How to Raise Any Window on Any macOS Space Without Animation

macOS Spaces are a powerful way to organize your desktop — until you need to grab a window from another Space. The default behavior forces you through a full-screen sliding animation that takes you away from your current context, shows the target Space, and then leaves you there. If you just wanted to pull one window over, you now have to navigate back. It's slow and disorienting.

DockMaster solves this with cross-Space window teleportation: select any window from any Space, and DockMaster brings it to your current desktop silently — no animation, no Space switch, no context loss.

Why Space Switching Is Jarring

When you activate a window on a different Space through Mission Control, Cmd+Tab, or the Dock, macOS performs a horizontal sliding animation to move you to that Space. This animation:

Takes 300–500 ms, disrupting your visual focus.
Moves your entire viewport to a different desktop, changing all visible windows at once.
Requires you to remember which Space you came from if you want to go back.
Compounds quickly when you're switching between windows on multiple Spaces throughout the day.

For users who organize work across 3–6 Spaces (common among developers and designers), this friction adds up to minutes of lost focus daily.

How DockMaster Teleports Windows

DockMaster uses a hybrid approach combining macOS Accessibility APIs and CoreGraphics private APIs to move windows between Spaces without triggering the system animation.

The process works in three steps:

Window identification — DockMaster maintains a real-time map of every window on every Space using CGWindowListCopyWindowInfo and AXUIElement. When you select a window from the Global Switcher (Option+Tab) or a Dock preview, DockMaster knows exactly which Space it lives on.
Space reassignment — using CoreGraphics Space APIs, DockMaster moves the target window's Space association from its original Space to your current Space. This happens at the window-server level, so no animation is triggered.
Focus and raise — DockMaster uses AXUIElement to raise the window to the front and give it keyboard focus. The window appears on your current desktop as if it had always been there.

Compatibility

Cross-Space teleportation works with all major macOS desktop modes:

Mission Control Spaces — the standard multi-desktop setup. Windows move between numbered Spaces seamlessly.
Stage Manager — introduced in macOS Ventura. DockMaster can pull windows out of Stage Manager groups on other Spaces into your current view.
Full-Screen apps — full-screen windows live on their own dedicated Space. DockMaster can teleport them out of full-screen into a regular window on your current desktop.

When You'd Use This

The most common scenario: you're working on Space 1 and realize you need a reference window that's on Space 3. Without DockMaster, you'd swipe over to Space 3, click the window, and either stay there (losing your Space 1 layout) or drag it back manually. With DockMaster, you press Option+Tab, select the window, and it appears on Space 1 instantly.

This is especially useful for developers who keep a browser on one Space, an IDE on another, and documentation on a third. DockMaster lets you pull any window to wherever you are without leaving your current context.

Get Started

Download DockMaster and grant Accessibility permission. Press Option+Tab to open the Global Switcher, then select any window — regardless of which Space it's on. It appears on your current desktop silently. Free to try, Pro (£14.99) for the full experience.