Some embodiments implement a linear switching application that provides functionality for switching between different windows based on an x-axis ordering of the windows instead of the z-axis or other ordering of prior art. The linear switching application identifies an array of currently open windows and sorts the array based on the leftmost x-coordinate position of the windows in the array. Optionally, the linear switching application modifies the GUI to display window identifiers based on the leftmost x-coordinate position of each window to orient the user to the x-coordinate position of each of the windows on-screen. The application determines an index in the current x-sorted array for the window that is currently frontmost and changes the frontmost window based on the current frontmost window and a directional input provided by the user.