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Comment by frankjr | Hacker News Reader

The funny thing is this is one of my favorite features, it keeps the switcher uncluttered. If you don't like it, you can use "Mission Control" (Control+Up Arrow) that will show you all windows across all applications (pressing Control+Down Arrow is the same but only within windows of the current application).

You can also switch with Command+Tab and once you hover over the application you want, you can press Command+Down Arrow (or Up Arrow or even Key 1) and that will show you all windows within that application (the same as Control+Down Arrow). Notice that each window has a title and you can press the initial letter and that window will get focus. You can then press Enter to select it.

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This could be use case dependent but I find that as a developer, I frequently want to cycle between 3-5 windows in 2-3 applications. Text editor, 2-3 browser windows (generally: thing I am working on, browser dev-tools for the thing I am working on, and reference web-pages), and 1-2 terminal windows.

In this specific use case, I found all the little differences between Windows and MacOS window switching to end up adding together in Window's favor fairly significantly.

On macOS you can cycle apps, the focused app’s windows and its tabs using cmd+tab, cmd+tilde and ctrl+tab respectively. Once that becomes natural it’s better than Windows’ plain alt+tab.

I understand how this works, but it's not better, especially not for multi monitor setups. Switching between three dev-tools, two browser windows, five terminals and an editor or two makes the Mac way a horrible way to work:

First, select the application that you want to use now. All windows from that application, across all monitors are now brought to the front. Then, you switch to the window you want to use. Most of these windows have no clear way of communicating to the user that it is active, so you have to look at each of the available windows to see if it's active or not.

Let's say that I have a monitor with three terminal windows on. I don't want to close them or minimize them, as I will need them again shortly. Now, I want to open a browser window above those three terminal windows, so I open it. Now, I want to move a single one of those terminal windows on top of the browser window, while keeping the other two below the browser window. Nope, not possible. On Mac, I have to use the mouse to pick the right terminal window to achieve this.

Ok, I understand that. It does suck in these situations. But the higher granularity also has situations in which it is beneficial.

It probably just depends on your particular workflows whether the good outweighs the bad or the other way around.

Sibling comment pretty much covers my feelings on this but I want stress the main point and add a couple minor notes.

My main point is that a window is a window. The app to which that window belongs means essentially nothing to me, I don't think there needs to be a separate hot-key for cycling windows-per-application, I do not find it to be a usefull organizational tool for switching between windows. I am aware of ctrl+tab but that seems to be a generally accepted program-level control not something from the operating system level.

Minor annoyances:

MacOS's cmd+tab visualization has a slight delay before appearing. This seems to be intentional and provides a nice experience when you know for certain that the selected window of the previously selected application is what you want to switch to; quickly tapping cmd+tab switches directly to that window without the visualization. On windows, the alt+tab visualization always renders immediately. I prefer the windows way because frequently the window I want is maybe 2 or 3 back. So I can more quickly locate it visually through the visualization that pops up on alt+tab.

On MacOS, that visualization I just mentioned does not have separate selection for mouse/keyboard in the cmd+tab menu. What this means is that if an errant mouse cursor passes the visualization while you are cmd+tab'ing to some application, the mouse will scramble your selection. On Windows, there are two separate selectors, one for alt+tab (confirmed by releasing alt) and one for mouse selection (standard point + click). MacOS does support both mouse and keyboard but they share the same selection and interfere with eachother. I know this sounds like an unlikely case but I actually find it quite common -- moving the cursor towards the anticipated area of interest in the soon-to-be-focused window while alt+tabbing will frequently pass through the area of the screen where the alt+tab visualization renders.

Why doesn't MacOS have an intuitve way to maximize a window? This drives me insane. It really feels very reasonable to me to want to see the system clock/tray/etc but have a window take up all other available space. This really feels like a fundamental window-control interaction to me and it is not the same as full screen. I do not understand why MacOS does not have this and why it does not seem to bother other people.

> Why doesn't MacOS have an intuitve way to maximize a window?

That's a Microsoft Windows paradigm, copied by Gnome and KDE. Systems 1-8 and OS 9 had no mechanism for making a window full screen, much like LisaOS and Xerox Star 8010 IS before it and NeXTSTEP/macOS continued this. It's just never been a part of the UI as it doesn't really fit with the desktop metaphor.

>Notice that each window has a title and you can press the initial letter and that window will get focus. You can then press Enter to select it.

Oh, nice! Thanks for this.

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