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Comment by jedmeyers | Hacker News Reader

[Command + `] - a very useful shortcut in OS X for switching between windows of the same application.

"[Command + `] - a very useful shortcut in OS X for switching between windows of the same application."

Well, it would be a very useful shortcut if it behaved the same as Command+tab ... but it does not.

Command+tab behaves like every other "alt tab" you've ever used - no matter how far you alt-tab over, hitting alt-tab again brings you back to the just-previous application. This means you can go over to a new window and immediately toggle back and forth with alt-tab. Works great. Everyone loves it.

Commmand+tilde, however, has a totally weird memory to it - it sort of goes in a forced order, without having a memory at all, except that it (seemingly) switches directions after releasing the key combination ...

However it behaves, you can't pick two arbitrary app windows to start toggling back and forth between. If chrome window A is 5 spots over from chrome window B in "the list", you will always need to flip over 4-5 spots to toggle between them.

And that just sucks.

I wish it were so simple. Most apps implement tabs now too, so you also need to learn Cmd-Shift-[ and Cmd-Shift-] to get around with the keyboard.

I use ctrl-tab and ctrl-shift-tab. Works out of the box in Safari (and customizable for apps where it doesn't).

My big grief with that is that it implements a different ordering logic than cmd+tab does.

cmd+tab orders by last active application, while cmd+` orders by last window created.

... and not even that ... it changes direction every time you use it and it even very slightly reorders things in a way I still can't predict.

(see my other comment above)

You are right. It reassess the order of windows when you change application. And here I just thought I was bad at keeping track of my windows.

Another thing I noticed just now is you can browse to no-window-selected using cmd+`

As far as I can tell, the logic is the following, with numbers representing order of creation, with 0 being no window:

    [3,2,1,0]

If you switch app with window 3 selected, the order is maintained. If you switch with window 2 selected, the new order will be

    [2,3,1,0]

if you switch with window 1 selected, the new order will be

    [1,2,3,0]

If you switch with window 0 (no window) selected the new order will be

    [0,1,2,3]

The amazing thing is, there is an entire company (Apple Computer) full of thousands of people that have to use this every single day ... what the fuck ?

How do they manage to not fix this ? How do they live/cope with this ?

One theory is that there are no power users at apple computer - just a bunch of people mouse-mouse-mousing around their computer all day, every day. I think that's unlikely.

OSX power users that actually work at apple ... why don't you get this fixed ? I live with this pain because I have no way to do anything about it ... why do you live with this pain ?

Which is bad enough by itself, but if you are using multiple monitors/workspace CMD+` will only switch between windows of that application that are on the same workspace.

Less useful on non-US keyboards, unfortunately, may require three keys in combination.

You can configure that shortcut in the Keyboard System Preferences.

Oh my god, this changes everything! CMD-tab focus to the wrong window has driven me nuts for ten years and this fixes it. I've just binded it to cmd-e since the ´´´ shortcut doesn't work on non-us keyboards

I would use this, but after trying iTerm2's drop-down terminal which uses the same combination I can't go back.

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