Overlay vs Rambox

I make Overlay. It's a panel. Hit a shortcut and it sits on top of whatever Mac app is fullscreen. Rambox is the other kind of thing: you leave it open, Slack and WhatsApp and Gmail stay signed in, and it runs on Windows and Linux too.

People compare them after a bad week of logins. The messes aren't the same. One is Xcode or Figma eating the screen while you still need a doc. The other is three clients, each with their own Slack, and a Windows machine on Thursday. Don't buy one app for both.

At a glance

	Overlay	Rambox
Systems	macOS 14 or later	Windows, macOS 12 or later, Linux
Price	$12 once. 30-day trial	Basic free. Pro $7/month or $70/year
Account	None, to use the app	Required
Two logins of one site	Yes, one tab each, separate cookies	Pro. Basic stops at two instances per app and has no workspaces
Over a fullscreen app	Yes. Default shortcut Option-Space	No. Ordinary window
Several pages at once	Nested panes, any edge	Tiles. Layout picked when the workspace is created
Preset apps	No. You open a URL	700+
Idle apps sleep	No	Yes, including on Basic
Computers	2 Macs on one code	Basic 1 active computer, Pro 3

Does Overlay replace Rambox?

Only on a Mac, and only if what you wanted was a web page over the app you're already in. Rambox is for keeping a lot of accounts signed in, including on Windows and Linux. Swap them and you'll want a refund inside a week.

Editor fullscreen, docs plus the issue plus ChatGPT for ten minutes, then back. That's Option-Space. Client A is Gmail, Slack, and Drive. Client B is a different Gmail, Teams, and Notion. You flip those sets all day, and Thursday isn't a Mac. That's a Rambox workspace.

Keep Chrome. You don't need both apps unless you've actually grown both habits. Most people who install both are paying twice to look at the same Slack.

Does Rambox stay above a fullscreen app?

No. Fullscreen a Mac app and Rambox goes to another Space, same as Chrome. Overlay stays up. Default shortcut is Option-Space. You can change it. It shows up on the screen where the pointer is.

You can also shove it against the edge of the screen and have it slide out when the pointer hits that edge. Hide it when the window blurs, when the pointer leaves, or only when you dismiss it. There's a borderless mode that drops the tab bar, so the page is the whole panel. Rambox users have been asking for a sidebar you can hide, because a workspace you leave open is still a window you have to go find. That request is this app.

Mission Control puts the panel away with everything else. It isn't a secret layer that ignores the rest of macOS.

Can both keep two Slack accounts signed in?

Rambox Pro can. Two instances, two logins. Grouping one client's Slack with that client's Gmail is also Pro. Basic allows two instances of an app and has no workspaces. Their pricing FAQ says Basic is one computer signed in at a time, Pro is three.

On Basic, the office desktop and the laptop at home already fight. Pro's three machines cover a desk, a laptop, and one more. After that you're signing out of Rambox itself. Overlay is two Macs on one code. There's no Windows install to sign into.

Overlay can keep two logins of one site up at once. Each tab has its own cookies. No Overlay account. Mark the second tab as an isolated session and sign in as the other person. The command is Isolated Session, on the tab's menu and as a button in the address bar. The site's cookies stay apart. Extensions don't. An extension's own login is shared with the main session, so your password manager is still one account in Overlay, not one per tab.

There's no catalog. You paste a URL. WhatsApp Web, Slack, Notion, a client's staging site, same gesture. Rambox's 700 presets are for when you want the icon, the unread badge, and a sane hibernation default without digging up a mobile user agent. If your list is five URLs you already know, you don't need the catalog.

A browser profile still covers a lot of this. Two Google accounts, a few switches a day, skip both products. I wrote the boring version here: staying logged into one site on a Mac.

What happens to notifications when an app sleeps?

Rambox can put an idle app to sleep so it stops eating memory. Their help page says a sleeping app doesn't check for messages. No notification, no unread count, until it wakes. Mail and chat presets usually start with sleep turned off, which is why. Everything else often sleeps after about fifteen minutes. You can wake one on a timer, or leave it until you click it.

That's the whole memory argument. People say Rambox gets heavy with a few messengers open. Several live web apps are heavy. Sleep is the lever, and it only works for apps you can stand to go quiet. Overlay doesn't have the lever. A tab isn't built until you show it, so launch doesn't spin everything up. After you've opened it, it stays a live page. Ten Slacks in Overlay cost about what ten Slacks cost anywhere. I'm not going to dress that up.

A page notification can become a Mac notification. Click it and you land on that tab. You can mute a tab, or turn its notifications off. There isn't one inbox. A page you never opened won't ping you.

What is missing if you pick Overlay?

No preset catalog, no sleep for idle apps, no Windows, no Linux, no team plan. Rambox 3 (October 2026) can also search accounts you've connected, Gmail, Drive, Slack, GitHub, Notion, Jira, from a command palette, even while Rambox is in the background. There's an AI side panel that can hand the app you're looking at to Claude, ChatGPT, Copilot, or Gemini, on your own login. Overlay doesn't do that. If you want Claude, open Claude in a tab.

Rambox wants you signed in to Rambox. The setup can follow that account. If you wanted this to live on one Mac with no vendor login, that matters. Overlay's tabs, layout, and window position sit in Application Support on that Mac. Passwords you save in Overlay stay on that Mac, encrypted, key in the login keychain. They don't sync.

Teams is $14 a person a month. SAML or Active Directory, workspaces installed for them, a logo. I don't have anything to sell an admin. If that's the buyer, wrong vendor.

You'd also lose their link rules. A slack.com link can open in the Slack already living inside Rambox, instead of a browser that asks you to sign in again. Overlay opens the link as a tab, or a small window you can merge back. There's no table of "this host belongs to that app."

What is missing if you pick Rambox?

It won't float over a fullscreen Mac app, and the plan with workspaces is a subscription. Pro is $7 a month or $70 a year. On 25 October 2026 the pricing page also showed $52.50 a year as a promotion. Budget the $70. Overlay is $12 once, ¥79 in mainland China, one code for two Macs, 30 days free, no card. Direct download and the Mac App Store are both on the homepage.

Their tiles get picked when you create the workspace. You can split a tile again. The help says the layout type is fixed at creation. Overlay doesn't ask you to pick. Drop a tab on the top, bottom, left, or right of any pane. Hover on another tab while dragging and the workspace switches under you, so you can drop into a layout that isn't on screen. Sizes come back next launch. Tiles fit a window that stays up all day. Nested panes fit a panel you call up for one task and dismiss.

There's a notes tab and a terminal in the same panel. Ignore them if you came for Slack. They matter if a doc, a shell, and a pull request already want to live together and you're tired of three apps for that.

Calls are a soft spot for this whole category. WhatsApp video, some Meet effects, thinner in a shell than in the real app. I wouldn't move a call you care about onto either of us and hope.

What does each one cost?

Overlay is $12 once. Rambox Basic is free. Rambox Pro is $7 a month or $70 a year.

That's rambox.app/pricing on 25 October 2026. Basic keeps notifications, focus mode, and hibernation, with the instance cap and the single computer. Pro adds workspaces, multi-login, unlimited custom apps, extensions, and a proxy per app. Teams is the $14 seat.

Custom apps are capped on Basic and uncapped on Pro. If your "app" is an internal tool that was never in a catalog, you hit the cap fast. Trial feels fine in week one and wrong in week five. That's usually why.

Not a Mac? Stop. Use Rambox. If you are: a chat model over the current app, two logins, the rest of this pile.