Later For Mac

With so many people working from home nowadays, often from their own devices, switching between your workspace and personal apps is a daily task, and it’s not quick. Not to mention that taking a break can seem daunting when you know you have to close and reopen a bunch of apps to get back to work.

Later is an open-source app that, true to its name, lets you save a set of applications for later, when they can be brought back up with a single click. You can even schedule them to be opened automatically after a certain time.

The app is accessed from the menu bar or via the ⌘⇧L hotkey. System windows, such as Finder or the App Store, can be excluded if you prefer. Later hides all other open windows, leaving your desktop clean and ready for anything else you might have in mind.

If you want to keep battery or resource usage to a minimum, you can quit the apps instead of hiding them. They can still be restored later on, but they won’t be running in the background until then.

Once you’re ready to get back to work, or stop working, you can restore all hidden apps using the ⌘⇧R hotkey or from the menu bar. You also get a quick preview of the desktop when it was saved, along with a list of open apps and the exact time.

If you just want to take a short break, you can configure the saved apps to be reopened automatically after 15, 30, 60 minutes, or even 5 hours. Alternatively, if you decide you just can’t handle any more work today, you can instantly close all your saved apps instead.

Later helps you out whenever you need to clean up your desktop or just put away all your work or personal apps for a little while. It’s very easy to use, with just two hotkeys doing all the work, and it has a bunch of extra features for scheduling and battery saving.