Favorite Apps: Stay for Mac

Stay is my favorite app to automatically rearrange windows on my Mac.

For work and home, I use laptops. My work setup is connecting a MacBook Pro 16” to two 27” LG UltraFine 5K monitors.

Every open app window is intentionally sized and arranged across that screen real estate. During the workday, I regularly connect and disconnect from these monitors. Even using Moom with keyboard shortcuts to quickly size and move windows, I don’t have time to constantly rearrange 15 app windows when I’m switching from external monitors to laptop.

This is where Stay saves me time. It remembers my window layout for every monitor and laptop configuration. When I unplug the monitors, windows automatically rearrange to the laptop-only layout. When I plug back into the monitors, I’m back to work in a couple of seconds.

I can’t recommend this app enough. My Macs are broken without it.

Challenging "Looks Like a Proper Mac App"

Compare Reeder 5 to NetNewsWire 5. I prefer Reeder's design, and trying out NetNewsWire 5 after hearing all the praise I realized I don't like AppKit standard components. For me, there’s not enough whitespace and visually separates UI panels too strongly. “Mac-assed Mac apps” to me look like Bear and Reeder. They’ve taken the soul of a native Mac app but added crucial whitespace and simplified their icon and UI panel treatments. I’m not making any bold claims here that Reeder is a great design beyond just its looks. MacStories awarded Reeder 5 Best Design of the Year in 2020.

People are praising Net Newswire’s keyboard navigation, Reeder seems more robust. Reeder doesn’t sacrifice in this area, it improves upon it.

This is not to say I don't wish NetNewsWire to not exist, I'm ecstatic Brent brought it to the Mac as an open-source project. Appkit is good for providing UI components that can deliver a great app without customizing your UI. With the redesign of macOS Big Sur, this delta has decreased.

In the end, what's more important than Reeder's design? I believe it’s the health of RSS as a reading tool and the robust third-party Apple developer community. That’s one of the top reasons I adore all my Apple computers.