Cove — Save your work. Switch in a second.

~10 min

…spent resetting your environment every time you switch projects on Mac.

The problem

Context switching has a real cost.

You jump between client A and client B, between deep work and comms, between a writing project and a code review. Each switch means closing tabs, rearranging windows, hunting for the right files, deactivating the wrong Focus Mode.

12 browser tabs to close, 8 to reopen elsewhere
Windows scattered across two displays, lost between desktops
Terminal sessions you have to reconnect manually
Reminders, Notes, and project docs you forget to reopen
The "wait, what was I doing again?" tax that costs you flow

How it works

Three simple actions,
infinite reuse.

Cove introduces a single primitive — a Session — that captures your entire workspace state. Once saved, switching is one click.

Capture

Open the apps, windows, tabs, and files you need for a project. Cove scans your Mac and saves it all as a named Session — with your icon, your color, your Focus Mode, and any linked Reminders or Notes.

Park

When you switch contexts, Cove "parks" your current session — capturing the exact state before closing the apps. Like git stash, but for your entire desktop. Nothing is lost.

Restore

Pick a session from the menu bar, type ⌘1, or let Cove auto-detect and suggest. In one second, every app, every window, every tab, every file is back exactly where you left it.

Features

Everything you need.
Nothing you don't.

Auto-detect

Cove watches what apps you open and suggests the matching session before you ask. Smart, weighted scoring ignores ambient apps like Mail or Spotify and focuses on what actually identifies your project.

Browser-aware

Native adapters for Safari, Chrome, Brave, Edge, and Arc capture not just open tabs but their order and active state. Restore reopens every URL exactly as you left it — no more "where was that link?".

Terminal sessions

Adapters for Terminal and iTerm preserve your working directories per window. Drop right back into the right project folder, in the right session, with the right history.

Templates

Save a Session as a reusable template — the apps without their content. Perfect for recurring rituals: weekly reviews, daily standups, deep work setups. Instantiate in one click.

Focus Mode

Each session can trigger a specific macOS Focus Mode through Shortcuts. Restore your "Deep Work" session and Slack/Mail go silent automatically. No discipline required.

Linked items

Attach Reminders lists, Notes, project docs, or any URL to a session. They auto-open at restore so the context comes back complete — your tasks, your notes, your references.

Built for

People who juggle.

If you switch between two or more "modes of work" in a day, Cove pays for itself in the first week.

For developers

Three clients. Six repos. One Mac.

Save a session per client with their Xcode project, Slack workspace, Linear board, terminal sessions cd'd into the right repos, and the right Figma file. Switch with ⌘1, ⌘2, ⌘3.

"Monday I work on Client A. ⌘1. All my tools land in 1 second. Tuesday it's Client B. ⌘2. I haven't lost a tab in months."

For designers

Brand work, product, pitch decks.

Different clients, different palettes, different reference boards. Cove keeps each project's Figma files, mood board tabs, Notion docs, and Spotify playlist in their own session.

"My 'Pitch deck' session opens Keynote, the brief in Notion, ChatGPT in a tab, and silences Slack via Focus Mode. Game-changer."

For writers

Book A. Article B. Newsletter.

Each writing project has its own research tabs, draft document, reference notes, and writing music. Cove restores the exact creative environment so you can drop straight into flow.

"Switching from my novel to the newsletter used to take 15 minutes of context-rebuild. Now it's instant. I write more because I switch less."

For consultants

Five clients before lunch.

Each meeting needs different documents, different Notion pages, different Slack channels. Cove's auto-detect can even propose the right session as you start opening client-specific apps.

"Client X calls. I pull up their session. Their entire context — docs, notes, prior emails — is on screen before they finish saying hello."

Pricing

One-time. Lifetime.

No subscription. No data collection. Pay once, own it forever, get every update.

Launch price · Limited time

$ 19 $29

One-time payment. Yours forever, with all future updates included.

Save unlimited sessions
All current adapters (Safari, Chrome, Brave, Edge, Arc, Terminal, iTerm, Finder, VS Code, Xcode, Slack)
Auto-detect with smart scoring
Templates, linked items, Focus Mode integration
iCloud sync (coming soon, free for everyone)
2 license activations included

Buy Cove for Mac

14-day money-back guarantee, no questions asked

FAQ

Honest answers.

Cove runs on macOS 14 (Sonoma) and later, on both Apple Silicon and Intel Macs. It works best when you grant it Accessibility and Automation permissions — these are required so Cove can capture window positions and instruct apps like Safari/Chrome/Arc to reopen tabs at restore time. No other special hardware needed.

Cove uses AppleScript and Accessibility APIs to capture and restore the state of other apps (your browsers, your terminals, your Finder windows). Apple's App Store sandbox restricts these capabilities for security reasons. Going direct lets us deliver the full feature set — and means more of your purchase goes to development rather than Apple's 30% commission.

Cove uses Sparkle, the standard auto-update framework for direct-distributed Mac apps. It checks for updates daily in the background and notifies you when a new version is ready. Every update is signed with EdDSA and verified before install — same mechanism used by Bartender, CleanShot, Hookmark, and most indie Mac apps. All updates are free for the lifetime of your purchase.

100% locally on your Mac, in Cove's app data folder. Sessions are stored in a SwiftData database — never sent to any server, never analyzed, never sold. We don't run any backend. Coming soon: optional iCloud sync between your Macs (encrypted, end-to-end via Apple's CloudKit). You can opt in or stay fully local.

14-day refund, no questions asked. Email me directly with your order number and you get your money back. No forms, no friction.

Yes — that's the point. When you switch sessions, Cove "parks" your current state (saving everything) and closes apps that aren't part of the next session. This is what makes context switches actually clean. You can also configure "essential apps" (Mail, Slack, Spotify) that Cove never closes regardless of session.

Spaces show you windows on different desktops, but they don't save state — your apps are still running, your Mac is still bogged down, and switching just hides one mess to show another. Cove actually closes what you're not using, persists state to disk, and restores it later. It's a save/load system, not a window manager.

Each license includes 2 activations, so you can run Cove on a personal Mac and a work Mac at the same time. Need a third? Contact me, I usually grant additional activations for legitimate cases (replaced Mac, etc.). Once iCloud sync ships, your sessions will follow you between activated Macs automatically.

Save your work.Switch in a second.