Comparison

Spaces Renamer stopped working. Here's what to use instead.

For years, Spaces Renamer was the go-to tool for labeling macOS desktops. It put actual names right inside Mission Control. Nothing else did that. But if you've tried it recently on an Apple Silicon Mac, you already know the problem.

Last updated: April 2026

What Spaces Renamer did so well

Spaces Renamer is an open-source project by Alex Beals (dado3212 on GitHub). It has over 1,200 stars, which is a lot for a single-purpose macOS utility. The reason people loved it was simple: it replaced the generic "Desktop 1", "Desktop 2" labels at the top of Mission Control with names you actually chose. "Work", "Music", "Chat", whatever you wanted.

At the time, no other tool did this. Apple certainly never added the feature themselves, despite years of requests. Spaces Renamer filled a genuine gap in macOS, and it did it for free.

It worked by injecting code into the Dock process, which controls Mission Control's rendering. That's a clever hack, but it came with a serious requirement: you had to disable System Integrity Protection (SIP) to make it work. For many people that trade-off was fine. For others it was a dealbreaker from the start.

Why it stopped working on modern Macs

Two things happened, roughly at the same time.

First, Apple released Apple Silicon. The M1, M2, M3, and M4 chips changed how macOS handles security at a hardware level. Disabling SIP on an Apple Silicon Mac is more involved than it was on Intel, and some of the code injection techniques Spaces Renamer relied on simply don't work anymore. The Dock process behaves differently.

Second, macOS 14.4 (Sonoma) introduced further changes to how Mission Control renders Space labels internally. Even users who managed to disable SIP on Apple Silicon found that the tool couldn't reliably rename Spaces anymore. Labels would revert, or the injection would fail silently.

The GitHub repository hasn't had a release that fixes these issues. There are open issues from users on M1 and M2 Macs going back quite a while. Alex built something impressive, but maintaining a tool that fights the operating system at the Dock level is an uphill battle when Apple keeps tightening security.

If you're on an Intel Mac running macOS 13 or earlier, Spaces Renamer might still work for you. But if you've upgraded your hardware or your OS in the last couple of years, it probably doesn't.

What your options are now

There aren't many tools that try to name macOS Spaces. Apple's own approach is to let you create desktops and full-screen app spaces, but they only get numbered labels or the name of the app that's fullscreen. No built-in way to call a Space "Design" or "Email".

Some people use wallpaper tricks. You set a different wallpaper on each Space with the name baked into the image. It works in the sense that you can see the name when you look at the desktop, but it doesn't show up in Mission Control and it's tedious to maintain.

Others use apps like SpaceJump, which takes a different approach to the problem. It shows your Space names in the menu bar and inside Mission Control, without hacking the Dock or disabling SIP. More on that in a moment.

There are also a few other Space management tools like WhichSpace (shows Space number in the menu bar) and Workspaces (focuses on launching app sets). But neither of them lets you name individual Spaces the way Spaces Renamer or SpaceJump do.

How SpaceJump approaches the problem differently

SpaceJump doesn't inject code into the Dock, and it doesn't need you to disable SIP. It lives in your menu bar and always shows the name of your current Space. It also displays your custom Space names as labels inside Mission Control, using overlay windows rather than Dock injection.

You give each Space a name through SpaceJump's preferences, and that name appears at the top of your screen. You can also press ⌘+0 to bring up the Quick Switcher, which shows all your Spaces by name and lets you jump to any of them instantly.

Because it works at the menu bar level rather than the system level, it runs on every Mac. M1, M2, M3, M4, Intel. macOS Sonoma, Sequoia, whatever comes next. There's no SIP dependency, so Apple's security updates don't break it.

SpaceJump also tracks how much time you spend on each Space, which is something Spaces Renamer never tried to do. If you organize your Spaces by project or client, you get a passive time log. You can export it as CSV for invoicing or just to see where your day actually went.

It costs $9.99 as a one-time purchase with a 14-day free trial. Spaces Renamer is free, so this is a real trade-off if you're on a budget and Spaces Renamer still works on your machine.

Where Spaces Renamer is still better

It's free and open source. You can inspect the code, fork it, modify it. SpaceJump is closed source and costs money.

For someone on an older Intel Mac who is comfortable disabling SIP, Spaces Renamer remains a solid choice. There's no reason to switch if it's working for you.

Where SpaceJump is better

SpaceJump works. That sounds like a low bar, but for anyone on Apple Silicon or macOS 14.4+, it matters. You don't need to disable SIP, you don't need to worry about OS updates breaking things, and you don't need to troubleshoot Dock injection failures.

The menu bar label is always visible, even when you're not in Mission Control. If you use Spaces heavily, you probably don't open Mission Control every time you switch. You swipe or use keyboard shortcuts. With SpaceJump, you can always glance at the menu bar and know where you are.

The Quick Switcher is faster than Mission Control for jumping to a specific Space by name, especially if you have five or more desktops. Press the shortcut, type a couple of letters, hit enter.

And the time tracking is genuinely useful if you bill clients or just want to understand how you spend your time. Spaces Renamer was purely cosmetic, which was fine for what it was, but SpaceJump gives your Space names a functional purpose beyond labeling.

Side-by-side comparison

Frequently asked questions

So which should you use?

If you're on an Intel Mac running macOS 13 or earlier and you're comfortable disabling SIP, Spaces Renamer is free and open source. It's worth trying.

If you're on Apple Silicon, or you don't want to disable SIP, or you've already tried Spaces Renamer and it didn't work, SpaceJump is probably your best option for giving Spaces real names. The 14-day trial lets you see if the menu bar approach works for how you use your Mac before you spend anything.

Both tools exist because Apple left a gap. They just fill it in different ways.