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Comment by thewindowmovie3 | Hacker News Reader

I recently switched to MacBook when my old ThinkPad gave up. I am regretting the decision now:

1. The dongle problem was one of the first thing i noticed. I tried to use a tplink usb hub which i have been using with my ThinkPad, but MacBook would randomly refuse to detect my keyboard or mouse when walking up from sleep.

2. Window management is bad. Windows solution is so much better. The only solution send to be to buy 3rd party software which emulates Windows OS behaviour.

3. Keyboard is crap (2019 MacBook).

There are few good things like the track pad, but honestly at this point ThinkPad + Windows gives a better developer experience than MacBook.

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I find many folks who dislike Mac's window management paradigm are unaware that there is a keystroke for cycling through app windows: Cmd-~ (tilde).

This may help you, or others.

I've been one Macs for 6+ years and this is a new one for me, thanks!

From my experience with that shortcut, it does not show the window if it was minimised. The title bar does change to the application name though. Is there a way to maximise the window after switching to it?

I also miss ability to snap the window to the left or right of the screen with keyboard shortcut - windows key + arrow keys. Is there a mac equivalent that I am missing?

No idea; I generally work on screens so big that any sort of maximization, even partial, is unpalatable.

That said, when I did a lot of travel, and worked on my laptop without any external screens, I was a big fan of Divvy (https://mizage.com/divvy/).

Also, here's a list of some keyboard shortcuts that folks may enjoy:

https://www.imore.com/manage-your-windows-pro-macos

So, it sounds like you might be talking about command+tab since the application is changing (comamnd+tilde does windows in the same application) so if you want to unminimize the application, you hold option while releasing the command key.

since that's a bit hard to parse:

press and hold command press tab until the applicaiton you want is highlighted in the switcher popup press and hold option release command

For snapping to the side of the screen, you need to add the shortcut yourself, but macOS allows you to do this. You need to:

open system preferences open the keyboard preference pane open the shortcuts tab select the App shortcuts category press + make sure All Applications is selected in the Application dropdown (should be by default) enter the following in the Menu title (case sensitive): Tile Window to Left of Screen choose your shortcut (highlight the shortcut input field and press the shortcut) and then hit Add repeat for the right side of the screen

technically some apps do not support split screen, for those you may want to override the shortcut with the action "Move Window to Left of Screen", overriding the shortcut on an app-by-app basis is done by adding another shortcut specific to that app with the same shortcut but a different action.

The navigation between Windows and OSX is fundamentally different (and a large gripe I have with OSX).

OSX is _Application Centric_ while Windows is _Window Centric_. The fact that in OSX I first have to navigate to the App, then once in that app navigate to a specific window that may or may not be visible is frustrating. On windows you cycle between windows that are in a stacked order that has no relation to the application that owns them (they are first-class citizens for the OS). It's more focused on your workflow of documents and not applications. Also, in Windows, if I select a minimized window it will un-minimize the window automatically for me while OSX seems to thing making the focus on the application in that case is enough, even if all the windows for the application are hidden.

These seem like trivial differences, but they are fundamental changes in workflow that trip a lot of people up. Also, FWIW, many (most?) window managers on Linux follow the same window centric workflow.

Note: If I'm slightly off on any OSX related weirdness, feel free to correct me. I switched back to Windows once WSL was a working alternative and haven't really looked back. The only thing I really miss in the _AMAZING_ trackpads.

To solve point NR2 you can use https://rectangleapp.com/ and bind it to the keyboard shortcuts you are used to. FYI you can also switch the location of the command, option and alt keys if you prefer the windows layout in: System Preferences > keyboard > modifier keys

That app looks like what i want. Thank you! Curious why it uses some third party keyboard shortcut creation tool. Doesn't mac os settings have ability to create keyboard shortcuts? Does that only work for built in mac os features?

I had a similar issue with window management on MacOS. I switched over to using Yabai about a year ago (a tiling window manager in the style of BSPWM on Linux) and haven't looked back since.

I've even managed to get Windows-style window management working in my config.

Link: https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai

Thanks for the recommendation. This and the rectangle app recommended here seems like what i want.

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