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Comment by missing_paren | Hacker News Reader

> cmd+backtick is like cmd+tab but between windows of the same app.

Well, I wish that were completely true, because cmd+backtick only cycles through the windows of the application, while cmd+tab lets you select the application you want.

From Ubuntu (or maybe rather Ubuntu's default desktop environment?) I am used to cmd+backtick allowing me to select the window - I did find an application that does enable this behavior [1] but I wonder what else is out there. I used to use Hyperswitch but it doesn't seem to work on Catalina

[1] https://contexts.co

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> > cmd+backtick is like cmd+tab but between windows of the same app.

> Well, I wish that were completely true, because cmd+backtick only cycles through the windows of the application, while cmd+tab lets you select the application you want.

I'm having trouble distinguishing between these two descriptions of the behaviour. What is different between what you say and what the author says?

Cmd-tab shows the row of open applications, you can tab through them (or shift-tab to go backwards), OR mouse over and click whichever app you want.

Cmd-backtick only cycles through the windows.

Speaking of which — while cycling through windows with Cmd-tab, you can hide or quit them by pressing h or q, by keeping the command button pressed.

Contexts hasn't had any updates in a while, but is still far and away better than anything else I've tried. There haven't been any regressions as MacOS has updated since the last version.

It's one of those "How did I manage before without this?" apps.

One of my favorite features is quick switching by holding down Caps and typing some of the Application / Window name. When releasing Esc, the selected window will be focused. So if you know the window you want to switch to, it's extremely fast.

A new app 'AltTab' has fast overtaken Contexts as a much loved alternative:

https://github.com/lwouis/alt-tab-macos

I just checked it out, thanks for the link. This shows promise!

But I don't really need the images of the windows, a list is much more efficient than a 5x3 grid of large images. And the quick switch esc+key is sorely missed.

I'll keep an eye on it though, thanks again for the rec.

The dev is currently extraordinarily dedicated to responding to tickets and is in heavy development.

I've already helped out and contributed a bit. Recommend to start Github issues for any gripes right away.

Not sure if he offers a non-grid list mode though. But he's open to new ideas.

I was just thinking how the app icon is more than enough to identify each window and thumnails don't make sense to me. You can disable thumbnails in the configuration.

Wow Contexts looks incredibly well designed. I'm not sure I'll actually use it over my current Hammerspoon setup, but they combine all my favorite quick selection techniques like smart ordering, fuzzy matching, providing two-character hints which will definitely select a certain item, persisting things to keep hints consistent, shortcuts where you press a modifier type and then release to activate ...

What I really want now is for Alfred to copy all of Contexts search features so that I can use them for generic search matching in Alfred workflows.

It seems to be unmaintained.

Oh I hadn't noticed, that's real sad. Their "upcoming" feature of showing window tabs is something that would be necessary for me.

I think the Control Center’s “windows of active application” view is what you’re looking for. Hit Ctrl+Down. It’s keyboard-navigable!

Can that be remapped to cmd+backtick perhaps?

Yes, but I don’t think you’d want that, as the navigation after that wouldn’t be the same (you don’t press Down again to move between windows and then let go of Ctrl to select; rather, you let go of Ctrl, move between windows with the arrow keys, then press Enter to select.) Better to keep the two muscle-memories separate.

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