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Comment by speedgoose | Hacker News Reader

Since the discussion is about making MacOS more usable, do you have something to recommend to switch between windows and not applications using command+tab, and to have a dock that shows all the windows easily, grouped per application. Because the default MacOS windows manager is really crappy when you have more than one window of the same application.

I would also enjoy a maximize button that does maximize the window and not create a virtual space with the application in full-screen.

I think people at Apple should probably use windows 10 for a few days on a dual screen setup, because MacOS is not very good compared to it. Thankfully it looks like a lot of people produce tools to make it better.

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> ince the discussion is about making MacOS more usable, do you have something to recommend to switch between windows and not applications

Command + ` does that.

> and to have a dock that shows all the windows easily, grouped per application.

Does Exposé not work for you? F3 by default, I think?

> I would also enjoy a maximize button that does maximize the window and not create a virtual space with the application in full-screen.

You might want to try opt-clicking the window maximise button. This maximise window size, in context of the content. May not always be full screen, but as big as the content needs.

Isn't command + ` switching between windows of the same application?

Exposé is not the same no.

The option click algorithm that decide how big the window should be hasn't impressed me to say the least.

I agree the window maximising is frustrating in macOS. I use what used to be Spectacle and is now Rectangle to bind a "real" fullscreeen commmand to a key combo.

The way the default behaviour creates a new space makes me think that no one in Cupertino uses a second monitor because that behaviour simply does not work if you do.

I just downloaded Spectacle a few days ago. Should I be using Rectangle?

I believe that's the case yes, although I only learned of it the other day and haven't got round to switching yet.

Spectacle is now unsupported and Rectangle is a community fork.

https://manytricks.com/witch/ may be exactly what you're looking for

Thanks. I will try this one too.

Contexts is a good cmd+tab replacement/supplement. You can try it for free.

https://contexts.co/

Hold option while clicking maximize and the window will do what you want.

Thanks! Contexts looks like an improvement. It's still missing the window previews though.

I had mixed results with the option key pressed while clicking maximize, some apps such as safari gets slightly bigger by a random amount that is probably a failed tentative to guess the optimal size.

> I would also enjoy a maximize button that does maximize the window and not create a virtual space with the application in full-screen.

This was the biggest thing that annoyed me when switching from Windows. I’ve been using SizeUp for 5 years now without any problem and it’s great, especially when using a 4K screen (quarter screen window tiles).

https://www.irradiatedsoftware.com/sizeup/

Command ` (or Command ~) switches between app windows.

You can also use exposé, recently renamed to mission control to view all app windows.

It looks like the default key binding for application windows is Control-↑ and for all windows is Control-↓

edit: you can also bind these to mouse buttons in system preferences.

Thanks. I should try to rebind the shortcuts to make mission control a bit more convenient to use. I have it in a hot corner, but this is useless on dual screen. Maybe a button on the mouse will be better.

I’d recommend alt-tab-macos [0]. It’s FOSS!

[0] https://alt-tab-macos.netlify.app/

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