One panel.
As many real screens as you need.
macOS treats an ultrawide as a single display, so you get one menu bar, one full-screen app at a time, and a Space the width of a table. VirtualScreens divides the panel into separate displays that macOS itself believes in — each with its own menu bar, its own Spaces, and its own full screen. Halves, thirds, or a split of your own; set it per display and change it whenever.
One rearranges windows. The other rearranges the display.
They work together and switch on or off per display, from the menu bar or Settings.
Snap Zones
Every displayDrag a window and drop it into a zone. Familiar if you have used FancyZones on Windows — the windows move, the display does not.
- Layouts per display, with a drag-to-top picker
- Keyboard shortcuts for every zone
- Native refresh rate, because nothing is composited
- Leave any screen out of it entirely
Virtual Screens
Per external displayThe panel is replaced by several displays macOS treats as real hardware. This is the part that gives you things Snap Zones cannot.
- A separate menu bar on each screen
- Separate Spaces, and Mission Control per screen
- Full screen that fills one third, not the whole panel
- Share one screen in a call instead of all of it
| Snap Zones | Virtual Screens | |
|---|---|---|
| Separate menu bars | No | Yes |
| Separate Spaces | No | Yes |
| Full screen inside a zone | No | Yes |
| Share one zone on a call | No | Yes |
| Refresh rate | Native | ~60 Hz |
| Permissions needed | Accessibility | Accessibility + Screen Recording |
Four tools stay free. Permanently.
The Dock fence, the mouse-wheel settings and the Apple Music blocker came from tools that were given away, and DisplayLink handling is a convenience around somebody else's driver. None of them is gated, and none of them will be.
- Stop the Dock hopping between displays
- Reverse the mouse wheel, per axis
- Keep Apple Music from opening by itself
- Run DisplayLink only while the dock is plugged in
- No account, no sign-in, no expiry
- Virtual Screens and Snap Zones
- 14-day trial first — no card, no account
- One payment. No subscription, no renewal
- Works offline forever — no activation, no licence server
Your licence key appears on screen the moment you pay, and the link keeps working if you need it again. Something wrong? Email contact@thestouch.com.
Signed, notarized, and it updates itself.
Drag it to Applications and open it. Updates arrive through Sparkle; if virtual screens are live when one installs, the cluster is taken down and your windows are carried back onto the panel before the app is replaced.
Homebrew submission pending. Until then, the disk image below.
The things worth knowing first.
What does it need from macOS?
macOS 14 Sonoma or later, on Apple silicon or Intel. Snap Zones needs Accessibility. Virtual Screens also needs Screen Recording, because each virtual screen is drawn from a capture of the panel. macOS requires a relaunch after granting Screen Recording — the app tells you when, and puts your windows back afterwards.
What does the 14-day trial actually give me?
The whole app, not a reduced one, and no card and no account to start it. Two weeks because that is how long it takes to find out whether it genuinely suits you: whether the compositing is smooth enough for the way you work, whether your Mac drives the extra screens comfortably, whether you reach for it every day or forget it is there. Those are questions a feature list cannot answer and a refund request should not have to. Try it properly first, and only pay if it earns it.
Is there a catch with the ~60 Hz?
Virtual Screens composites each screen from a live capture, and that runs at about 60 Hz regardless of what the panel can do. For writing, terminals, browsers and calls it is not noticeable. For gaming on a 144 Hz panel it is — leave Virtual Screens off for that display and use Snap Zones, which touches nothing and runs at native rate.
What happens if the app crashes while screens are live?
The virtual displays exist only while the process does, so they disappear with it and macOS puts the panel back by itself — measured, not assumed. There is also a ledger on disk recording where your monitor belongs, written the moment it moves, so the next launch can restore the arrangement even after a hard kill.
Does it phone home?
Your licence is never checked over the network. It is signed and verified against a key inside the app, so there is no licence server that can be unreachable, go down or be switched off — someone on a plane with a licence they paid for keeps working, and always will.
There are two network requests, and neither one gates anything. The first is the update check. The second is a once-a-day note from a licensed copy saying which licence is running: it sends the order number from your receipt, a random identifier for that installation, and the version. Not your licence key, not your name, not your email address. The server keeps a scrambled form of the address it arrived from — enough to tell one office from nine countries, not enough to be a record of where you have been — and old entries are deleted.
It is there because a licence verified offline can be copied, and this is the only way to see a key that has been passed around a whole company. Turn it off in Settings → Advanced and nothing else changes; a trial never sends it at all. Lost your key? Email contact@thestouch.com and it will be reissued.
Will it keep working on future macOS versions?
Virtual Screens rests on a private CoreGraphics API that Apple could remove in any release. That is worth saying plainly rather than burying: it is the same foundation other virtual-display apps for the Mac are built on, it has been there for years, and it is still not a promise anyone can make on Apple's behalf. Snap Zones uses public APIs and is not exposed to this.
Why is it not on the Mac App Store?
The App Store requires sandboxing, and creating a display cannot be done from inside the sandbox. That is also why it is signed with a Developer ID and notarized by Apple instead: your Mac still verifies it before it opens, without the network.