How to keep a window always on top on Mac (every method that works)
PowerToys gives Windows users a keystroke for it. Most Linux window managers put it in the title-bar menu. On a Mac you go hunting for always on top in System Settings and find nothing — because macOS, through Tahoe and into the macOS 27 betas, still has no built-in way to pin an arbitrary window above the others. What it does have is a handful of apps that can float themselves, a small industry of utilities that fake it convincingly, and one limitation that catches everybody. Here's the honest version.
Why there is no always on top setting on Mac
Stacking order is a property each app sets on its own windows. The public interface another app gets — the Accessibility API — can move a window, resize it, focus it, close it. There is nothing in it for "keep this one above everything else."
So every always-on-top utility on the Mac is a workaround of some kind. Either the app itself offers a float command, or a helper reaches for undocumented window-server calls, or it draws a live copy of your window inside its own floating panel. That's why they all want Accessibility permission, why some also want Screen Recording, and why behaviour shifts between macOS releases.
It is also why they share one hard limit: nothing floats over a full-screen app. A full-screen window gets its own Space, and a floating panel sitting in your desktop Space cannot appear over it. This isn't a third-party bug — Apple's own floating notes behave the same way.
The apps that can already float themselves
Before installing anything, check whether the window you want on top can do it by itself. Several Apple apps ship with the command:
| App | How | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| QuickTime Player | View → Float on Top | A video or screen recording over your work |
| Notes | Window → Float on Top | A checklist beside the thing you're working through |
| Stickies | Window → Float on Top | Scratch text, phone numbers, a reminder |
| Safari / Chrome | Picture in Picture | Any web video, in a window you can park anywhere |
Notes is the one people miss. Choosing Window → Float on Top pops the selected note into its own window and keeps it there; you can float several notes at once. Stickies has the same item under the same menu.
Picture in Picture is the other underused one. Both Safari and Chrome offer it from a playing video's controls or its context menu, and the floating player it produces is genuinely always on top.
Tools that pin any window
For everything else — a Finder window, a PDF, a terminal, a Zoom call — you need a utility. The current field:
| Tool | Cost | How it pins | Worth knowing |
|---|---|---|---|
| KeepTop, WindowPin | Free (Mac App Store) | Pick a window from a list, it stays above the rest | Simplest route; macOS 13 or later |
| PinWindow | Free, open source (MIT) | Mirrors the window into a floating panel with ScreenCaptureKit, passing clicks through | Needs Screen Recording and Accessibility |
| Floaty, TopWindow | Paid | Dedicated pinning, plus opacity and click-through extras | Most polish, most options |
| BetterTouchTool | Paid | A pin/float action you bind to any shortcut or gesture | Only sensible if you already run it for automation |
The mirroring approach is worth understanding, because it explains the odd behaviour you'll see. Tools built that way are not raising your window at all — you are looking at a live copy of it, captured many times a second and drawn in a floating panel, with clicks forwarded to the real window underneath. If macOS decides the original is fully hidden and stops rendering it, the copy can freeze on its last frame, and every pinned window costs GPU time.
None of them, mirror or not, will float over a full-screen app.
What "always on top" is usually really asking for
It's worth naming the underlying problem, because on a Mac the pin is often the long way round. Two different frustrations send people searching for it.
"I need to see both of these at once." That's a layout problem, not a stacking one. Two windows placed side by side never cover each other, so there is nothing to pin and nothing to unpin later. macOS will give you halves from the Window menu — see our walkthrough of the native options — and that is enough if you do it twice a day. If you rearrange windows constantly, a keyboard tiler makes it a reflex: Let's Tile drops a grid over the window you're using, you steer with the arrow keys and press return. The free tier is a 3 × 2 grid — halves, thirds, two-thirds, quarters, full screen — and stays free; Pro is $9.99 once for custom grids, a different grid per display, and margins between cells.
"It keeps getting buried and I keep hunting for it." That's a switching problem. A window doesn't need to hover if getting back to it is one chord you never miss. Cmd-Tab won't do it, because it switches apps rather than windows — the keyboard ways to switch windows are the fix. Let's Switch is our answer to that one: hold Option-Tab for a live preview of every open window, most recent first, across apps and monitors.
To be plain about it: neither Let's Tile nor Let's Switch has an always-on-top mode. If you specifically need a window hovering over another app — a video call while you type, a reference over a full-screen editor — use one of the utilities above, and accept the full-screen caveat. If what you actually want is to stop losing things behind other things, placement and switching solve it without a pin.
Frequently asked questions
Is there an always on top keyboard shortcut on Mac? Not a system-wide one. QuickTime, Notes and Stickies each have their own menu item, and utilities like BetterTouchTool let you bind a shortcut to their pin action, but macOS ships no global chord for it.
Can I keep a window on top of a full-screen app? No. Full-screen apps live in their own Space, and floating panels live in the desktop Space. If you need two things visible at once, tile them side by side or use Split View instead of putting one app in full screen.
Does Rectangle do always on top? Free Rectangle doesn't. Rectangle Pro has a Todo mode that reserves a side of the screen for one app, which is about space rather than stacking order — useful, but a different thing from pinning a window above others.
Why does my pinned window look frozen? You're almost certainly using a mirror-based tool, and macOS has stopped rendering the original window because it's completely covered. Nudge the real window back into view and the copy catches up.
Did macOS 27 add a pin-window feature? No. The window-related changes in macOS 27 are about positions staying steadier across external displays. Window levels are untouched, and third-party utilities remain the only route.