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Comment by liquidify | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand what the problem was. Alt tab to get to the program, then alt tilde to get to the window. It was a very natural feeling action.

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It's the difference between MacOS or Windows default behavior. Alt-tab between windows has always been the default on Windows, and it was the default for most open source window managers for a long time too. I believe Gnome changed their default to follow how MacOS worked a few years back. Now it seems Ubuntu is reverting back (or is this a Gnome change again?).

Different people prefer different defaults. Personally I can't stand the MacOS version, and for the few years I used MacOS, it drove me nuts. That said, I don't use Ubuntu, so this doesn't matter to me either way.

I use alt-tab, I get a window that looks a bit like this: https://i.imgur.com/mtynAgC.png

However most of the time I switch focus by pointing my mouse to another window (mouse focus / click to raise)

Every once-in-a-while I go on a Googling spree to see if there's a way I can switch Mac OS to the Windows/early Gnome style. I cannot fathom the Mac OS style being better. Maybe if you only had one monitor, one desktop, and minimized all windows not specific to your current task?

Are you looking for Hyperswitch[0]? I've been using it ever since I needed to start using a mac.

[0] https://bahoom.com/hyperswitch

Yes! This is great, thank you!

That was me as well until I got back to safety ;-)

That and:

- ctrl and fn being swapped on the laptop keyboard (but not on the full size keyboard), with no way to fix it in settings or bios.

- movement and selection key combos varying wildly between apps.

Rumours has it both can be fixed now. Meanwhile Windows is now less annoying to me than it has been since XP was fresh and KDE has left the 4 series behind so, all while Apple fans are raging furiously everywhere about the new keyboards, so I'm not asking dor a Mac bext time either it seems.

I don’t understand the problem though. Alt+tilde for windows, alt+tab for applications. I intentionally will use one over the other depending on what I want to switch to, and it has become second nature. I find the OS X approach way more manageable when working with many windows/apps.

For me, the problem is I have to alt-tab to get to the right window, pause, remember that alt-tilde exists, alt-tab to get to the right program, pause, alt-tilde to get to the right window in that program.

I've only got a half-dozen or so things open. For me, it's just faster to have one shortcut (alt-tab) let me cycle directly to what I want, instead of having to bounce between multiple shortcut commands.

I recently saw Mozilla was looking into what benefit people gain from Electron as opposed to just running stuff in a browser tab. I can answer that for Mac users quite simply: If you run Slack in a Firefox window, and want to switch to Slack, this is how to do it in Mac OS:

* If you have a Firefox window focused, press alt-`

* If you have anything other than Firefox focused, press alt-tab

If you have Slack running as an Electron app, this is how you switch to Slack:

* Press alt-tab.

When I want to switch to the last window I had focused, the decision should be to press the "switch to the last window you had focused" key combo, NOT "figure out which application you currently have focused, and press a key combination based on whether it's the same or not".

Having multiple windows and multiple desktops makes it worse. One thing I hit far too often:

Monitor X has vscode on Desktop 1, Firefox window A on Desktop 2.

Monitor Y has Firefox window B.

I want to switch from Firefox window A to vscode. I press alt+tab. It works -- monitor X changes to Desktop 1 and vscode is the active window.

I now want to change batch to Firefox window A. I press alt-tab. FAIL: Active window is Firefox window B on monitor Y. (Subsequently pressing alt+` to switch doesn't help. there's only one Firefox window on the current desktops, so nothing happens.)

Thus, I can switch OFF of a desktop using alt-tab, but I can't switch back to it without some other key combo I don't know. (I end up having to just use the mouse.)

An additional example that isn't strictly alt-tab / alt-`, but related to how it's implemented:

I have two Firefox windows open. If I alt-tab to one, they both come up to the front, including the one I'm not using -- which may now be obscuring another window I was using.

Monitor X has vscode + a Firefox window A I'm not currently using.

monitor Y has the Firefox window B I am using.

When I alt-tab from vscode to the Firefox window B on the other monitor, the other Firefox window A also moves to the foreground, obscuring my vscode window. They could fix this while still using the alt-tab/alt-` system. It's just a related issue.

I'm sure I could get around this by aggressively minimizing whatever window I'm not currently using, but it's aggravating that I have to do that for, as best I can tell, no benefit whatsoever.

I will say that pre-Windows 95 I was on 3.11 and switching wasn't "last-focused" based. It was simply in the order of when your applications were opened. At the time I thought the change to last-focused was stupid. (I think today I'd probably still be okay with the old method, but it does make less sense when you have a lot of windows open at once.)

However, I'm now about four years into Mac OS as my only environment, so this isn't doesn't seem to just be about what I'm used to. I'm not quite to the 10k hour mark yet, but I'm well past the halfway mark.

As a user, I don't think in terms of applications, I can think in terms of workflow which spans applications. I might be switching between certain browser windows, a terminal etc and I shouldn't be having to think "wait, this is an app switch vs a window switch".

I don't think it's too different than switching between browser tabs.

    - Ctrl + Tab: within window
    - Alt + Tab: between windows
    - Alt + ~: between applications

I think the main problem is that these shortcuts are difficult to learn. For example, I didn't know about Alt + ~ until this thread (!), and I'm confused at how users are meant to learn shortcuts like that.

One difference between ctrl-tab and alt-~ (or alt-`, depending on your keyboard layout) is that tabs within a window are very close to each other, and obviously distinct from windows in their own right, whereas it's frequently not immediately obvious whether two windows belong to the same application.

and this is the reason I don't use tabs in browsers. To me, there is no "app x is a web page, I need to alt tab to browser then ctrl tab to the right tab". I don't use tabs in browsers, so it's always just aLt tab to get where I want

Situation: have three iTerm windows (let's say X/Y/Z) and two Chrome windows (C/D).

X/Y are running some stuff I'm not interested right now. Related stackoverflow answers are in tabs in C. Z is in the left part of the mornitor: I'm currently working on it. D is on the right side showing some dashboard.

Was looking at D, pressed Alt-Tab to go back to Z.

X and Y pop up from behind, completely obscuring D. Disgusted, press Alt-Tab again, and watch C covering Z.

Groan.

Yes, yes, I know, a true developer should be able to afford enough monitors to spread all windows evenly. Or use a tile-based window manager and memorize 12 hot keys for each mixture of task. Sigh.

My thoughts exactly. I actually prefer the alt-tab alt-tilde because it feels more natural to me. Thumb positioning is less accurate than finger (at least for me).

I do dislike the constant changes, but I also think there's far more exciting things in the post to praise :-)

- takes twice as long time,

- forces me move your hands around

- and forces me to think

I get the other two, but how does moving your finger from tab to the key right above it qualify as "moving your hands around"? I hit tab with my middle finger, which reaches ~ quite naturally. I'm really happy to find out about this, it works on macOS, so I'm going to be using it!

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