Taskboard Adds An IOS-Like App Switcher Tray To Mac OS X

Launchpad in OS X is what Springboard is to iOS with one small difference; it does not let you quit apps.You can launch apps and organize them in folders, but to exit them, you need to use their Dock or Menu Bar icons. If you think Springboard has a better, more convenient way of quitting apps, TaskBoardis a free Mac App that does it for you. It adds a replica of the Springboard app switcher bar in iOS to your OS X desktop, to easily switch between apps and quit them. Your desktop slides up to reveal the app switcher, and the Dock disappears to accommodate it. You can click and hold an icon to put it in wiggling mode similar to iOS, where the quit badges appear. TaskBoard can be triggered by moving your mouse to the bottom of your screen, or by using a customizable keyboard shortcut.

We recently covered AppsBar, which lets you access your recently opened programs from a similar bar on the top of your screen. TaskBoard works similarly, only at the bottom of the screen and for your currently running apps rather than the recently closed ones.

Once installed, TaskBoard enables both the mouse gesture and the keyboard shortcut. Move your mouse to the bottom of your screen and it will glow blue (made by the elves, you know). If you position the Dock at the bottom, you might find this slightly inconvenient or even buggy at times; there is sometimes a delay before the Dock disappears and rarely, it does not disappear at all.

Once the app switcher appears, you can click any one of the app icons to switch to it, or click and hold an icon to get them to start wiggling and show the quit button for each.

If you don’t feel like using the mouse gesture for the purpose, you have the option of using Command+Control+Up Arrow key combination to reveal the TaskBoard app switcher. You can even disable the mouse gesture from TaskBoard’s preference pane in System Preferences. The app’s shortcut keys can also be modified here, but the changes don’t always work. TaskBoard is in beta so there are a few kinks that need to be worked out, one of them being the app not responding to a change made in the preference pane.

Feature wise, the app can do with some more customization options for the mouse gesture; strictly speaking, the app switcher bar need only appear at the bottom of the screen to mimic the iOS app switcher, but some might want it to appear on any other screen edge. The delay before the bar appears when you position your mouse at the bottom of the screen should also be customizable. Another handy feature for a future update might be to add an option to also show your recently launched apps that aren’t currently running, the way it’s done on iOS.

Download TaskBoard For Mac