Ikuna vs macOS Stage Manager: Do You Need a Third-Party Workspace App?

macOS Stage Manager groups your windows into visual sets and displays them as thumbnails on the left side of your screen. Ikuna saves your complete workspace apps, browser tabs, window positions, and Focus Mode settings, and restores everything when you switch projects. Stage Manager is a window grouping feature built into macOS Ventura and later. Ikuna is a context manager that treats your project environment as a single saveable state. Stage Manager helps you organize what is currently open. Ikuna remembers what should be open and brings it back. For most knowledge workers, Stage Manager is not enough on its own, and here is why.