DeskStag → Rename desktops in Mission Control

How to rename desktops in Mission Control on macOS

The short answer

macOS has no built-in way to rename your desktops — they’re locked to “Desktop 1, Desktop 2, Desktop 3,” and have been since Mission Control arrived in 2011. You can approximate names with manual workarounds (a different wallpaper per desktop, a Stickies note, or a menu-bar labelling app), but none of those put a real name on the desktop’s thumbnail inside Mission Control. The only way to do that on a stock Mac is a dedicated tool — DeskStag — which draws your own names and colours directly onto each Mission Control thumbnail.

Why macOS calls them “Desktop 1, 2, 3” — and won’t let you rename them

Apple calls each virtual desktop a Space, and it deliberately keeps Spaces simple: there’s no setting, anywhere in System Settings, to give one a name. The request is not obscure — threads on Apple’s own Community forums asking for it go back to 2011, with thousands of votes and a fresh “+1” most weeks. Fifteen years on, macOS still numbers them and nothing more.

That gap is why a small genre of workarounds exists. Some are genuinely useful for telling desktops apart; the catch is that none of them write a name where you actually look when you’re switching — the Mission Control overview itself.

The manual workarounds (and where each one stops short)

Give each desktop a distinct wallpaper

The most reliable no-install trick. Set a different wallpaper for each Space (right-click the desktop → change wallpaper while you’re on that Space) and the thumbnails in Mission Control become visually distinct.

Good: zero software, survives reboots. The catch: it’s a colour, not a word. “The blue one” works for four desktops; it falls apart at eight, and it tells you nothing about what’s on the desktop.

Pin a Stickies note to each desktop

Open Stickies, type the desktop’s purpose, and the note stays on that Space. Cheap, and the text is real.

Good: actual words, no install beyond a built-in app. The catch: the note lives on the desktop, not on the Mission Control thumbnail — so when you swipe up into Mission Control to choose where to go, you still see “Desktop 1, 2, 3.” It labels the room, not the door.

Use a menu-bar labelling app

Several well-known utilities show the current Space’s name in the menu bar. They’re stable, they’re on the Mac App Store, and they do exactly what they claim.

Good: a real, persistent name for the desktop you’re on. The catch: the name lives in the menu bar, which means you have to look away from Mission Control to read it. In the one view built for choosing a destination — the Mission Control overview — the thumbnails are still unlabelled. (There’s a side-by-side comparison here.)

The pattern: every manual method tells you where you are. None of them labels where you’re going — the thumbnail you’re about to click.

The method that actually labels Mission Control: DeskStag

DeskStag is a small menu-bar app built to do the one thing the workarounds can’t: put your own name — and an optional colour — on each desktop’s thumbnail, inside the Mission Control overview. No menu bar to glance at, no sticky notes, no guessing by wallpaper.

The part that matters for trust: it does this on a completely stock Mac. The only previous tool that drew names into Mission Control needed you to disable System Integrity Protection and inject code into the Dock — and it was abandoned years ago. DeskStag leaves SIP exactly where Apple set it, and it’s notarised by Apple.

How to name your desktops with DeskStag

1. Install DeskStag and, on first launch, grant the two permissions it asks for — Accessibility and Screen Recording. (Accessibility lets it find each Mission Control thumbnail; Screen Recording is how macOS files “reading other apps’ window names and positions” — DeskStag never records, stores, or sends your screen.)
2. Open Mission Control — swipe up with three or four fingers, or press the Mission Control key.
3. Click the label above any desktop thumbnail and type its name — full inline editing, right there in the overview.
4. Click the small ring at the left of the label to pick a colour for that desktop.
5. Swipe back out. Your names and colours stay on the thumbnails, every time you open Mission Control.

That’s the whole flow — name a desktop in a couple of seconds, and it’s labelled from then on.

Do the names survive reboots, reordering, and a second display?

Yes. DeskStag ties each name to the desktop’s own stable identifier, not its position — so:

• Reboots: names and colours come back.
• Adding, removing, or reordering desktops: the right name stays with the right desktop instead of sliding onto its neighbour.
• Multiple displays: it’s multi-display aware and works whether macOS’s “Displays have separate Spaces” setting is on or off.

It also adds a couple of keyboard niceties: a global hotkey to flash the current desktop’s name on screen, and the ability to switch to a desktop by name.

FAQ

Read next: DeskStag vs menu-bar desktop-naming apps →