A privacy-first, predictive window manager for macOS — context-aware, fully extensible, and beautifully minimal.
Iridium is a smart macOS window manager that sits quietly in your menu bar and surfaces the right apps at the right time. It combines two philosophies:
- Responsive window management — transparent, fast, keyboard-driven layout control modeled after the best tiling and floating window managers.
- Predictive app surfacing — when you take an action (copy text, copy code, open a file), Iridium reads that context ephemerally and presents a focused selection of the apps most likely to be useful right now.
The result is a workflow where switching context feels native — not like fighting your OS.
| Feature | Description |
|---|---|
| Predictive Surface | Clipboard actions trigger smart app suggestions (copy code → IDEs, copy URL → browsers, copy prose → writing apps) |
| Transparent Window Management | Overlay-style layout engine that never obscures your work |
| Behavior Packs | Community-authored rule sets that extend Iridium's prediction logic — zero code required |
| Menu Bar UI | Apple-HIG-aligned settings panel lives in the top bar, never in your Dock |
| Privacy by Design | All context signals are processed in memory and discarded immediately — nothing is persisted or transmitted |
| Fully Extensible | Public protocol surface lets developers and power users craft their own behavior packs |
User Action (e.g. ⌘C)
│
▼
Context Signal
(clipboard type,
active app,
time of day)
│
▼
Behavior Engine ◄── Behavior Packs (user / community)
(matches signals
against policies)
│
▼
App Suggestion Panel
(ephemeral overlay)
│
▼
User selects or dismisses
│
▼
Context data discarded ✓
Iridium never stores clipboard content, file paths, or behavioral telemetry. Every signal lives in memory for the duration of a single prediction cycle and is immediately released.
Iridium was designed with a strict data minimization principle:
- No clipboard data is ever written to disk.
- No telemetry, analytics, or crash reporting is transmitted off-device.
- No behavior history is retained between sessions or within a session.
- Context signals are read, evaluated in-memory, and immediately discarded.
- Behavior packs run in a sandboxed evaluation context with no I/O access.
See SECURITY.md and docs/privacy.md for the full security model.
Behavior packs are the heart of Iridium's extensibility. They are declarative rule files (JSON + optional Swift) that map context signals to app suggestions.
Example: Code Snippet Pack
{
"id": "com.example.code-snippets",
"name": "Code Snippets",
"version": "1.0.0",
"triggers": [
{
"signal": "clipboard.contentType",
"matches": "code",
"suggest": ["com.apple.dt.Xcode", "com.microsoft.VSCode", "com.jetbrains.intellij"]
}
]
}Anyone can author and distribute behavior packs. See docs/behavior-packs.md for the full authoring guide.
- macOS 14.0 (Sonoma) or later
- Xcode 15 or later (for building from source)
git clone https://github.com/cicm/Iridium.git
cd Iridium
open Iridium.xcodeprojBuild and run the Iridium scheme in Xcode. The app will appear in your menu bar.
Pre-built .dmg releases are available on the Releases page once v1.0 ships.
Iridium/
├── Iridium/ # Application source
│ ├── IridiumApp.swift # App entry point
│ ├── ContentView.swift # Root UI
│ └── Assets.xcassets/ # Icons and colors
├── IridiumTests/ # Unit tests
├── IridiumUITests/ # UI / integration tests
├── docs/ # Extended documentation
│ ├── architecture.md # Technical design
│ ├── behavior-packs.md # Behavior pack authoring guide
│ └── privacy.md # Privacy model details
├── .github/ # GitHub config (CI, templates)
├── CONTRIBUTING.md
├── SECURITY.md
└── CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md
Contributions are welcome. Please read CONTRIBUTING.md before opening a pull request.
The most impactful contribution right now is authoring behavior packs — you don't need to touch a line of Swift to extend Iridium's capabilities.
MIT — see LICENSE for details.