DeskStag → DeskStag vs menu-bar apps

DeskStag vs menu-bar desktop-naming apps: which should you use?

The short answer

If you want to give your macOS desktops real names, you have two kinds of tool: menu-bar Space namers (Spaceman, SpaceJump, Desktop Space Renamer and similar) and DeskStag. They differ in one decisive way — where the name appears:

• Menu-bar apps show the current desktop’s name in the menu bar, at the top of the screen.
• DeskStag draws the name (and a colour) on the desktop’s thumbnail, inside the Mission Control overview.

Pick by where you actually look when you’re moving between desktops. Glance at the menu bar? A menu-bar app is a fine, often cheaper, choice. Navigate by opening Mission Control? Then you want the name on the thumbnail you’re about to click — which only DeskStag does.

The real difference: where the name lives

Both kinds of tool solve the same root problem — macOS only ever calls your desktops “Desktop 1, 2, 3” (here’s the full guide to renaming them). The question is where the name is useful.

A menu-bar label tells you the name of the desktop you’re already on. That’s genuinely handy. But the moment you swipe up into Mission Control to choose where to go, the menu bar is gone and the thumbnails are back to being unlabelled rectangles. The label is on the wrong screen for the job of switching.

DeskStag puts the name where the decision happens — on the thumbnail, in the overview, alongside an optional colour so the right desktop is recognisable at a glance.

What menu-bar namers do well

Be clear-eyed: these are good apps, and for some people they’re the better fit. Their genuine advantages:

• Many are on the Mac App Store — sandboxed, one-click install, Apple’s refund flow.
• They’re often free or a couple of pounds.
• They usually need fewer permissions (some need none), because reading the current Space name is less invasive than positioning labels across the Mission Control overview.
• Some bundle extras — quick switching, the current Space number, and so on.

If your habit is to glance at the menu bar to confirm where you are, a menu-bar namer may be all you need — and it’ll cost you less. (Check each app’s current feature list and price; they change.)

What DeskStag does that they can’t

• Names render inside Mission Control, on the thumbnails themselves.
• Colour-coding per desktop, so you spot the right one without reading.
• It does this on a stock Mac with SIP intact, notarised by Apple — no disabling protections, no Dock injection. (The only earlier tool that drew into Mission Control needed exactly those hacks and was abandoned.)
• Names stick to the right desktop across reboots, reordering, and multiple displays.

DeskStag’s trade-offs (the honest cons)

In exchange, DeskStag asks for more than a menu-bar app does:

• Two permissions — Accessibility and Screen Recording. Screen Recording sounds heavy, but it’s simply the permission macOS files “reading other apps’ window names and positions” under; DeskStag records nothing and your names never leave your Mac.
• Direct download, not the App Store — because the cross-process work needed to label Mission Control isn’t allowed in Apple’s sandbox. (It’s the same route Bartender, BetterTouchTool and Alfred take.)
• It leans on undocumented macOS behaviour, so a macOS release can shift things — DeskStag falls back to menu-bar labels rather than breaking, and is tested against the betas.

Which should you choose?

• Choose a menu-bar namer if you mostly check the menu bar to see where you are, you prefer a Mac App Store install, you want minimal permissions, or you want the cheapest option.
• Choose DeskStag if you navigate by Mission Control and want the name where you click, you want colour-coding, and you’re happy to grant two clearly-explained permissions to get it.

They’re not really competitors so much as two answers to “where should the name be?” DeskStag’s answer is: on the thumbnail, where you’re going.

FAQ

Read next: How to rename desktops in Mission Control on macOS →