The concept of an app switcher tool is rather odd. After all, why would you need a tool for jumping between apps, when the Command+Tab shortcut works just fine and the three-finger swipe opens the Mission Control on the Mac? Well, there are solutions that work better.
Second, when you bring the mouse and keyboard combo into the picture, the fluid convenience of the trackpad gesture flies out the window. Over the years, the developer community has produced some real app switcher gems.
AltTab has been a favorite in the Mac user groups for a while now. Witch and Contexts have also attracted their fair share of Mac power users. But there was still some scope for making things easier, and more importantly, elegant. Dory fills that gap.
Dory is the latest app switcher application for Mac, one that is as flashy as it is about sheer substance. Instead of asking users to shift their hands from the keyboard deck to the trackpad or asking them to remember a special keyboard shortcut, Dory takes things to the elementary stage.
C is for Chrome. S is for Safari. T is for Teams. That’s how easy Dory makes it to bring your desired app window into the foreground focus. It does so beautifully, with an added dash of versatility.
All you need to do is hit the button of your choice on the keyboard, or the mouse. After that, you’re just an identifier key away from launching the app of your choice. Alternatively, you can save yourself the second key press and just go with a hover gesture above the desired app’s icon.
A refreshing solution to a basic problem
The idea behind Dory is not too different from the side panel on OnePlus and Samsung phones. The objective is to make it a tad bit easier for users to access one particular app among the dozen running in the background. And with as little effort as possible.
In Dory’s case, you’re a mouse click and an identifying letter away from doing it, without getting overwhelmed by a screen full of small and big app windows. Dory essentially puts the desired app just one key-press away. C will summon Chrome, D will launch Docs, and so on.
While working away from my desktop (and the overpriced mouse), I set up the left Control button to open Dory’s app switcher. My favorite part is not the ease of switching between the apps, but the extremely non-intrusive way it happens.
By default, the app switcher opens as a tall pillar, but that’s not where the fun is. You can make the app switcher look like a palette of icons, just the way you see paint color strips. Or better yet, go with the scroll wheel look, which opens with a smooth animation and is pretty cool to witness.
I wish there were an option to control the animation speed. Either way, have a look:
The whole premise behind Dory might sound meh, but it actually makes app switching a tad quicker, less visually formidable, and easier to execute. It’s more convenient compared to the updated Spotlight approach in macOS Tahoe or third-party apps.
You are not tasked with remembering a shortcut for each app. Starting with the first letter of an app’s name just feels more natural. Plus, the trigger action is not a two-key approach. With a mouse, you are actually dedicating (and giving a purpose) to the middle key, which is hard to forget or even confuse with any other action.
Likewise, you can pick any key on the deck that you don’t use and assign it a task. Either way, you’re not memorizing anything or getting confused among the native or third-party shortcuts. Dory is saving merely a second, or even less, but when immersed in work, it makes a tagible difference by saving you a few “Tab” keystrokes, a visit to Spotlight, or launching the Mission Control.
You don’t even have to lift your hand from the keyboard deck to reach for the trackpad. It feels and acts like a native macOS solution. That’s a huge victory, and something not many apps can claim to offer.
How does Dory work?
The best part about Dory is that it lives as a Menu Bar utility. Some of my favorite macOS utilities — such as Antinote and Maccy — also live as Menu Bar items. Setting up Dory is pretty straightforward, and it doesn’t offer any overtly complex or deep customization tools.
All you need is a mouse, and you’re good to go with your Mac desktop setup. On a MacBook, any key of your choice will get the job done. By default, Dory picks the middle button of the mouse — which is usually redundant apart from scrolling — to open the app switcher interface.
When you open the app, you pick the app picker design from among three layouts. I love the list view and the pillar design, but my favorite is the card-style wheel of app icons. The app section is where you assign the key shortcut for apps. That’s about it.
Alternatively, if you don’t have a mouse, Dory offers an even more convenient route. Just pick any keyboard hotkey to summon the app switcher. I picked the right Option key on my MacBook Air, since it lies mostly unused and rests within easy reach of the thumb.
The only thing Dory misses is the ability to assign two-letter shortcuts, the way Spotlight lets users set quick keys in macOS Tahoe. That’s because you will eventually run into an overlap with app names. For example, which app do you pick for “S” between Google Sheets and Slack?
The team behind Dory says when you launch the app picker and hit a shortcut letter, it will prioritize the app that you use predominantly, or visit most frequently. It’s a thoughtful idea, but it doesn’t fully solve the overlap problem.
For example, I run Apple Music and Asana all day. The former is active in the background all day, while Asana is where I track my daily work. Likewise, the situation with Asana and Antinote duplication over the letter “S” is a bit confusing.
To Dory’s credit, as you keep pressing the assigned identifier key, it will cycle between the apps until you land on the one you want to open. So, between picking Slack and Sheets, you just have to press on “S” one more time. It isn’t something that ruins the experience, but just a minor naming situation beyond anyone’s control, to be fair.
Another minor nuisance is that while working across a multi-screen set-up, it sporadically opens the app switcher on the other screen, and not where the cursor is currently resting. But this only happened when activating the app switcher using the designed keyboard shortcut key, and not the mouse.
Overall, Dory is the best app switcher I’ve used in a while. It may not sound like something that will supercharge your productivity, but it grows on you. And for something as fundamentally recurring as jumping between different apps on a Mac, it’s absolutely worth the $3.99 one-time fee.
View Dory on the App Store.
