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Comment by Eun | Hacker News Reader

Window management in OSX is horrible.

Finder is even more horrible. It reminds me of the Windows 95 Explorer. A network drive hangs? Good luck with Finder..., the whole system halts.

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My number one complaint about OSX is also window management. I've never found anything comparable to the way Windows 7 let you use the left/right arrows to line up windows on half the screen. That is the only thing I miss about Windows, but it's a pretty big one. Also, when dis/connecting monitors on OSX, windows often get lost.

ps- if anyone has any suggestions or recommendations, I'd love to hear them!

I use Divvy and am pretty happy with it. Lets me configure different zones and assign keyboard shortcuts to put windows in those zones.

BetterTouchTool / BetterSnapTool

Seconded. I use + love BetterSnapTool. Works great.

Best tool ever. The custom touchpad gestures are great, too. You can do stuff like three-finger swipe up/down to switch to previous/next tab, and rotate right/left to open/close taps.

I hardly ever use the touch gestures but BTT will let you drive everything from the keyboard. I can put windows almost anywhere at will now.

I know I'm being selfish here but it would be nice if Apple covered this sort of stuff instead of concentrating on emoji and Siri. Both of which I have no real use for.

I think I paid $1.99 for this 5 or so years ago. Hands down the best $1.99 I've ever spent.

Did you know about Moom? https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/moom/id419330170?mt=12

I absolutely love moom. I can't imagine going back to using macOS without it. It's amazing to me that this kind of functionality isn't built in. I use moom entirely via keyboard to easily move/resize windows onto a set of customizable "grids." With moom I spend almost zero time/effort fighting with window placement and almost always feel that windows are exactly where I want them. It's a great feeling!

I've been using Amethyst and kwm for the past 4 years and are very happy with proper tiling in OS X. There's been some minor inconveniences but over all it's great.

Not sure what specifically you're talking about here, but if you wanna line up two windows side-by-side you can long click on the green "full screen" traffic light button in the top left of an app's window (e.g. Word), and choose which half of the screen you want it to maximise in. Then do the same for another running app in the other half and it'll split the screen between two apps at full size.

Okay, I just long clicked (5 seconds) on the green button and all it did is maximize the window. Tried long click + drag, didn't work. What am I missing?

Works for me, long click, it resizes to left half horizontally, then when I release it fills vertically. On the right side is a collection of my other windows, I tap one and it fills the right side.

Alas, it's not resizing the windows, but creating some sort of new virtual desktop and sticking them in it.

This is true

That kind of turned me off buy maybe it's worth giving it another go.

Here's the relevant Apple Support article

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204948

I was in the same boat and after some Googling I found that you need to have "Displays have separate Spaces" checked in the Mission Control preferences. For some reason it requires you to log-out and back in after activating it, but afterwards I can indeed use split view as described.

I don't remember changing this setting, but it's always possible I did years ago. I have never been a big user of Spaces and somehow missed out knowing Split View was ever a thing, but it's actually pretty neat.

This seems pretty cool. Looks like it gives you split DESKTOPS, which isn't quite the same. But I'll try it out. Thanks!

TIL! Great feature. After you have your two side by side apps you can also drag the border in between to make one larger than the other.

I use Spectacle for this, simplest thing I've found so far: https://www.spectacleapp.com

I second the Spectacle recommendation, but it is frustrating that you have to download an APP to do something that should be built into the window manager.

for top-level activities that won't really be composed with anything else, it seems fine to leave it to app developers;

as long as someone does the job correctly

Yeah, there have been many many iterations of these apps, by different developers. SizeUp + Cinch, Divvy, Spectacles.

While I think that Apple should have just copied Microsoft's approach (i.e. what Cinch does) the wealth of options for window management means that everybody can find something that they like.

Spectacle is EXACTLY what I was looking for. Thank you!

Spectacle is great, but am I the only one who has to restart it periodically when it stops responding to keyboard shortcuts?

Obviously YMMV but I've been using Spectacle for years and have never had to do this.

I've found Spectacle leaves a bit of padding space under where the dock folds out - potentially useful, but unwanted in my case, and I wasn't able to find a setting to change that behaviour.

I use BetterSnapTool instead, which seems to have a better collection of settings and solves my (admittedly minor) gripe with Spectacle.

I use Optimal Layout and the sadly-now-discontinued-but-still seems-to-work Zooom/2 for alt-window dragging:

http://most-advantageous.com/optimal-layout/ http://www.coderage-software.com/index.html

There is a great app called Hyperdock that does exactly what you want with window snapping. It works so perfectly that I sometimes forget that it's not a native feature of OS X.

Not sure about your window size problems with external monitors, I find that OS X handles this amazingly well

I forgot I had Hyperdock on my last Mac and when I got my new one I thought it was broken because it wouldn't snap / scoll maximize.

It has probably been my favorite utility for Mac

Hammerspoon! Combined with Miro's lua script [1] it provides virtually the same interface (if you've got the "hyper" key setup properly)

[1] https://github.com/miromannino/miro-windows-management

Not sure if it's just my experience, but I've found Hammerspoon to be extremely demanding on my older 2012 MacBook Air. I find single purpose apps somehow work better.

But I do love the amazing level of configuration and scripting that Hammerspoon allows you to do.

I've been using Hammerspoon for ages with a home-baked script, but Miro's one looks way better. Thanks for the link!

Magnet has been working well for me for years - https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/magnet/id441258766?mt=12

as you can see by the answers, there are lots of options :) Personally i use Spectacle and it works great for me

I've been satisfied with Moom, http://manytricks.com/moom/.

+1 for moom... I have mine set to a 4x4 grid instead of the default, so I tend to overlap some windows, depending on what I'm working with.

Moom does what it does. I use it as a faceless application.

I don't understand how OSX and Windows lack a drag modifier key. Like, in most Linux WMs you can hold Ctrl and click and drag anywhere in a window to move it.

Missed that too, so i installed an app "metamove". Sort of works fine!

There is Divvy which is an interesting approach. There is Hammerspoon if you fancy Lu's hacking and Phoenix if you fancy JavaScript. Hammerspoon can do more.

Moom. Hands down the best window management tool for OSX.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/moom/id419330170?mt=12

I don't really find this to be a valid complaint. There are so many free tools out there that handles window management for macOS. I personally use Spectacle. Here is a list of 20+ window managers: https://www.slant.co/topics/526/~best-window-manager-for-mac

Moom is pretty good, beats the crap out of Windows.

Ubuntu has these similar features in whatever default window manager thing it uses (I don't know the difference between window manager, desktop, etc for Linux). It also has "geographical desktop management," i.e., in windows and mac your separate desktops are to the left and right only, on ubuntu they can be up, down, left, or right. Might be trivial to some, but to me, having a "physical space" metaphor for my workflow is tremendously helpful.

Also you can drag left/right to snap to one half of a screen.

Anyway I tried to replicate this behavior on Mac with spectacle. It's meh. If you fuck up and fullscreen something and then try to half screen it, it seems to break horribly.

Divvy is my go-to window manager on macOS. I've got it set up to arrange windows on each edge as well as a "communication" window in the upper left corner of the screen for Slack, etc...

Hyperdock, yes it's a paid app but it allows for what you want along with my favorite gesture of swipe up/scroll up while hovering over an application's titlebar to take it full screen. There may be free options out there but I've have hyperdock for years. It also gives you dock previews when you hover like Win7.

Get magnet from the App Store, it's better than windows!

No one has mentioned it yet, but I have used slate for years. It's a programmable window manager. You can program the Windows 7 functionality you described with a few lines of config, if you wish, and that just the tip of the iceberg.

It can do everything but make lunch.

https://github.com/jigish/slate

Try ShiftIt or the clone. I use this at home as I missed the Windows+cursor movement of windows.

Try moom . It's great

The fact that finder doesn't let you retrieve or enter your current FS path just like a URL in a browser is criminal.

Drag the icon in the top center of the window onto your text editor or terminal, it will paste the full path from the Finder window.

Admittedly it's annoying that this feature is hidden and requires dragging with the mouse, but it is possible.

You can also drag any folder or file from the finder into an open or save dialog and it will take you to that folder / select that file

This is one of many features i much appreciate in Mac OS X. Active corners is another powerful features that makes window managing and file moving a bliss. I find macOS much stickier than iOS. I can go without my iPad but not without my mac.

This is great and I miss it every day at work on Windows. I end up Alt-D , Ctrl-C, alt-tab, Ctrl-V to work out where anything is.

Cmd-shift-G lets you enter a path (with tab completion) in the Finder or in any open/save dialog

It's hidden, looks like an afterthought ux-wise, and is inferior to the interactive bread-crumb style that the windows explorer uses. But better than nothing, thanks.

>and is inferior to the interactive bread-crumb style that the windows explorer uses

Actually the Finder has interactive breadcrumb style paths that's not hidden at all (just not on by default):

View -> Show Path Bar

It also has a "path dropdown" with all the directories up to the current path, shown if you command-click on the current folder's icon+name on the top-center of the Finder.

"Show Path Bar" isn't interactive, but it's worth noting that the Command-Click trick lets you navigate to any of the folders along the path, not just display them. (Which I'm sure you know, but just in case readers don't.)

I've never found macOS's window management to be that bad, but to be fair I've been using Moom for a decade or so, and lately have been using the "split full screen app" trick a lot. (Someone else mentioned the long press on the green "full screen" dot for that, but you can also do it just by making an app full screen, going to Mission Control--which I do with a four-finger swipe--and dragging a second app on top of the full screen one.) That's not as useful for 27" monitors--in most cases I prefer to actually have untiled windows I can rearrange and resize with the pointer--but it's terrific for laptop screens.

>"Show Path Bar" isn't interactive, but it's worth noting that the Command-Click trick lets you navigate to any of the folders along the path, not just display them.

Not sure what "isn't interactive" means, but the OS X "path bar" let's you do the exact same thing (as you describe for the command-click on the folder icon): by clicking on any folder along the path you can navigate to it.

Note that it takes a double-click for that though. Perhaps you were only single-clicking?

That was one of my biggest annoyances with OSX. Thank you for posting this.

But Finder lets you drag any folder into an Open or Save dialog to navigate the dialog to that folder. That's something that continually frustrates me in Windows. As near as I can tell, the only way to move a Windows open dialog to point to a folder that's open in Explorer is to copy and paste the URL (which means throwing away whatever's in my clipboard).

Just hold alt/option when copying something and the Copy option will change to Copy path. The path can be pasted in the Go Menu (or with Shift-Command-G)

> Window management in OSX is horrible.

What is so horrible about it ? I have the exact same reaction every time I have to use Microsoft Windows. Window management is one of the strongpoints of MacOS.

> A network drive hangs? Good luck with Finder..., the whole system halts.

I've never encountered this problem on both AFP and SMB shares.

Fullscreen mode loses focus constantly with 2 monitors, SMB shares are very slow especially with large amounts of files to be listed. Finder crashes a lot dealing with network filesystems. The search on Finder is extremely bad and doesn't hold a candle to Windows 10 search.

I am typing this on a Macbook Pro so I am not some Windows fan. OS X has fallen way behind in its desktop incarnation. The only reason I use OS X is due to its Unix shell for development. I don't think anyone can honestly say that as a GUI OS X is better than recent Windows.

>Fullscreen mode loses focus constantly with 2 monitors

I've never lost focus with fullscreen/2 monitors. So?

"I haven't experienced the problem you're talking about, so it must not exist."

... on Windows you drag a window to the right and make it 1/2 or 1/3 or 1/4 the screen. On a Mac dragging the window... drags the window.

I never understood the whole obsession with running applications fullscreen. The whole point of a multitasking OS is to run multiple apps at the same time. If you need to run your apps fullscreen you probably need a bigger monitor.

The common use-case is laptop vs. desktop. If you have a 34in. WQHD display, full-screening one app is going to be silly; if you're stuck with the built-in display on an MBP when you're at the cafe, it's much more practical.

For the other perspective - it actually boggles my mind when I see coworkers with one desktop open with 3-4 windows kinda mushed all around, different sizes, etc. Like, you paid a lot of money for that good display, why are you not using it?! How can you stand having to scroll all over a window to see something, when you could just fullscreen it? Is it that they need to context switch quickly? Why not just use multiple desktops, with all fullscreen or at least fully-half-screened apps?

I never understood this type of workflow and when I was in school it was everywhere, it's like apple was pushing for people to have little windows strewn out over an otherwise gorgeous display.

I am using it, that's the whole point of having multiple windows open. Each window shows whatever is relevant about that context, and it takes up no more space than necessary so I can have as many sources of information visible as I want.

Also, it's nice for spacial awareness. I feel a little bit lost when a window takes over the entire screen and blanks everything else out.

Regarding spacial awareness, because I have the same window in a given "desktop" all the time, my spacial awareness is locational. If I'm in my IDE, I know it's 2 desktops to the right to get to my terminals. From there, 3 to the left to get to my company chat. Etc.

It's even better in ubuntu because desktop switching isn't just left/right, it's up down. So I can really think geographically. I guess that's just the kind of brain I have - for example, if I want to look for tickets for a movie I want to see, I search "movie theater" in google maps and click the theater in the location I want to go to, then navigate through ticket buying etc. shrug who knows man

When you want to write a letter by hand, do you clear your entire desk and get a desk-sized blank sheet of paper to write on ?

How can you stand having to scroll all over a window to see something, when you could just fullscreen it?

Uh... because with three 30" monitors, it would be like sitting in the front row at an iMAX theater?

My MBA always has an app in full screen mode. My TB display has windows on windows. It is the apps' fault, not mine.

> Window management is one of the strongpoints of MacOS.

Can you give an example of this? I regularly switch between macos, windows and ubuntu and I have a hard time coming up with much positive to say about macos window management (unless a third-party tool is used).

command-tabbing between apps instead of windows is just wrong imo. You constantly have to keep in mind if the window you're switching to is part of the same app or a different app.

The way command-tabbing brings all an application's windows forward always bugged me too. Fortunately, there is LiteSwitch (http://sysbeep.com) that lets you switch to the frontmost window only.

While I'm at it, I'll also plug https://manytricks.com/witch which I find invaluable for switching between windows and just got an update.

Cmd-` lets you switch windows within an application though, as I recall (can't confirm as I'm on Windows at work)

Hyperswitch (https://bahoom.com/hyperswitch) fixes that perfectly.

Having the menu bar on top is confusing when you've got multiple windows open.

It bothers me more that windows explorer doesn't have tabs natively. I use that all the time in Finder and it's way more convenient to be able to right click on a directory and say open a new terminal tab in that directory then having to go to the title bar and type in cmd in windows.

This is true, but better touch tool, moom, divvy, etc all leapfrog windows or ubuntu window management. The network drive problem, I have not run into with my NAS, so idk where to help you there.

I'm especially partial to sitting there with a 4+k screen with nothing open, opening two finder windows to copy a file, and having them spawn on top of each other as tiny little 500px squares in the middle of a vast ocean of unused screen space.

I agree. It got better with Sierra but it's still far away from Windows in this regard.

I use ShiftIt (https://github.com/fikovnik/ShiftIt) for this.

I don't know why better touch tool's window snapping isn't built into the OS, it makes my iMac usable.

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