Deft
Give your Mac the Windows habits you miss — free, native, and open source.
Deft is a lightweight macOS menu-bar app that brings the window-management and keyboard behaviour of Windows to your Mac, without changing anything permanently.
Features
- Windows Snap — drag windows to edges/corners to snap them; Snap Layouts, Snap Assist, shared resize dividers, and
Win+arrow keys. Drag a snapped or maximized window away and it becomes a floating window about a fifth of that screen, sized for the display you drop it on.
- Live Preview — real, moving window thumbnails in the switcher (
Alt+Tab in Windows mode, Cmd+Tab in Mac mode), Snap Assist, and when hovering the Dock.
- Windows keyboard —
Ctrl acts as Cmd, the Win key, F-keys, Home/End, Explorer keys in Finder, a Windows-style language switch key, and auto-detection of Windows vs Mac keyboards.
- Cut & paste files in Finder —
Ctrl+X (or ⌘+X on a Mac keyboard) then Ctrl/⌘+V moves files, like Explorer — a short click sound confirms the cut, and Esc cancels it.
- Mouse & scroll — independent natural-scroll for mouse and trackpad, side-button back/forward, and
Ctrl+scroll to zoom (sent as ⌘+scroll to apps that zoom that way, ⌘+/⌘− to the rest).
- System Monitor — live CPU, RAM, SSD, temperature, and device-battery cells in the menu bar with smooth animation; click for all four at once in a tidy grid (user/system CPU, core types, swap, SSD speed and free space, SSD and battery temperatures), whichever cells you show, plus the battery level of this Mac and connected devices (mouse, keyboard, headphones), a bolt on cells that are charging, and for this Mac the charger's wattage, the power coming in, and a warning when the charger is too weak to keep up.
- AI Usage — a Claude Code cell next to CPU/RAM with the same session and weekly percentages
/usage shows, read from the file Claude Code keeps on your Mac (no account; Deft asks your own Claude Code CLI to refresh them and never sees your sign-in). Click for weekly and per-model limits and reset times.
- Display controls — resolution, refresh rate, rotation, set main display, power a display off, and a drag-to-arrange window, and it remembers your window layout: when displays drop off during sleep and come back, windows return to the display they were on.
- Clean Keyboard — lock every key so you can wipe the keyboard.
- Glass slider — choose how see-through the menu and windows are, from clear Liquid Glass to frosted; the menu updates as you drag.
- Manual — a built-in guide to every feature, in English and Thai.
See it move
Drag to an edge to snap — Snap Assist fills the rest
Snap Layouts — drag to the top and pick a layout
Alt+Tab with live window previews
Screenshots
| Menu bar | System Monitor & Claude Code usage |
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Install
- Download the latest Deft.dmg from Releases.
- Open it and drag Deft to Applications.
- Launch Deft and grant the permissions it asks for (see below).
The app is signed with a Developer ID and notarized by Apple, so it opens without security warnings. One download runs on both Apple Silicon and Intel Macs (macOS 13 or later); Intel support is new, so reports are welcome.
Or with Homebrew:
brew tap ninjait07/deft https://github.com/ninjait07/deft
brew trust ninjait07/deft
brew install --cask deft
Permissions & privacy
Deft works entirely on your Mac and collects nothing. It uses:
- Accessibility — move/resize windows and translate shortcuts.
- Screen Recording — draw live window previews (nothing is recorded or sent).
- Input Monitoring — tell a Windows keyboard from a Mac one.
The only network request Deft makes is checking for updates (a small public file on GitHub). See PRIVACY.md.
Build from source
./build.sh # build + sign + launch (dev)
KNACK_VERSION=1.0 KNACK_BUILD=1 ./release.sh 1.0 1 # notarized release dmg
Requires macOS 13+, Xcode command-line tools, and a Developer ID for signing/notarizing. The whole app is a single Swift file: Deft.swift.
Follow
Updates, demos and new projects are posted on the NonDev Facebook page — follow along, ask questions, or suggest features there.
Support
Deft is free. If it makes your Mac feel like home, you can tip via PromptPay (in-app) or GitHub Sponsors. Thank you!
License
GPL-3.0 — crafted by Non Bannawat 🇹🇭
