Guide

Why Lanterna

What sets Lanterna apart from the system switcher, AltTab, and Contexts:

• It takes no thumbnails and lists only app icons and window titles, Contexts-style. The switcher appears at once and uses almost no memory for captures.
• It switches windows in most-recently-used order, with type-to-filter search and shortcut hints.
• It needs only Accessibility and Input Monitoring. Window titles come from accessibility information, so Lanterna needs no Screen Recording.
• It runs on Apple Silicon only, supports Liquid Glass on Tahoe and later, and lives in the menu bar with no Dock icon.

Requirements

• macOS 26 (Tahoe) or later
• Apple Silicon (arm64) only

Installation

From the disk image

1. Download Lanterna-X.Y.Z.dmg from the GitHub Releases page
2. Open the disk image and drag Lanterna.app to /Applications

With Homebrew

brew tap peacock0803sz/lanterna https://github.com/peacock0803sz/Lanterna
brew install --cask peacock0803sz/lanterna/lanterna
brew upgrade --cask peacock0803sz/lanterna/lanterna  # upgrade

First launch and permissions

On first launch, Lanterna asks for these two permissions. Grant both.

• Accessibility
• Input Monitoring

Note

Lanterna lists and switches windows through accessibility information. It does not need Screen Recording.