Developer and creative tools

aaronscribner/

pixl-put

macOS menu bar app that restores windows to their saved Desktop positions, telling them apart by project or document, and by browser tab if you opt in.

What’s new here

PixlPut assigns each window an identity: editors are matched by workspace or project and document apps by file. Browsers are matched by open tab only if you turn on “Identify individual browser/editor windows”, which is off by default and needs the Automation permission. After a restart, each window goes back to its own saved position; returning it to its own Desktop also needs yabai with System Integrity Protection partly disabled.

What it does

PixlPut sits in the macOS menu bar and watches your window layout. You click Capture now on each Desktop to save it. After sleep, wake, a display change, or a restart, it restores windows to the position and size you saved on each Mission Control Desktop.

Moving windows between Spaces requires yabai with System Integrity Protection partially disabled, because macOS gives no public API for that. The repo vendors a fork of yabai that fixes tracking when “Displays have separate Spaces” is turned off. Without yabai, per-Desktop position and size restore still works.

Captures are manual and local. Data lives in ~/Library/Application Support/DisplayMaid-Next/. Network calls are limited to a Sparkle update check, which sends nothing beyond a User-Agent; no analytics or crash reporting. History snapshots let you roll back to an earlier layout.

Who it’s for

Developers or power users on macOS with a fixed multi-Desktop workflow who are tired of windows shuffling around after sleep or display reconnects. The README is explicit: this is a personal tool tested on one Apple Silicon machine running macOS 26.2 with a specific display configuration and “Displays have separate Spaces” turned off. Anyone on a different setup should read the requirements carefully before investing time in it.

Try it

No prebuilt releases yet. Build from source:

git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/aaronscribner/pixl-put.git
cd pixl-put
./scripts/build-app.sh

On first launch, grant Accessibility when prompted. The PixlPut icon then appears in the menu bar.

For cross-Desktop window moves, run the yabai setup after configuring SIP:

./scripts/setup-yabai.sh

Xcode 15.4 or later (Swift 5.10) and macOS 14 Sonoma are required to build.

How mature is it

Created 2026-10-08, last pushed 2026-10-09. 1 star, 0 forks, no releases, no listed contributors. 20 commits in the past 90 days. No license yet (listed as TBD in the README). The README explicitly describes this as a personal tool tested on one hardware setup.