Hyperspaces is the ultimate way to customise Apple’s Spaces. If you’ve ever found yourself wondering which space you’re in, then Hyperspaces is for you!
- Backgrounds: Set individual desktop images for each of your spaces.
- Labels: Give each of your spaces a name, then show it on your desktop and in your menubar.
- Colours: Set a colour for each space, and watch the desktop image slowly fade from colour to colour as you switch between your spaces.
- Switch: Use the Hyperspaces switcher to visually move through your spaces using the keyboard or the mouse.
- Hotkeys: Set-up personalised hotkeys for common actions:
- Switching directly to a space;
- Adding and removing spaces on the fly;
- And many more!
Download
You can download a demo of Hyperspaces 1.0 right now, and customise the first three of your spaces! If you’d like to customise more than three spaces, you’ll need to pony up and buy the full version .
Requirements
Hyperspaces requires an Intel-based or PowerPC-based Mac running Mac OS X 10.5.5 — the faster, the better!
I’d also recommend a video card with at least 256Mb memory if you’re planning on using custom desktop images — Core Animation really chews through your video memory!
Support
My name is Tony Arnold, and I develop Hyperspaces - if you’d like to ask me a question, you’re welcome to e-mail me - otherwise, I like to use GetSatisfaction.com to keep in contact and manage any support issues.
Release notes
The current release is Hyperspaces 1.0 beta 7 (or “b7”), which is a pre-release — I'm still ironing out a few niggly bugs. Here are the changes from the last version:
New and fixed features
- New Hyperspaces is fully 64-bit. There is no longer a sub-process to handle hotkeys.
- Fix Hyperspaces should now correctly save preferences on logout, shutdown and reboot. I am sorry about how long this took to track down and fix.
- Fix Hyperspaces should no longer draw over the top of applications like Coversutra, DeskShade, GeekTool and other desktop level decorations.
- Fix The scaling of desktop images should work just the same as the Mac OS X Finder does now.
- Fix Fixed a number of crashes around the use of colors from the standard Color Palette.
- Fix The switcher now uses the system highlight color you have set in the Mac OS X "Appearance" preference pane.
- Fix Many other minor fixes and optimisations.
Known issues
- There is currently no help, and no manual. It's coming.
- The switcher flickers when it's showing and hiding.
- The option "Disable Core Animation for the desktop background" is not entirely finished. Core Animation is still used to render the desktop colors and text.
Here are the changes in Hyperspaces 1.0 beta 6 (or “b6”), which can still be downloaded:
New and fixed features
- Fix Memory usage is improved under most circumstances.
- Fix Space switcher will now show the correct highlighting and hover effects.
- Fix Space switcher now accepts right mouse clicks to switch to a space.
- Fix The desktop image scaling techniques "Fit to Screen" and "Fill Screen" were reversed - now they are not.
- Fix When using system desktop pictures, Hyperspaces will respect the settings for each individual display.
Here are the changes in Hyperspaces 1.0 beta 5 (or “b5”), which can still be downloaded:
- New Added the ability to display the Hyperspaces desktop over top of the normal desktop icons ("Draw desktop backgrounds:" in the "General" preferences tab).
- New Added a new low memory drawing mode for older macs - you can activate this by checking the "Use low memory drawing" checkbox in the "General" preferences tab. This mode does not use Core Animation for desktop images, so they will not animate. Labels and colours should still animate, but may not work correctly.
- New Added preferences for controlling Growl.
- New Added preferences for controlling Software Updates.
- New Removed the option to set the menubar transparency on a per-space basis. This option was causing crashes and problems for many users and there's no "right" way to set this.
- Fix Hyperspaces should not lose it's preferences on reboot - I need people to test this though.
- Fix Much more efficient storage, retrieval and drawing of images for space backgrounds and the switcher. You should see drastic improvements when using a large number of spaces.
- Fix Removed the thin blue line that was drawing next to the Hyperspaces icon in the system status bar.
- Fix Function keys can now be used as hotkeys.
- Fix Hyperspaces should no longer "swallow" the 'a' key.
- Fix Hotkeys should now set and un-set consistently - previously, it was impossible to unset hotkeys properly.
Here are the changes in Hyperspaces 1.0 beta 4 (or “fc4”), which can still be downloaded.:
- Fix Resolved a memory leak when removing rows or columns of spaces.
- Fix Resolved a crash when using background colours with a filter.
- Fix Resolved a crash with tiled desktop pictures.
Here are the changes in Hyperspaces 1.0 beta 3 (or “fc3”), which can still be downloaded.:
- New Added Growl support - you can change the settings for this directly from the Growl preference pane.
- New Images are now cached in a more efficient manner - this should mean lower memory usage for users with more than 3 spaces.
- New If you choose to run Hyperspaces as an application with a Dock icon, you can drag and drop images onto the dock icon to change the current space background, or click on the icon to activate Apple's Spaces overview. There is no preference for setting the Dock icon to display - you'll need to do this manually.
- New Added a new "Spaces Preferences..." menu item that open's the system preferences for Spaces.
- Fix You can drag images onto the image well within the preferences again.
- Fix The switcher no longer shifts slightly when changing spaces.
- Fix I'm trying out a method to fix the white background problem users with older video cards see. Please let me know if this build fixes the problem for you (you know who you are!).
- Fix General stability and speed fixes.
Here are the changes in Hyperspaces 1.0 beta 2 (or “fc2”), which can still be downloaded.:
- New Added software update preferences.
- New Users can now set which colour filter they would like for background colours.
- New User can now set the animation speed.
- New Background images are now cached in memory to speed transitions.
- Fix Fixed a crash when using PICT images as desktop backgrounds. Unfortunately, PICTs aren't properly supported by Core Animation so they can't be used by Hyperspaces. This also addresses a crash when using EarthDesk.
- Fix General stability and speed fixes.