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Comment by frou_dh | Hacker News Reader

Somewhat related... if you're using a Mac and haven't taken the time to understand the difference between Hide (Cmd-H) and Minimize (Cmd-M) then you're missing out.

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Would you care to elaborate? I'm not an expert and minimising has always been this frustrating accidental combination where you have to use the cursor to get the window back up from the dock and command+tab doesn't work anymore.

[0] is the first result on stackoverflow but it still seems unclear to me.

[0] https://superuser.com/a/51775

MacOS has a much stronger distinction between applications and windows than MS-Windows does.

The Cmd-Tab switcher deals with apps, not windows. Similarly, Hide (Cmd-H) and Hide Others (Opt-Cmd-H) operate on app(s), while Minimize (Cmd-M) operates on a window.

When an app is Hidden, it will come back into view when you select it using the Cmd-Tab switcher.

The gist is that people who aren't experienced with MacOS overuse Minimize and underuse Hide/HideOthers. And sadly seem prone to being obnoxious in their ignorance on the subject [0]

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21256915

Thanks, that is a great explanation! I will give it a try and see if it improves my life at work.

There is in fact a way to 'un-minimize' a window [0]: Use cmd+tab to go to the application, while still holding cmd press alt, and release cmd. It helped me out a couple of times when I accidentally minimized a window.

[0] https://discussions.apple.com/thread/1615114

Worth noting that some apps un-minimize themselves. Spotify is one.

Interesting, thanks for the lesson.

Keybinds like these are amazing with spatial design such as Finder, Nautilus, or the way Gimp worked before it went with the Photoshop redesign.

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