Why We Built PipNow: The Case Against Alt-Tab

Before PipNow, we kept running into the same kind of collapse. If you work on a Mac, this will sound familiar.

Pain #1: The AI is running. You’re waiting.

Modern AI tools are async by nature. Ask an agent to refactor a module, or a model to process a batch of files, and the job takes minutes. You can’t walk away — it might stop to ask a question, or fail silently. So you ⌘Tab back every thirty seconds. Did it finish? Did it error?

A few seconds each time, dozens of times a day. The real cost isn’t those seconds — it’s the several minutes it takes to get back into flow after every switch.

Pain #2: The game and the assignment, take your pick

The match is in the second half. The lecture is playing. The group chat is blowing up. And your document is open. macOS’s window management — fullscreen, Mission Control, Split View — assumes you do one thing at a time. To “keep an eye” on the second thing, you surrender half your screen, or buy a second monitor.

Pain #3: Traders figured this out first

Market feeds, watchlists, news streams, chat rooms — traders need four or five information sources on screen at once. Stacked windows, constant switching, and the market doesn’t wait.

What we tried — and why it wasn’t enough

• Native macOS Picture-in-Picture: video only. Chats, terminals, web pages? No. One at a time.
• Multiple desktops / Mission Control: still switching, just with different gestures.
• Split View: sacrifices half the screen to “keep an eye” on something.
• A second monitor: effective, but expensive and not always an option.

All of these manage space. What we needed was to manage attention: watch, without switching.

So we built PipNow

PipNow turns any window into a floating mini window, pinned above everything:

• Hover at any window’s top-right corner, click once, and it becomes a mini window;
• Or press ⌘⌥P to miniaturize the current window instantly;
• Hover over a mini window and the full-size view pops up for a moment; move away and it tucks back in;
• Click a mini window to pin its preview in the center — click buttons, type replies, right inside it;
• No limit on mini windows. Watch as many things as you need.

Developers, students, traders — different scenarios, one answer: the window stays where it belongs, and your attention stops bouncing like a ping-pong ball.

PipNow is in beta. If the switching problem sounds like yours, start with our tips for getting the most out of it — or read why Windows users coming to Mac feel right at home.