Spaces Renamer
Spaces Renamer is a combination of an application and SIMBL plugin to allow you to rename your spaces.
The compressed view after pressing F3
The expanded view after hovering
The interface for renaming the spaces
Spaces Renamer supports multiple monitors, and highlights the current space in each monitor with an outline. Here it is in a video if you want to see it in action.
I want to be able to rename my spaces. While TotalSpaces has this functionality, it's not free, and it has a bunch of other features that I'm not really interested in.
This is a SIMBL plugin and an application. The SIMBL plugin handles renaming spaces from a saved plist. The application adds an icon to the status bar that allows you to rename the spaces and update the plist.
[!WARNING]
This will not work for M1/M2/Apple Silicon Macs, and may not work for macOS 14.4+. Please scroll down to separate install instructions.
csrutil disable
in Recovery mode by following this tutorial). There are additional commands for macOS Catalina, with details under the 'System' tab of MacForge. After it's installed you can partially re-enable SIP using csrutil enable --without debug --without fs
. If you fully enable SIP, Spaces Renamer won't work.
spaces-renamer.bundle
with MacForge.app
, or simply drag and drop it in to install it.
killall -9 Dock
in Terminal to restart the Dock application.
[!NOTE]
While this has been stable for months, it relies on a beta version of MacForge, so there may be compatibility issues with other plugins.
sudo launchctl unload /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.macenhance.MacForge.Injector.plist
sudo rm -rf "/Library/Application Support/MacEnhance"
sudo rm /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.macenhance.MacForge.Injector.plist
sudo rm /Library/PrivilegedHelperTools/com.macenhance.MacForge.Injector
csrutil
by disabling SIP (use the command csrutil disable
in Recovery mode by following this tutorial). There are additional commands for macOS Catalina, with details under the 'System' tab of MacForge. After it's installed you can partially re-enable SIP using csrutil enable --without debug --without fs --without nvram --without kext
(thanks to @serkanozkul here). If you fully enable SIP, Spaces Renamer won't work.spaces-renamer.bundle
version to /Library/Application Support/MacEnhance/Plugins
and run killall -9 Dock
.You can trivially uninstall SpacesRenamer by using MacForge to delete the plugin and dragging the app to the Trash. If you want to fully remove MacForge and SpacesRenamer you can do the following:
sudo launchctl unload /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.macenhance.MacForge.Injector.plist
sudo rm -rf "/Library/Application Support/MacEnhance"
sudo rm /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.macenhance.MacForge.Injector.plist
sudo rm /Library/PrivilegedHelperTools/com.macenhance.MacForge.Injector
sudo rm -rf ~/Library/Containers/com.alexbeals.spacesrenamer
MacForge is automatically downgrading
If you are running into issues where MacForge is downgrading, try uninstall MacForge by deleting the app and emptying Trash, running the purge.sh
file, restarting your computer, and then installing MacForge again. Make sure when you install you disable automatic upgrading and checks.
I can't see the icon in the menu bar
Make sure the SpacesRenamer app is actually running (you can check it in Activity Monitor). If it is, it's likely that you just have a lot of icons. See this comment for some recommendations on how to rearrange your icons to have it be visible.
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