He Wasn't Looking for a Business Idea. He Was Looking at Someone Else's Screen.
Jayesh wasn't looking for a startup idea. He was watching someone else's screen. One comment in a tutorial thread sent him down a rabbit hole that ended with him building the Mac app he always wanted.
Jayesh Betala was scrolling X when he got distracted.
Not by the content. By a detail in the background. Someone was doing a Claude Code tutorial and the way they switched between apps caught his eye. It looked cleaner than the standard macOS switcher. Faster. More intentional.
He typed a question in the comments. Someone mentioned Contexts, but wasn't sure it still worked on the latest macOS versions.
That single comment sent him down a rabbit hole that ended with him building DashPane.
Every Alternative Had a Problem
Jayesh tried Contexts first. Paid app, hadn't been updated in a while. He ran the trial anyway because the idea was genuinely useful.
Then he looked at AltTab. Powerful, lots of features, but too heavy and buggy for his workflow.
Then Raycast. Incredible product, but overkill if all you want is a fast, focused way to switch between apps and windows.
That's the moment the decision became obvious.
"I thought: I can probably build the version I actually want."
So he did.
Built for One Person First
The first version of DashPane was just for Jayesh. He used it on his own Mac and watched what happened.
It became one of his most-used apps.
That was the signal. If he was reaching for it every day, maybe other Mac users would too. He spent about a month getting it to a place polished enough to ship, real life running alongside it: family events, travel, a proper break after almost a year of nonstop work. But he kept coming back to it.
When he finally launched, DashPane hit #19 on Product Hunt for the day.
"That gave me a lot of confidence."
Shipping What He Wishes Existed
The roadmap isn't driven by market research. It's driven by the same instinct that started everything: Jayesh noticing something that could work better and building it.
He wanted trackpad haptic gestures. So he built them. He finds small workflow details that bother him, tests them, and ships quickly.
"A lot of the roadmap comes from things I wished other apps handled better when I tried them myself."
The plan from here is simple. Keep listening. Keep shipping. Keep making it better.
DashPane is at dashpane.pro.
Follow Jayesh's work at @jbetala7.
