WindowTop for Mac: The Picture-in-Picture Alternative You've Been Looking For

Switching from Windows to Mac, many people hit the same disappointment: on Windows there’s WindowTop, a great utility that pins any window on top and shrinks it into picture-in-picture. On macOS, you search around and find that WindowTop has no Mac version.

The capabilities you got used to

WindowTop earned its popularity by solving very specific problems:

• Always on Top: keep a window floating above everything;
• Shrink to PiP: turn a window into a small picture-in-picture view;
• Transparency / click-through: keep it out of the way.

In short: watch the second thing, without breaking the first.

On macOS, that job belongs to PipNow

PipNow does the same job — and honestly, the capability sets overlap a lot:

Need	WindowTop (Windows)	PipNow (macOS)
Pin any window on top	✅	✅ as a floating mini window, above everything
Shrink to picture-in-picture	✅	✅ one click, no limit on count
Interact inside the small window	✅	✅ pin the preview, then click and type in it
Keyboard shortcuts	✅	✅ ⌘⌥P miniaturizes the current window
Privacy	✅ local processing	✅ all mirroring local, no account, no telemetry
Platform	Windows only	✅ built for macOS 13+ (Apple Silicon)

With capabilities that close, the differences come down to two things:

First, the platform. WindowTop is Windows-only, and Mac users have been missing an equivalent.

Second, the interaction model. WindowTop’s PiP is a shrunken window — to see details you enlarge it again. PipNow’s daily flow is different: the mini window sits quietly in a corner → hover over it and the full-size view pops up instantly → move away and it tucks back in → when you need to act, click once to pin the preview and work right inside it. The whole chain is designed around not interrupting what you’re doing — you never have to juggle the window’s size just to look at something.

Why this is harder to do on macOS

macOS’s window system is far more locked down than Windows’: mirroring any app’s window live requires Screen Recording permission, and interacting inside a preview requires Accessibility. Quite a few older pinning utilities — the ones relying on system injection — have broken along the way. PipNow is built on modern, system-sanctioned APIs, which is why it can reliably pin any window.

Migrating from WindowTop? Two things to remember

1. ⌘⌥P — turn the current window into a mini window;
2. Click a mini window — the preview pins in the center, and you can work right inside it.

That’s it. If there are other Windows habits you miss, tell us at [email protected] — your feedback is the next update. And for the bigger picture, read why we built PipNow or the practical tips.