We’ve done our fair share of window management applications here at MacStories. SizeUp, Mercury Mover, and Zooom/2 have all entered the market in hopes of improving how you interact with your Mac’s windows. And they’re all equally interesting, because they incorporate similar shortcuts while going about resizing and moving in completely different ways.

Today’s application, WindowFlow, adds a new element to the mix that could replace the infamous ⌘-Tab.

Currently existing in beta form, WindowFlow builds upon keyboard shortcuts, but incorporates a pane (or two!) to help you both manage and manipulate application windows. For the most part it’s a pretty successful combination, but coincidentally many of WindowFlow’s keyboard shortcuts conflicted with those already set on my system. But not to worry - a few changes and five minutes later, I was up and running.

So about that ⌘-Tab? Yeah, it’s a thing of the past. Because while it’s pretty great for quickly switching between applications, you can’t get a preview of what the heck you’re looking at. But not to fear, because with WindowFlow launched and running briskly in either your dock or menubar, you can now hold ⌥ -Tab to bring up an application’s pane. From here, you can continue tapping tab to cycle forward through applications (getting a beautiful application preview), or by pressing the additional ⇧ key, one can cycle through their applications in reverse (much like Apple’s own application switcher).

But you can do so much more than just switch between applications. Pressing the S key (again, with ⌥ held down) will start to queue up application windows. Once you have a few applications queued, you can then press an appropriate number on the keyboard to spring applications into appropriate parts of the window, as instructed by the Global WindowFlow Keys pane. Organizing your screen to these presets could not be easier, provided your windows are in the same Space.

Talking about the Global WindowFlow Keys pane (I’ll call it Key pane for short), think of it as an instructional panel whose context changes based on the currently active window. While your application panel is open, you’ll receive instructions on how to interact with your windows. What some may not know (and I don’t think this is advertised), is that you can use the Key pane as a sort of shortcut for your mouse. Clicking it brings up the application pane, where you can double click an application to jump to it. It might just be faster than switching spaces with hot corners!

Your ⌘ and ⌃ keys are of course your modifier keys, and they come into play when resizing Windows. In conjunction with these keys, pressing the arrow keys will move your Window around the screen. It’s surprisingly pretty speedy, and I was pretty satisfied because it wasn’t too much, or two little. I love it. If you add the ⇧ into the equation, you can resize windows (which is again pretty speedy). You can use ⌘⌃Y to center your Window (yes!), or ⌘⌃U to Maximize. I wish pressing it again would minimize the application (if it does, it didn’t work for me).

There’s some other goodies to find in here too, but I’ll leave digging through the preferences and playing through WindowFlow up to you. I will mention that you can change your keyboard shortcuts at any time, including whether or not you want WindowFlow to show up in your menubar or dock.

I think overall, as a beta, this product works very well. I didn’t have a problem using its functions, but if you find a feature isn’t working, there’s probably a keyboard shortcut conflict somewhere. For $12 (for a limited time), you too can have the Pro version, and coming soon is a less expensive Standard version which retains the core functionality you might be looking for. A big thanks to Benedict Lowndes for a review copy! As a personal note, I love the new icon!

UPDATE: Users can use option-M to minimize windows. Thanks Ben!