen Recording, no Full Disk Access.
Privilege escalation	None. No privileged helper, no XPC service, no setuid binary, no code injection, no SIP changes.
Your files	Untouched, apart from its own preferences.

Residual risks, stated plainly

Private APIs are unsupported. Symbols are resolved with dlsym and called through function pointers. A missing symbol is detected and reported; a silently changed one could crash the app.
Not sandboxed. Inspecting other apps' windows is incompatible with the App Sandbox. Inherent to the job.
Not notarized. That needs a paid Developer ID certificate. Building from source sidesteps it completely.
It can relocate any app's windows. That's the feature. It grants no privilege that any process running as you doesn't already have.

Will this ever be on the Mac App Store? No — private API use is grounds for rejection, so that door is permanently closed. Distribution outside the App Store is a different question: notarization is an automated malware scan, not an API review, so a notarized Developer ID build is entirely permissible.

Idea, design & direction

David Geller

Born of a genuine daily irritation: seven Desktops, one wandering Terminal window, and a stubborn conviction that computers should meet you where you are.

Source on GitHub

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One hotkey. The window comes to you.