Display Layouts, Done Right.

No. Displace does not collect analytics or track how you use your Mac or the app.

When you first launch Displace, a 14-day Displace Pro trial starts automatically, no email or signup required, and unlocks every Pro feature. When the trial ends, Displace keeps working on the free tier, and the Pro features turn off until you upgrade. It's never a lockout. On the free tier your top 3 profiles stay active; any extra profiles you've made are saved but stay locked until you upgrade.

Displace Pro is a one-time $24 purchase. One license covers up to 5 of your own Macs. If you ever activate a 6th, the one you've used least recently is deactivated automatically, so your license never fills up. It's a lifetime license with free updates. A future major version may be a separate paid upgrade.

If you need a little more time to evaluate Pro, or need it on more than 5 Macs, just get in touch at [email protected].

Displace works by controlling cursor movement across displays. The Mac App Store is not a good fit for that kind of app, so Displace is distributed directly.

To control cursor movement, Displace requires Accessibility permission. You can still open and interact with the app without granting it. The cursor engine just won't run until permission is granted.

When Displace is running and active, it temporarily adjusts your macOS display arrangement. This helps Displace manage cursor movement more reliably and avoid visual cursor glitches.

Before doing this, Displace saves your current display arrangement and restores it when the app stops running, so your Mac returns to its normal setup when Displace is not active.

When Game Mode is active, Displace also temporarily disables hot corners to prevent accidental activation. When Game Mode is turned off, your original hot corner settings are restored.

Displace comes with a Background Helper to restore these settings if the main app cannot do it itself, such as after a crash, force quit, or unexpected shutdown.

Displace has two Cursor Modes: Default and Compatibility.

In Default mode, Displace takes control of your cursor, so macOS is no longer the one moving it. In Compatibility mode, macOS controls the cursor normally.

Letting macOS control the cursor has a tradeoff: Displace has less control over exactly when and where the cursor moves between displays. If macOS moves the cursor somewhere Displace did not expect, Displace may need to move it back afterward.

Default mode avoids this because Displace controls cursor movement directly. This makes the experience smoother and allows features like Game Mode to work properly, because Displace can lock the cursor to one display with confidence that it will stay there.

Both modes are available so you can get the best possible experience while still having the flexibility to fall back to Compatibility mode for any input device where it works better.

There's one worth knowing about. Because Displace takes control of your display arrangement and lets you resize your displays freely instead of letting macOS handle it, drag selections that start on one display and continue onto another do not work reliably while Displace is active. This affects selecting items on the Finder desktop across more than one display, and macOS region screenshots that span multiple monitors.

Using Displace without this tradeoff is currently a work in progress.