Ghost windows with empty titles accumulate for all apps, persist after app quit (macOS Tahoe 26.3.0)

[rv97]

Body

AeroSpace is creating phantom/ghost windows for every application. These windows have empty titles, are not visible on
screen, but are tracked by AeroSpace as real tiled windows. They accumulate over time — each time an app is quit and
reopened, additional ghost windows appear. This causes the tiling layout to split into increasingly smaller sections,
with blank space where the ghost windows are tiled.

This affects all applications, not just a specific one. Tested with WezTerm, Cursor, and others — all exhibit the same
behavior.

Environment

• macOS version: 26.3.0 (macOS Tahoe)
• MacBook Pro M4 Pro Chip
• AeroSpace version: Tested on both v0.20.2-Beta and v0.19.2-Beta — issue occurs on both
• Machine: MacBook (Apple Silicon, Homebrew at /opt/homebrew)

Steps to Reproduce

1. Install AeroSpace and configure on-window-detected rules to assign apps to workspaces (standard setup, config attached
   below)
2. Open any application (e.g., WezTerm, Cursor)
3. Run aerospace list-windows --all — notice the app shows multiple windows, most with empty titles
4. Quit the application completely (verify with ps aux | grep — zero processes running)
5. Run aerospace list-windows --all again — the ghost windows with empty titles still appear despite the app having no
   running processes
6. Reopen the application — additional ghost windows are created
7. Each cycle of quit → reopen adds more ghost windows

Observed Behavior

After opening WezTerm once:

$ aerospace list-windows --all --format "%{window-id} | %{app-name} | '%{window-title}' | %{workspace}"
2697 | WezTerm | '' | W
2718 | WezTerm | '' | W

After quit and reopen (WezTerm has ZERO running processes between quit and reopen):

2566 | WezTerm | '' | W
2585 | WezTerm | '' | W
2619 | WezTerm | '' | W
2640 | WezTerm | '' | W

The number keeps growing with each quit/reopen cycle

The same behavior occurs with Cursor and other Electron-based apps.

Expected Behavior

• When an app is quit, its windows should be removed from AeroSpace's window tracking
• Reopening an app should show only the actual windows the app creates
• Windows with empty titles (utility/helper windows) should not be tiled

What I've Tried (None of These Resolved the Issue)

1. flatten-workspace-tree — ghost windows remain after flattening
2. aerospace reload-config — ghost windows persist
3. Fully quitting and relaunching AeroSpace — clears existing ghost windows, but they reappear as soon as any app is
   opened
4. aerospace close --window-id — closes individual ghost windows, but new ones appear on next app open
5. Adding an on-window-detected rule to float empty-title windows:
   [[on-window-detected]]
   if.window-title-regex-substring = '^$'
   run = 'layout floating'
6. This had no effect — the ghost windows still appear as tiled. It seems on-window-detected does not fire for these
   phantom windows.
7. Downgrading from v0.20.2-Beta to v0.19.2-Beta — same issue on both versions
8. Verified app processes are fully terminated — pgrep and ps aux confirm zero processes, yet AeroSpace still tracks the
   windows

Additional Context

• The issue started around Feb 24-25, 2026 and was not present before
• No AeroSpace config changes were made around that time
• The on-window-detected mechanism does not appear to fire for these ghost windows, suggesting they are being tracked
  through a different code path
• All ghost windows consistently have empty string titles
• enable-normalization-flatten-containers = true is enabled in config

Config (Relevant Sections)

start-at-login = true
enable-normalization-flatten-containers = true
enable-normalization-opposite-orientation-for-nested-containers = true
default-root-container-layout = 'tiles'
default-root-container-orientation = 'auto'

Example on-window-detected rules (issue affects ALL apps with these rules)

[[on-window-detected]]
if.app-id = 'com.github.wez.wezterm'
run = 'move-node-to-workspace W'

IMP Note: No change has been made to Aerospace in the recent times. I am using Aerospace for more than 8 months. This is the first time facing this issue.