A dozen Mac utilities. Meet Perch.

Window tiling, screenshots, clipboard history, Alt-Tab, system stats, night mode and cleaning modes — one panel, every one on a shortcut.

Free & open source macOS 14+ Apple silicon & Intel No telemetry 2.5 MB download

Download for macOS View source
Early stage — a personal project, used daily on one Mac and self-tested on every release, but not widely tested yet. Issues welcome.

01 — WINDOWS

Put windows where you want them

Halves, thirds, quarters, full screen. Press the same shortcut again and the width cycles — one key finds the size you meant. Five layouts tile everything at once, and one shortcut puts a window back. This is the panel itself — every control works.

⌃⌥← ⌃⌥→ ⌃⌥↩ ⌃⌥⌫
Perch
System
Screen
Tools

Layout

Brightness & night

100
Night Mode
Perch 1.9.2 — up to date Check

02 — SYSTEM

Know what your Mac is doing

Click CPU and you get per-core load and the processes driving it, helpers grouped under the app that owns them. GPU, memory, disk, network and sound each get the treatment that suits them — a ranked list where ranking means something, plain figures where it does not. End a runaway process without opening Activity Monitor, and pin any figure next to the clock.

⌃⌥Space
Perch
System
Screen
Tools
0%

BY CPU

Perch 1.9.2 — up to date Check

03 — TOOLS

The small stuff, one click away

Blank the screen to clean it. Lock the keyboard, or just the trackpad, and wipe without typing into anything. Clear caches to the Trash. Take a screenshot and keep taking them. Keep the Mac awake for as long as you need. Paste from history. Try any of them below.

⌘⇧V ⌥Tab ⌃⌥N ⌃⌥K
Perch
System
Screen
Tools

Tools

Switches

Perch 1.9.2 — up to date Check

Everything in the box

No paid tier. All of it works the moment you install it.

Window managerHalves, thirds, quarters, gaps, multi-display, undo.
Custom layoutsFive presets that tile your frontmost windows at once.
Alt-Tab switcherLive window previews, type to filter, close or quit inline.
Clipboard historySearchable, pinnable, with image previews and source apps.
System monitoringCPU, GPU, memory, disk, network, battery health, thermals.
Disk cleaningSixteen cache targets plus your own. Always to the Trash.
Screen cleaningFlat colours that double as a dead-pixel test.
Keyboard cleaningInput locked on a countdown so you can wipe the keys.
Trackpad cleaningPointer frozen, keyboard live so Esc still lets you out.
ScreenshotsDrag to capture and the crosshair stays up for the next one. Grab a window, a display, or on a delay; read the text out of a selection; sample a colour; pin a shot above everything.
Updates install themselvesPerch replaces itself and restarts. The new build must be signed by the same key as the running one, or it is refused before anything moves.
Night mode6500K to 2400K via display gamma. Manual or scheduled.
BrightnessPer display, including external monitors over any cable. On a shortcut too, in the same sixteenths the Mac’s own keys use — which only ever reach the built-in panel.
SoundOutput level and mute, switch between outputs, and see which apps are actually making noise. No per-app sliders: macOS exposes no volume on a process, and the only way round it is shipping an audio driver.
Keep awakeHold it open, or for 15 minutes to 8 hours with the time left on the row. It can start itself while plugged in, while an app runs, or while the CPU is busy, and let the display sleep while the machine works.

Shortcuts

Every one of them rebindable in Settings.

ShortcutAction
⌃⌥SpaceOpen the Perch panel
⌘⇧VClipboard history
⌥TabAlt-Tab — hold Option, tap Tab, release to switch
⌃⌥`Searchable window switcher
⌃⌥← →Left / right half — press again to cycle ⅓, ⅔
⌃⌥↑ ↓Top / bottom half
⌃⌥U I J KQuarters — top left, top right, bottom left, bottom right
⌃⌥D F GLeft / centre / right third
⌃⌥CCentre without resizing
⌃⌥↩Maximize
⌃⌥⌫Restore original size
⌃⌥⇧← →Move to previous / next display
⌃⌥⇧4Screenshot — stays armed; W window, F display, D delayed, T text, C colour, P pin
⌃⌥= ⌃⌥-Brightness up / down on every display, external ones included
⌃⌥NNight mode
⌃⌥⇧SScreen cleaning
⌃⌥⇧LKeyboard cleaning
⌃⌥⇧TTrackpad cleaning

Install

Free, and takes about a minute.

Fetches the latest release, checks it against the published checksum, installs it, clears the flag macOS puts on downloads, and starts it. Asks for no privileges. 

curl -fsSL https://perch.ishanmalu.dev/install.sh | bash

Piping a script into a shell means trusting it, which is a fair thing to be wary of. Read it first if you would rather: 

curl -fsSL https://perch.ishanmalu.dev/install.sh -o install.sh
less install.sh && bash install.sh

Then grant Accessibility access under System Settings → Privacy & Security → Accessibility, and press ⌃⌥Space. Updates after this install themselves.

Privacy

Perch can see window titles, read the clipboard and intercept keystrokes. That deserves saying plainly.

Keystrokes are counted, never recordedThe cleaning modes discard every event they swallow. Key codes are never stored or logged.
Clipboard history stays localOwner-only permissions. Password managers and credential-shaped strings are skipped.
Every network call is one you asked forChecking for an update, and downloading it, talk to GitHub. The speed test fetches a block of bytes from Cloudflare when you press Run. Nothing else opens a socket.
Disk cleaning cannot go rogueA path guard rejects system and home directories. Removal is always to the Trash.
Accessibility reads geometry, not contentWindow positions, sizes, titles and app names. Never what is inside a window.
Window previews are optionalCaptured only while the switcher is open, held in memory, never written to disk.

Full detail in SECURITY.md. Every release ships a checksum, and you can run the built-in checks yourself with Perch --selftest.