Hacker News Reader

Comment by ChicagoBoy11 | Hacker News Reader

Despite the warning, I didn't find it nearly as "ranty" as the author cautioned, and instead seemed like a fairly comprehensive and fair take on his experience.

Having gone through the same thing myself several years ago, the UI aspect of it is something that I'd be curious to see how it develops for the author. I think it is not uncommon for Windows folk to find the windowing experience on macs rather painful, at least at first. However, after a while, it sort of "made sense" to me, if that makes any sense at all. There are some clear UX philosophies that are very different, and the initial transition can only be pretty jarring, but I'm curious what the author would say about it after a month or two.

Also, fwiw, I think most power Mac users also marshal the use of some other programs to help along with some of that (or at least to tailor it more closely to what they want the experience to be). Rectangle is one of the first installs on any Mac I put my hands on... makes window management so much more pleasant!

View on HN

Not that it's right or wrong, but the behavior dates back to the very first implementations of Mac OS and Windows. Mac OS has always been an application switching interface, and Windows has been a window switching interface. Takes getting used to the paradigm shift.

OP here. I like this perspective, I never thought about it this way!

As someone that came from a windows world for the first 10ish years of my career, i found this pretty frustrating too. I honestly still do. Sometimes it feels like I just cannot get to the window I want.

You don’t have to live with it if you don’t like it; open source to the rescue: https://alt-tab-macos.netlify.app/

There is a separate shortcut to switch between windows of the currently selected application cmd + ` or ctrl + down arrow to show the windows.

So you alt + tab to select the application and switch to the right window. I personally think it's more reliable than Windows especially if I have a lot of Windows open (I used Windows for the last 10 years). On Windows I regularly switched to the wrong windows because of my fat fingers...

So i actually use these shortcuts all the time! I think im more struggling with some edge case of my multi screen setup, im not sure. I just find myself having to do the full expand of all windows and then find the one i want to get things working again.

FYI, I always load Rectangle on my Macs for window snapping using keyboard keys. It's fantastic!

I wonder how much of the difference between Windows and Mac comes from the 1980s look-and-feel lawsuits. Microsoft couldn't clone the Mac directly so they had to make it gratuitously different and worse.

I can't get used to the fact that I can't alt-tab to a minimized window. Nor can I figure out how to switch to any particular minimized window. You have literally no way of knowing that a minimized window exists other than right-clicking the dock icon, or going to the "Window" menu after you switched to the application. The dock was fine 20 years ago when they released OSX, but they've literally done nothing to make it better since then.

I don't actually minimise windows on the mac at all. I just sling them on a contextual virtual desktop and then triple-swipe up when I need a different one.

Not once have I had to sit there mashing alt-tab and guessing then.

Has Mac changed its default settings?

The Dock shows you any minimized windows on the right.

If for some reason this is no longer default (I don't remember the last time I setup a new Mac and didn't carry over settings) Right Click the dock >> dock preferences >> Uncheck "Minimize windows into application icon"

Well, that did work. But now I just have a massive pile of minimized window icons... and still no keyboard shortcut to switch to them.

I guess like the other person mentioned I just don't find myself minimizing that often on Mac.

That being said there is an option. The first is if you are in an application you can do control-down or (if you enable it under gestures >> more gestures for your trackpad) you do 3 fingers down you will see the minimized windows for your current application at the bottom. I did also just look it up and apparently if you do cmd-tab and press up on an application it does the same thing.

Not exactly what you are looking for, but you can at least do it on a per application level for anything minimized.

While the app switcher is highlighting the app with minimized windows, press cmd+1 to switch to those windows.

On Mac you generally just don’t minimize windows unless you explicitly want that behaviour (sort of hidden and available manually through the dock). It’s just a different workflow.

The few times I've used a Mac, trying to use this workflow just leads to a lot of visual clutter. Everything sits on top of everything else, and every window is sitting somewhere on the screen, a constant reminder that nags at the back of your mind.

This seems like a weird comment, what did people do before macs got virtual desktops (which was relatively recent compared to unix)? As a side note I remember discussion with apple users arguing that virtual desktops are not how one "should work" and are useless, now it's "you should use virtual desktops, obviously".

As someone who used Mac back then: mostly just complain about it and accept that OSX did not have any good way of stashing away windows. I am still not impressed but is less painful now that we have virtual desktops.

Well, personally, I keep a lot of windows open on my screen because I work well that way. It's similar to the "cluttered desk" method—it may look messy, but I've got everything available to me and even if you don't know where anything is, I do.

But I recognize that's more of a personal style than general usage.

I've been a Mac user since before the system even had proper multitasking, and the general answer to your question is that we would keep open the applications and windows that were useful to us, sometimes hiding an application that we're not actively using and don't need to have cluttering up the screen. Once Mac OS X came along, we would also minimize individual windows we weren't using—and if you minimize a window, then hide the application that it belongs to, that also hides its minimized windows in the Dock.

Also note that for every application up until a few years ago, and for some applications even now (and dependent on a System Preference setting), you can keep an application open on the Mac without any windows open.

> Well, personally, I keep a lot of windows open on my screen because I work well that way. It's similar to the "cluttered desk" method—it may look messy, but I've got everything available to me and even if you don't know where anything is, I do.

> But I recognize that's more of a personal style than general usage.

> hiding an application that we're not actively using and don't need to have cluttering up the screen.

So having only used macs very sporadically what is the difference of hiding an application and minimizing a window?

> Also note that for every application up until a few years ago, and for some applications even now (and dependent on a System Preference setting), you can keep an application open on the Mac without any windows open.

So am I understanding correctly that hiding an application is essentially the same as minimizing all windows of that application (into some hidden space), I assumed from the previous posts they would just be moved to some virtual desktop? I guess that would be very nice for some applications but very annoying for others, e.g. do terminals count as the same application?

Hiding an application, very simply and straightforwardly, just takes the application out of the foreground and makes all its windows disappear. They are still considered to "exist", in the same desktops/spaces, and no state is lost—when you switch back to the application, all its windows reappear exactly as they were when you hid it (assuming no background processing changed them, of course). They are just not visible for as long as you keep the application hidden.

The difference between this and minimizing is that a) it affects all windows of the application, not just a selected one, and b) a minimized window either goes into the side of the Dock, or into the application icon on the Dock (depending on your set preferences); hidden windows, as I said, are completely invisible.

There is also a "Show All" option under the application menu (the one just to the right of the Apple menu, with the name of the foreground application) that will un-hide all currently hidden applications.

Virtual desktops are a relatively recent addition to the Mac; this hiding behavior has been around and worked consistently since the mid-'90s, well before Mac OS X.

(As a final random tidbit, one of my most common methods of hiding an application—particularly if it's the one I'm using at the time—is to simply option-click on either the desktop or another application's window, as that is a longstanding shortcut for doing so.)

I never minimize windows at all on the Mac, perhaps because of this behavior. I hide apps with (Command-H) instead, and use multiple desktops for managing different workflows instead.

Yeah I hide stuff all the time and I find myself using Single Window mode a lot too, especially on a smaller screen.

The keyboard shortcut to switch to them in ctrl-down (or whatever you have set to "Application windows") and then arrow keys.

Ok, so you can actually do this but the keyboard sequence is a bit bonkers.

* Hold down Command and press Tab until the application icon representing the minimised window is highlighted.

* Release Tab but DONT let go of Command.

* Now press Option too so you are holding down Command + Option

* Now release Command so you are just holding down Option

* Finally release Option

Amazingly this will then maximise the window whose application icon you selected in the first place.

Sounds crazy but it works. Try it!

You've literally improved my life with this comment. Thank you.

Holy crap. Same here, I never knew this keyboard shortcut existed.

You can also tab to the application, hit the up arrow and use the arrow keys to select the minimized window then hit enter.

In fact, my command-tab workflow is: command-tab to open the Switcher and then arrows to switch application/window

Exactly. Cmd-Tab to open the switcher, arrow-left/right to select the desired app, arrow-up/down to show all windows, then arrows or mouse to select the desired window.

I did not know you could do this, and have been following command-tab with control-down for years now. Thanks!

Also, when it comes to maximizing, the green button changes modes when you hover over it with Option held and switches to tiling the window left/right or maximizing it. In general, holding Option on Mac toggles alternate behaviors for menus and buttons. (Special callout to Option+dragging a window edge)

Thank you. That was super helpful!

This works, but it's (1) completely undiscoverable (how did you find out about this?), and (2) does not work for switching to a minimized window if the app has another unminimized window.

I don't know about natural discoverability, but Apple still has user manuals for its products: https://support.apple.com/manuals

I learned a few things from idly perusing them when I had nothing better to do.

Thanks for this! I had no idea. That said, it doesn't seem to work if you have 2+ instances of an app window, with one minimized and the other not.

That's new to me. I had gotten used to knowing that the first minimised window for something like Messages or Activity Monitor is what I wanted, and used Cmd-0 to get that up.

I do this, it's the only thing I know how to do on a mac and it's in my muscle memory as there's no way I could describe it.

It put me off so much that I really can't be bothered to work out why it works, what the underlying switching philosophy is, or if there are any other commands to use.

I will try this once, be amazed, and promptly forget it.

This will help: https://alt-tab-macos.netlify.app/

The solution is simple. Don't minimize windows. Everything fullscreen on virtual desktops. Three fingers up and choose the window you want if it's one you don't use normally. Three finger swipe between frequently used windows.

I do this. It's absolutely insane that it's the easiest way to do window management in MacOS. We have regressed to the point of not having windows anymore.

I do too.

A while back I had the Raspberry Pi 400 computer on my desk and a newish M1 Mac. It was interesting how much better the window management was on the Pi. Frankly, for things like file management, that little computer was Snappy as hell.

And it does dual monitors like a champ!

And don't get me wrong here, I've used a lot of systems, and I'm fine with my Mac. I know how to use it, I get things done and the M1 chip is really sweet.

I generally go with the flow figure out what the flow is and I just don't worry about it past that. I just had to comment on this particular topic because I thought it was kind of humorous.

Amazing that in the era of N+1K external monitors suggestion is still to use fullscreen windows.

This is where snapping comes in. You can make a fullscreen window that is made up of two applications. Really it just comes down to never fusing with your windows once you have them set up to your liking. Once everything is either fullscreen or in its corner of a virtual desktop you should never be changing how your windows work. Nothing should ever be hidden behind anything else, if it is it's time to make a new virtual desktop for it.

I use a variation of this approach. Make all windows exactly the same size (I'm using Hammerspoon). Hide applications (Cmd-H) instead of minimizing windows. Cmd-Tab to whatever app you want. Cmd-` to whatever window you want.

Sometimes the silly shadow around the top window gets too big, but then you can Option-Cmd-H to hide all other apps.

One way of addressing this is to use the intended method, which is to Hide the application instead of minimizing it. Cmd H hides the application away, and it pops back to the front with a Cmd Tab.

Why havent they removed the mostly useless minimize feature?

Open the "Mission Control" settings in System Preferences to see what key sequence you have assigned to "Application Windows". While you are there you might also click "Hot Corners..." and check if "Application Windows" is assigned to a hot corner.

Invoke "Application Windows" and it will show you all the visible windows of the current application tiled so you can see them all, and it will show you all the minimized windows of the current application across the bottom of the screen. (Some applications, such as TextEdit and BBEdit also show recent documents there).

While in the "Application Windows" ctrl-tab cycles between all open apps while remaining in "Applications Windows" view.

I also prefer Windows default behavior to macOS in this respect.

I find macOS alt-tab'ing works better for me with the addition of https://contexts.co/

Same here. I would be so slow on my work Mac if I didn't have Contexts.

FWIW, I never minimise windows, just hide them (Cmd-H). Works fine (and you can Cmd-Tab to them).

Same. I use hide (Cmd-H) most of the time because I want to hide the whole application, not a single window of the application. I also use Hide Others (Cmd-Option-H) to focus on a single app. And I use Cmd-` to switch between windows of the app I'm in.

There is a rare case that I minimize a window, but it's generally because I don't want to work with that window any time soon, but I don't want to close it either, and I have multiple windows open in the app. Since I'm not frequently switching to the window in this situation, its fine if the easiest way to get back to it is to use my mouse.

The most annoying behavior for me is Alt-Tabbing an application whose windows are spread across multiple desktops. Alt-tab will not go back to the actual previous window, it will go back to the window of the previous application closest to the current desktop. Sigh. Luckily I don't have to put up with MacOS for very much.

Switching across multiple desktops (ie spaces) is really annoying. In particular, you switch (Cmd-Tab) to the app you want, realise the window is on another desktop, then Ctrl-arrow-left/right to the desired desktop, but there the windows are ordered as they were when you left, and you have to Cmd-Tab to the desired app again.

Alternative: Cmd-Tab to desired app, arrow up (while holding Cmd) to see all windows of that app, then pick the desired one (with arrows or mouse).

Instead of minimizing windows, put them on a separate virtual desktop. Or close them.

I never minimize windows on purpose. I think the only reason the concept exists is because it predates virtual desktop switching.

Also, instead of Alt-Tab, flick four fingers up or down and select the window of interest.

Yes, under macOS minimizing windows is conceptually more like putting them away in the cabinet for later retrieval whereas under Windows it’s closer to setting them aside momentarily. The level of friction is accordingly different.

Keyboard shortcuts are IMO superior to gestures and are objectively faster.

The whole virtual desktop can get quite clunky fast when you have multiple windows opened or ephemeral programs that you temporarily need.

In the case of alt+tab window switching I suspect it’s only faster if you are going to the last used window. If you’re hunting for an app through multiple alt tabs, you’re almost certainly going to take more time than using the mouse gestures to switch.

Unless I have dozens of app no because the beauty of alt-tab is the fire-hold-release which is always quicker than getting the mouse and clicking.

Not the way I lay out my windows. Most of the time every window is partially visible, and so I switch by clicking on the one of interest. Or I overlay them and scroll the partially obscured one without focusing on it. The only time I actually switch with mission control is when I'm searching for a particular desktop and window, or am reorganizing windows. In those cases mission control is far superior.

All gestures on macos regarding virtual desktops and windows have corresponding keyboard shortcuts.

Still, it's not alt tab with the press-hold-release which is always quicker than doing gesture->arrow to select something->enter.

Completely disagree. Doing three finger swipe x times is just as fast if not faster than keyboard shortcuts that require you hunt down the window you're looking for.

It's objectively slower when you need to leave the keyboard with one hand to reach your touchpad. I'm thinking about a desktop environment here where 1. you might not even have a touchpad and 2. you have your both hands on the keyboard.

I don’t think the literal fraction of a second difference matters.

It matters after a long day and it adds up. On top of the time lost, it's also a matter of ease of use.

I mean maybe if you're using vim all the time, but most of my apps require mouse interface, so my hand is usually near the trackpad. Even when I'm using external monitors I still use the laptop keyboard and trackpad.

Good for you if it works, but it doesn't for me and I find it cumbersome.

The one thing I'll say I like about the weird minimize behaviour is that I do a lot of screen sharing and it's pretty nice that once I minimize a window that it's pretty hard for it to suddenly pop back into view. On Windows I have to pretty much just religiously quit applications before I share screen but on OSX it's usually sufficient just to minimize them.

I minimize windows on purpose if I want to completely ignore their existence but not close the window. For example, Terminal windows that are running background processes that I don't need to attend to, VMWare windows for headless VMs that I only SSH into, and the like. It's nice because they don't show up when I open the app, and basically cannot unminimize without explicit action.

Most of the time, though, I don't bother minimizing windows on macOS, whereas I minimize windows often on Windows. Although they're similar actions, they wind up serving different functions, and trying to treat minimized windows on macOS like minimized windows on Windows is just a recipe for frustration.

1. CMD-tab to application with minimized window.

2. Ctrl-down for "Mission Control > Application windows"

3. Down arrow to select minimized

4. Enter

This even works when all windows of application are minimized.

It's a tradeoff: takes more keypresses to access the minimized window, but prevents the minimized window from getting in the way most of the time. Which is what you want if you've minimized it.

This reminded me of a post on Macintosh Folklore[0] about the early development of application switching on Mac OS. It certainly gave me some insight into why things work the way they do in the Mac world.

[0] https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Switcher.txt

Having used the very first Mac, it made sense on that tiny screen. One application per time was almost more than it could accommodate. The monitor got bigger after a few years and the menu on top and the full screen interface started not to make sense compared to the Windows PC next desk.

Nah, I’ll defend the top menubar to the death. Infinite height and top-speed cursor speed makes working with it from the top versus from the window much more efficient for me, and it wastes less pixels (the purpose of high res monitors for me is to use all of the pixels) and gives me a working area on its right side for various utility apps I don’t want taking up space in the Dock (which has enough problems even with a relatively small working app set).

What also helps though is that an under-appreciated aspect of a typical set of Macintosh apps is how good the context menu has gotten. Typically I’m using the context menu and hotkeys much more than the menu bar because it is rare there is an option I want that is unavailable in the context menu.

Additionally, when the menubar is a global system widget, UI designers in pursuit of minimalism can’t take it away. They’ll be there whether the designer likes it or not, acting as a searchable index of the app’s functionality.

While I do appreciate those benifits the confusion caused as soon as there are multiple windows on the screen doesn't seem worth it. I have enough trouble managing keyboard focus I don't need to add another layer (which somehow seems even harder for me to comprehend)

It’s just one of those things that if you want to, you can get used to it, but if you resist it you won’t. Like learning Vi or Emacs or BBEdit. There are tools you already learned to use, the Macintosh user interface is just another.

The alternative is what? Apple changes something millions of people are already used to, their existing customer base, to satisfy switchers specifically when most can easily adapt? Or you just don’t use a Macintosh. Now what Apple does need to do is bring proper contrast back and stop wasting everyone’s time with this minimalist nonsense; even the option in the Accessibility options is utter garbage.

I didn't resist. Although if that was an option I may have considered. And after a year of daily use are work it was still tripping me up.

It's possible for an interface to be widely used and still have sharp edges. I consider this one of macOS's. It doesn't need to change, it may well not be worth it. But at least some people will end up in the menu of the wrong application.

It's easy to run into this situation if you regularly have two windows side-by-side, and switch back-and-forth between them so that the focus could be in either window at any given moment. If you only have windows maximized (as I suspect GP does) it's not something you'll ever run into.

Nah. Many windows, from many apps, but typically two or three at the front side by side. I’ll leave Full Screen videos open as a kind of running queue in Mission Control but that’s about the extent of it.

There’s no secret, I just don’t lose track of which window I’m focused on in software because that’s the one I’m immediately focused on.

> Or you just don’t use a Macintosh

Exactly. The global menu and the top bar have been the main reasons I never bought a Mac.

the Mac OS model just doesn’t work for my ADHD brain. I much prefer the Windows model, it feels much more natural fit for how my brain works :)

> natural fit for how my brain works

and that is a perfectly sensible way of looking at this (and many other) fanboi discussions over the decades.

But then again, if such sensibility ever took hold in the majority of humans, it would be the end of social media as we know it :-)

I'm not a mac user (but a linux user who chooses desktops with the windowing paradigms of like windows 2000 or so plus multiple desktops) so have no idea how it's like in practice, but:

These days it's very common for more than half your work to take place in a browser, with many browser windows, each having many tabs

Every window of the browser almost is like its own application for the user, yet they're all from the same application with the same name for the OS

How does an application switching interface, rather than window switching interface, work out for that, if a lot of what you want to switch between is different windows of the same browser?

(and what if in addition there would be also many terminal emulator windows, each also with many tabs, and maybe some code editors, spread across multiple virtual desktops)

Desktop PWAs and "open as own window" shortcuts help a lot with this, letting you (from a UI perspective at least) run a web app as though it was its own application rather than within the browser.

"Create shortcut" is heavily underrated feature on Chromium. Firefox dropped similar feature. https://support.google.com/chrome_webstore/answer/3060053

Cmd+` switches between windows of the same app, and it's actually more convenient (IMHO) than using Alt+Tab to switch between every one of your windows from every app. There are also a handful of trackpad gestures for showing all the windows in the current app or all of your windows.

except windows is still king because the preview shows the instance instead of an application

Cmd tilde instantly switches between windows, so there is no preview and so your comment doesn’t really make sense.

If you’re talking about cmd-tab, personally I’ll take big recognizable icons than thumbnails with minuscule text and such any day.

And mission control will give you windows previews if you want them.

ctrl+up / ctrl+down

Ctrl+Down is useful for navigating intra application, but Ctrl+Up is a ridiculous mess.

As long as you haven't made the active window full screen, or the window you want to switch to, then yes, it works. But it is painful :P

That's one of the reasons I never make windows full-screen.

Except for that annoying quirk, I actually find the interface better (though it definitely took time to get used to it).

I prefer windows to be full screen. Then I three-finger swipe between apps on my trackpad.

I get that. I just use an app that lets me maximize windows with a shortcut (I use Size-up but there are many great options). I then make sure to maximize everything, so effectively all my windows are always maximized.

It's not the same as fullscreen, because it still has the top mac bar, but that's fine, and it gives me the ability to cmd+tab / cmd+tilde through my windows.

> As long as you haven't made the active window full screen, or the window you want to switch to, then yes, it works. But it is painful :P

What's being described as "full screen" windows on macOS is not exactly that, and it's very different than full screen windows on Windows or the standard Linux window managers.

On macOS, when we click on the little green button on top of a window, that window becomes full screen *and* becomes a new single-window workspace.

https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/use-apps-in-full-sc...

You can "Maximize" the app (to put it in Windows parlance) by Option+Click the green button (you can observe during the hover state for the green button the change from "full screen" to "maximize" by pressing Option).

Or even just double-click the window‘s title bar. Just like on Windows

Not only trackpad, you can use ctrl+down to show all windows of the current app and ctrl+up to see all windows.

I prefer binding "Move focus to next window" to the F12 key. Since Cmd+` is a hard keyboard combo on non-american keyboards.

I kind of gave up on non-US keyboards.

The Portuguese layout sucks horribly for programming, especially on the Mac (brackets in horrible places), and the U.K. layout (where I’m based) sucks horribly for writing Portuguese in. The US international just works for all my purposes (including writing tiny amounts of other languages besides Portuguese and English)

Have you tried this one ?

http://norme-azerty.fr/en/

That looks like an "AZERTY International", with no advantage over the Portuguese layout for programming, and no advantage over "US International" for typing languages other than French. It does look like an improvement over traditional AZERTY!

My choice is "US International with AltGr deadkeys". The deadkey behaviour in simple "US International" is very annoying for programming: you have to double-tap every key that could be an accent, such as single quotes or backquotes.

> no advantage over "US International" for typing languages other than French

Uh, did you not even bother to click on the link or something ??

The easy access to all Greek characters (and more math symbols) alone is great if you work in a math-related field !

Yes I clicked but didn't notice the Greek overlay. It's neat. I imagine that it can be useful for math, if you're not using something like LaTeX or Emacs already. I even have something similar in my custom layout, although it seldom gets any use. That does not make it any better for programming, nor for typing in Portuguese (or even Greek).

Look, I think it's great that this thing exists and grateful that you mentioned it. I may even suggest it to some of the French-speaking juniors I work with.

It does not, however, address the issues of the person you were replying to. And I know because I'm in a similar position to them.

Just checking you're aware that dead keys for all Portuguese diacritics are available in the UK PC layout - alt+e (´), alt+n (˜), alt+\ (`), alt+c (ç), alt+i (ˆ)

Because I never went back to the Portuguese layout after finding those key combinations.

It's inconsistent compared with alt-tab behaviour.

cmd-tab switches to the last used application (assuming you don't hold down), right now for me that switches from Firefox to Slack.

Pressing cmd-tab again switches from Slack back to Firefox.

However for window switches

cmd-` switches from my HN window to a jira window. cmd-` again switches to a webmail window. To switch from jira back to HN I have to press cmd-shift-`

Exactly, and believe it or not, this strange little inconsistency is the only thing I still can't get used to after using macOS for ~15 years.

If you press Cmd-Tab, then let go, and press Cmd-Tab again, yes, you get back to the first application you were in.

If you press Cmd-Tab, hold Cmd, and keep hitting Tab, you cycle through the available applications.

If you press Cmd-`, get the window you want, and do something in it, then press Cmd-` again, you get back to the first window you were in.

If you press Cmd-` repeatedly, you cycle through the available windows of the active application.

There is a slight difference in how you trigger the two behaviours—and the behaviour of Cmd-` can sometimes be a little opaque, I grant, since "do something in the window" is not always 100% clear, either to the user or the computer—but they do have analogous behaviours.

Press Cmd, Press `, Release `, Release Cmd

You've swapped from window 1 to window 2

Press Cmd, Press `, Release `, Release Cmd

You swap from window 2 to window 3

Press Cmd, Press tab, Release tab, Release Cmd

You've swapped from application 1 to application 2

Press Cmd, Press tab, Release tab, Release tab

You swap from application 2 to application 1

That if you type something after swapping window and the behaviour changes is even worse!

For cycling

Press Cmd, Press Tab, release Tab, Press Tab, Release Tab, you can move from application 1 to application 3, although it doesn't switch immediately, just shows you a menu while you hold down Cmd

Do this with windows and the actual window changes as you move, not a menu

It's poor behaviour and one reason I prefer my linux desktop to my anicent macbook. (Another reason, I've got about 15 opwn terminals, but I can't just raise 1 terminal window above my browser, I have to raise them all. Of course there's no focus-follows-mouse either, it's all very user-unfriendly, at least by default. I'm sure there's some software that might fix this, but back in the 90s when I was using Windows I remember that sort of software was just terrible. The easier option is to finally fix my linux laptop, which died around the time covid started, and thus wasn't a critical path fix)

I filed a big report about this years ago. Please do the same so that Apple knows this bothers people.

Edit: it didn’t behave this way before 2009

And it seems that it doesn’t behave that way in every program. Firefox seems to be doing it correctly (most of the time anyway)

This is where the value of electron wrappers and web apps installed as PWAs comes in. It offloads app management duties from your browser and puts them back in the hands of the OS.

The former of those two can also get rid of redundant menubars (as seen in e.g. Figma) which is a nice bonus.

Exactly. When the Electron-apps-are--awful-compared-to-desktop-apps conversation comes up, I'm always frustrsted to not see this perspective, because it really reframes the real potential value of Electron implementations away from (from this perspective, unfair) critical comparison to implementing internet services and applications as true desktop apps.

I love doing this but my personal hell is when my Google account(s) are constantly signed out of my PWA for Meet, Chat, Work Gmail, Personal Gmail 1, Personal Gmail 2.

I quite like the epiphany / gnome-web functionnality to create "apps" out of separate website. Too bad it doesn't work with msteams and I wish firefox had that function as well so I can still use my extensions on thoses.

I have a few workflow solutions to this, but Control Down-Arrow or three finger swipe down is the most common.

Also, windows are in a stack from least to most recently put in front, so if I know something is toward the back I start with command-~.

I also happen to believe that there is such a thing as having too many browser windows open, so when these strategies start to become unmanageable, I will close some. The Expose for browser windows takes up to twelve before it needs to make the icons really small, that's a reasonable limit for me, especially given both tabs and tab groups (which I'm increasingly making good use of).

To be clear, this is a workflow, not a workaround: unlike focus follows mouse being impossible, I'm content and productive handling the browser this way.

And if you have so many windows open that it becomes difficult to manage, usually you can sort them into virtual desktops

I have 409 tabs open at the moment… (more on my desktop computer)

I agree. While I admit that I have only lightly used macOS but for my last job I find it hard to get used to this multidimensional switching. I think it might have made sense where you had a few documents and a few emails and a few folders. But now I have 3 browser windows and 3 terminals and my brain can't get used to the fact that a video call window is in the same group as my reference docs but my text editor is in a different group with my build output. Maybe I should use a different terminal emulator for my editor but that just seems like fighting the window system.

Or maybe after a couple more years of macOS and I would get used to it.

It's just the difference between a depth=2 tree and a flat list. What's better depends on your access patterns, but at least semantically, the tree makes a lot more sense to me.

I just wish "spaces" worked like xmonad workspaces [0], specifically that in xmonad there are some number of workspaces (9 by default) and each display is a view into _any_ of those. Macos has a checkbox "Displays have separate Spaces", and neither checked nor unchecked gives the behavior I want.

Let's say I have just two monitors. That box being checked means I have spaces A1 A2 .. An and B1 B2 .. Bn, and monitor A can display any of the "A" spaces and monitor B can display any of the "B" spaces. But if I want everything from B2 to get displayed on monitor A, I have to create a new space An+1 and drag everything over one window at a time, like a cave man.

Unchecked means I have spaces AB1 AB2 .. ABn, and switching spaces switches both monitors at the same time! So if I want to see the A side of AB1 and the B side of AB2 at the same time, I'm out of luck.

Xmonad workspaces allow me to do any of the above behaviors (oh, and it switches workspaces instantaneously, instead of this left/right spatial thing macos insists on, I guess because of the trackpad swipe gestures). One of these days I need to try to make Hammerspoon fake workspaces in a way that works for me, because (like the OP) this is by far the least comfortable thing about working in macos for me.

[0] https://xmonad.org/tour.html#using-other-workspaces

Yeah this works because of indexed access. The tradeoff is you get a limited number of spaces, and you require a much larger key binding surface area. Like how indexes take memory.

If your state is A1/B2 (two monitors A and B displaying spaces 1 and 2 respectively), and you're working in A1 and want to switch B2 to B3, how do you "focus" on display B before moving spaces to B3? If you just press mod-3 I assume you'd get A3/B2. Do you have to alt-tab until you focus a window that is currently in B and then mod-3?

In my xmonad setup only one window (and thus screen) has the focus, so I would need to hit the key that switches focus to my B monitor (for me that's Mod4+e, B monitor is Mod4+q) and then Mod4+3.

True about indexed access; some other window managers have natively built in "tagged workspaces" where windows have tags and the "chat workspace" is just "all windows that have the chat tag". You can (probably? I've never used them) bind numbers to tags permanently or temporarily but you wouldn't be limited to 0-9. I never bothered trying to copy that setup in xmonad because I never used more than 5 or 7 workspaces.

> But if I want everything from B2 to get displayed on monitor A, I have to create a new space An+1 and drag everything over one window at a time, like a cave man.

That's...not true, though? Unless I'm misunderstanding what you're after...

When you activate Mission Control (not sure offhand what the default shortcut is; I have mine set to Ctrl-Up, but I might have customized it), you can drag entire spaces between monitors. I do this regularly.

Ah, I had no idea you could do that. I don't generally use the expose / mission control swipe gestures. ... Actually I just realized I haven't bothered using spaces in years (since before Catalina I think), maybe I should try again. Thanks!

You can drag whole screens from one monitor to the next. Open command center and then just drag the whole screen over in the top bar.

For me it's a two-finger double tap on the mouse (I think--not at my computer at the moment.)

The browser really breaks the paradigm. I think the ideal would actually be a browser that had a window per site and an “application” per category of site.

It doesn't work out well. This is an area of macos that grinds my gears daily. It gets even messier if you maximize an app, or use multiple desktops.

Often I need to quickly switch between a particular terminal window to a particular browser window. But it's always a gamble. I don't know what I'm gonna get when I press cmd+tab. It may show the correct window, or it may show all terminal windows, or it may even do absolutely nothing.

So, I have the opposite problem when I go back to using Linux/Windows: I mentally file all my windows into application buckets and it makes the alt-tab switcher for not-macOS seem to pick a random window.

I don't understand what's random about always switching to the last window you were using. It's a simple rule, no exceptions. Macos window/app switching rules are too complicated and full of special cases, which makes it harder to integrate into your work flow.

Because, basically, I don’t think in terms of switching windows, I think in terms of switching tasks/apps and some apps/tasks happen to have a bunch of windows.

It's still easy to understand because it is just one rule, with no exceptions. Comparatively the OSX model is filled with arbitrary rules that depend on many factors (is another window of this app open in a maximised mode?, does the last desktop you were on have no windows?).

Even if, with time, you have become comfortable with it, it is still a more convoluted way to manage tasks.

Simple isn’t the same as convenient.

Sure, but Mac's solution is neither. At least in the modern world where almost everything is done in your browser.

I bet a good percentage of Mac users use actual applications for their work instead of browser-based app facsimiles. That's what comes of having a (reasonably) consistent, stable OS to work from.

So, my workflow basically involves switching between terminal, browser and emacs. With macOS’s scheme, if I switch from emacs->browser, I can always hit switch back to emacs without having to parse the switcher, even if I’ve opened a new browser window for some reason. On windows/linux, when I open a new browser window, alt-tab goes back to another browser window, not back to the other “task”.

I certainly don't do everything in a browser. I usually have at most 2 browser windows open (usually just one). For important browser-based apps, I just pin the tabs.

I actually find the macOS model to be more convenient (even though I didn't like it when I first tried it). It makes it very easy to switch away from an app that has multiple windows.

To be honest, I'm not sure there's an objectively better solution. I think it all comes down to the workflow and habits you've built around the model you use most often.

It's also pretty convenient to be able to switch between browser windows using cmd+`. I don't need to worry about getting other apps in between my browser windows.

I dunno. I just want a focus group on a desktop, where switching is related to the project I’m doing. For example one desktop vscode, iterm, browser. And another desktop about productivity.

The problem with switching is that you quickly get too many windows / apps.

I tried to have a user per group, but that does T work fast enough.

The best setup for me is 2 or 3 machines, linked with synergykvm

This is the problem at root, yeah.

Application switching makes sense in a world where the application is the locus of interest and you tend to spend a long time in each app, only rarely switching to another. We haven't lived in that world for a very long time.

It's definitely not a gamble.

When you press Cmd-Tab, first of all, if you hold it down for longer than about a second, it shows you the icons of the currently-open applications, letting you select which application you switch to.

Whenever you use Cmd-Tab to switch to an open application, it will always foreground all the open windows of that application that are on the active desktop/space.

When I'm doing something like you describe, where I know I'll be switching back and forth between a specific pair of windows of different applications (and I have a bunch of other windows of those applications open), my usual practice is either to size and position them where I can just see both at the same time (large screens ftw), or I'll pull them off into a separate space where Cmd-Tabbing between the two applications will be guaranteed to switch between just those two windows.

As a lobg time on and off Mac user: nnt very well. The Windows/Xfce method of switching between all Windows within the current workspace fits the modern way if working much better.

Yes, Mac also supports switching between Windows in the same application but that is rarely what I want either since I am a heavy user of virtual desktops

It’s worth noting that Microsoft has moved more towards an “application switching interface” with Windows 11. Multiple windows for a single application are always forced to be grouped in the taskbar. I hate it.

Hasn't this been the case since Windows 7? I know 7/10 had the option to disable it, and it sounds like Windows 11 has removed that choice, but it's been clear what Microsoft has had in mind for a while now.

The switch-by-application is the only thing I have not let go when starting to exclusively use Linux on the desktop. Switch-by-window is too hard to get used to.

In addition, the classic user interaction method for Macs has always been drag and drop between multiple on-screen windows, while Windows users have traditionally kept every window maximized.

Personally, I think it goes back to early Windows originally supporting very low resolution graphics cards where you simply couldn't display more than a single widow's worth of content at once.

Remember that EGA was only 640×350. You had to have a user interaction method that worked at such a low resolution.

Having things optimised for drag and drop between multiple windows is the reason for Classic Mac OS to only maximize a window enough so that the entire contents of the window is visible, instead of taking up the whole screen.

The first Mac (actually Macintosh back then) had a 9" monochrome screen with 512x342 resolution, so less than EGA (16 colors). [1] The Macintosh and EGA were released at about the same time. [2]

[1] https://everymac.com/systems/apple/mac_classic/specs/mac_128...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_Graphics_Adapter

Remember CGA with a maximum resolution of 640×200 in two color mode or 320x200 at four color mode?

It was also supported in Windows, and given that Windows also kept a separate copy of the menubar as part of every window's chrome, they could have really called it Microsoft Window.

The need for a user interaction method that works at such a low resolution is the origin of Windows users expecting a UI that keeps every Window maximized.

Drag 'n drop has been in MS Windows and different flavour of Linux distros for the last 10-15 years at least regardless whether the application windows have been maximised or not. Or are you referring to something completely different?

Are we pretending that Windows users don't use cut, copy, and paste instead of drag and drop for file management?

File management in the classic Mac UI was always to open a window for the source directory and another window for the destination directory and use drag and drop to move or copy the files.

File management in Windows was to navigate to the source directory, cut or copy the files, navigate to the destination directory and paste.

Just as the classic Mac OS only maximizes a window enough to show all the contents of the window, but no larger than that to facilitate interacting between multiple windows instead of having every window take up the whole screen.

I believe you are making a generalization to apologize for the author of the article for not figuring out, or not immediately knowing already, how to use keyboard short cuts to cycle through selecting windows. [1]

You're both being silly, but the author is being especially silly to evaluate an operating system mostly based on how he feels about the user interface.

macOS is more than just a user interface, more on that in a bit. That being said, there is no Universe where any Linux user interface nor any user interface developed by Microsoft is superior to Apple's Aqua. Sure, Aqua sucks, but nothing, anywhere, approaches its ease of use (developed for everyone, not just the nitpicky self-proclaimed power users with weird tastes), and the feeling of solidity, like windows, menus and icons have some gravity and aren't just weightless and flat sprites ready to fly off the screen or fail to interact with other graphic elements properly. Frankly, every gui ever has been chasing Apple's guis since 1984. Truth hurts, I'm sure, but those are the facts. NT4 and 2K, very similar, were collectively the best guis Microsoft ever released, and gui-wise, everything since has been an absolute disaster, visually and with interaction, XP and 7 included, just absolute crappy junk of guis, and 10 and 11 are no better. In Linux, I always liked every gui I saw, Gnome and KDE, and really it can be tailored to whatever the user's desire is, can even run WindowMaker for the NeXT feel. But therein lies the problem, no consistency whatsoever and it's not for everyone; it is only for the tinkerers, coders, and Linux admins.

Back to the operating system. macOS is rarely given the credit it deserves for being such a solid stable gui running on top of SUS UNIX. Come' on, the author merely mentions this and says nothing about it, but right there is nearly everything that matters: more software available than any other platform ever plus all the best professional apps (printing, photography, audio, video, etc.) run better on macOS, and massive security benefits right out of the box, default config, but of course it can also be hardened, trivially, and then pretty much forgotten. You can never forget to attend to the security of your Windows machines, update, upgrade, constant, ceaseless, never ending scans, but that is in addition to its catastrophe of a user interface, so there's that.

[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-switch-between-window...

I never got used to it after a year. I wasn't even a "new" Mac user as I'd previously used Jaguar/Panther/Tiger/Leopard as well as Classic and even NeXTStep. But while those were better than XP time has marched on and I don't feel like MacOS improved enough compared to the competition (with regards to window management). If anything should have been Sherlocked it should have been rectangle/magnet etc.

I also feel like Apple cripples mice, it's a very trackpad centered workflow and if you're not using one it suffers. Also they really need to have a separate mouse scroll toggle built in.

what do you mean by "mouse scroll toggle"?

Maybe "natural" scroll direction vs the old scroll-bar orientation.

Yes exactly.

I've seen this mention between comments and the article, but there is such an option! Or am I thinking of something else? If you go to "System Preferences" > Mouse > unclick "Scroll Direction: Natural". Am I missing something?

Unless they've changed it really recently you can't have a mouse scroll "unnaturally" and a trackpad "naturally". They're tied together for some reason. You need a 3rd party utility to it.

Yes, you can, both options exists in System Preferences, one under Mouse, the other under Trackpad

But when you change one, the other changes :(

Oh never notice that, thanks for the update

So, I always invert the mouse scroll wheel on Linux now, because the Mac scroll direction just feels right to me. Which is sort of the problem here: macOS’s UI works really well if the paradigm makes sense to you and long-time Mac users often have the same problems “backwards” when they use Linux or windows.

Did it feel natural to you in 2011? It's not that old of a change. You can get used to it no doubt and I almost feel like it makes sense on trackpads but not so much on scroll wheels. Why fight 10+ years of muscle memory for literally no gain and a bunch of pain everywhere else?

I adapted to it in about two days, it made sense to me from the very beginning.

I've been on Mac for 10 years now and I still consider the way Windows handles windows vastly superior.

The fact that cmd-tabbing to a app will place all of its windows on top means that I might be forced to move a window with the mouse to see what's underneath it which I find infuriating. The fact that two windows belong to the same app is an arbitrary distinction to me. I group things by mental "projects", and I prefer to maintain my window z-order based on that.

I never liked using virtual desktops and I just downloaded altTab which I've read about in threads here, but it seems to flicker weirdly and it has already crached on me once within a 1/2 hour timespan so I don't foresee myself keeping it.

Same here. After 3 years of daily macOS usage I snapped and finally installed AltTab too. I though I’d get used to it’s way of doing but it’s really not good. I’ve also installed Rectangle a while ago to get easy screen splitting.

macOS does a lot of things very well, just not that.

My first Mac was the first Intel iMac. OSX Tiger was better than Windows XP. Expose felt better than the alt tab of xp- and more fun. And Tiger pushed to have windows take up the space of their contents rather than the whole screen, so most windows were visible on screen all the time making switching between them easier.

In the time since, I brought another iMac and had 2 work MBPs.

In that time, MacOS got worse. It now wants to make windows full screen. Mission control is awkward if you use an ordinary mouse.

My workflow has changed. I'm more likely to have 2 windows of every app- 2 vscode windows, 2 terminal windows and 2 browser windows. As stated many times over, MacOS handles switching between those configuration of windows badly (and I gave it plenty of time to become intuitive).

I now use the Gnome desktop. I have windows that snap. I have alt tab that cycles through windows (it needs configuring). And it has an Expose like effect (gnome overview).

I feel like I have the best of all worlds. Great window management. Great hardware support (none of the MBPs supported daisy chaining my displays). The Linux command line. The same apps I'd be using on any other OS.

I'm now on 7 years since the first MBP provided to me by an employer.

It's just as terrible as ever. I would not use an Apple product outside of work, despite some thousands of hours using one over the last several years. Everything about using a Mac feels patronizing and intended to make me work harder than I should to do the most simple tasks.

I had a similar experience: I was semi-forced to use a Mac for over a decade due to how much of my iOS-focused development work started to rely on tooling people only made for macOS, but when the pandemic started (due to being stuck at a desk all the time)--and now mostly working on non-"mobile" software-- I switched back to Windows and it was relieving.

Same. I have a MBP for work, and run Arch Linux on a Dell laptop for personal use. Before that it was Linux on a ThinkPad. The hardware on the MBP may be better, but not in any way I care about, and I'd trade it all to be rid of the touch-bar and have my function keys back. The MBP is fiddly as heck to get it to drive my ultrawide monitor at full resolution, while both Linux laptops "just worked". Personally I just can't find any reason I should prefer the Mac.

Agreed. The distinction between applications and windows that macOS/Mac OS has always made was jarring at first, but definitely one of those things that after the initial adjustment simply feel different rather than objectively better or worse.

Better or worse depends on use case, but I will say that a tree is a much better semantic fit than a flat list.

Funnily enough there was a time when MDI was a popular and favored design philosophy on Windows, practically leading to the same application/window distinction that MacOS had/has.

I think the bit on window management reads a little too much like someone who sort or made up their mind upfront. I use windows in my professional life, because that’s how we roll in Denmark, but back in 2015 I bought my first personal MacBook and it’s been a great relationship ever since.

On windows I need to install tools for things like snapping pictures because the default snipping tool isn’t quite good enough. I also hate window management, especially on multiple screen setups where you can’t move the mouse from one screen to another if the resolutions are different (4k screens and an open laptop as an example). Mean while a lot of the things the author complain about are things I find decent on a Mac. The fact that you can easily auto-size windows so that you have 1 full screen, 2 half screen apps, and x csized windows on 3 different window spaces is just awesome.

The biggest issue is that even after 7 years I still have no idea how many little tricks I still don’t know about Mac OS because it never tells you how to use it and pressing shift command (or maybe it’s option) 4 to snap a screenshot isn’t exactly intuitive.

> especially on multiple screen setups where you can’t move the mouse from one screen to another if the resolutions are different (4k screens and an open laptop as an example)

What do you mean by this? That is absolutely possible.

What I miss most in macOS is Super + Left and Super + Right to tile windows left and right..

Check out the Mac app "Magnet" on the app store.

You can add keyboard shortcuts to do that in settings if you really want it. It still does that. If you run apps in full screen mode it gives you a rudimentary tiling workspace on each desktop with a tiled app on it.

Just long press on the green button on the window for a tiling menu.

I've used Spectacle with the defaults, for years. It's not actively developed but still works. There are actively-maintained alternatives, but since it has zero times done anything weird or glitchy for me, even with multiple monitors, I've not switched yet.

"brew install spectacle", start it, give it accessibility permissions it needs in the Settings panel, set to start at login (check a checkbox in Spectacle's settings panel). Forget about it until you set up a new Mac.

cmd+option+up/down/left/right for half-screen tile. Cmd+option+F for the equivalent of maximizing a window in Windows (not Mac-style fullscreen). Cmd+ctrl+left/right for upper-left and upper-right quarter tiles. Add shift to make it lower-quarter on that side. That's it. Was all available to me instantly via muscle memory inside a month, don't even think about it now. It's how I do nearly all my window placement/resizing.

I used Spectable as well. The newer version is called Rectangle.

Spectacle is a must have IMO.

I set mine up to be Shift+Ctrl+(QWE/ASD/ZXC).. where Q/E/Z/C are for the corners, A/D left and right halves, W/X for top and bottom halves, then S in the middle for full screen. The mnemonic of the "box" formed by those keys on the keyboard is easier for me to remember.

I've used Moom for years now - https://apps.apple.com/us/app/moom/id419330170?mt=12 - it has all the things, menu access, window snapping, short cuts, custom configuration, and saved layouts

It doesn’t have a keyboard shortcut by default, but you can bind 'Move Window to the Left Side of the Screen' and 'Move Window to the Right Side of the Screen' in Keyboard > Shortcuts > App Shortcuts.

another thing to note is that you can add shortcuts to any application as long as it has a menu title... you just have to type the menu item exactly. this also works to effectively remove shortcuts from apps that hijack something that you use elsewhere and don't want available ever. you have to set it to something like control option command shift F15 or something that you'd never use.

> rather painful, at least at first

I get that some people prefer that, but I've been on macOS daily for 10+ years and still can't find the top level OS paradigms (window switching, over reliance on mouse/extremely poor keyboard support, lack of proper "maximized" windows) anything but painful.

It might be that growing up with windows ingrained certain gestures on my mind that I can't let go, but I feel like I've decidedly given it a shot. And I still hate it.

Yes, there are workarounds, but they're workarounds that require third party applications. I expected more from the OS.

Most recent newcomers to Mac and ex-Windows users get tripped up by the fullscreen windows, which are honestly pretty bad.

The way to use MacOS is to use the Spaces to group windows by theme / task. For example, I have one space where I have Slack, Skype, Teams, Discord, Mail and Outlook currently open. Another one has my main "browsing" Chrome window. Another one has my iTerm (the only fullscreen app). And the last "permanent" one has my "debugging" Chrome window. They're always in the same order (none of that "reorder automatically" nonsense), so I can switch tasks using the mouse (2-finger swipe left/right on the Magic Mouse), trackpad (3-finger swipe) or keyboard (ctrl-left/right). Inside a Space, I switch between windows using Exposé (swipe on trackpad, double-tap on mouse or F3 on keyboard).

I've been using macOS both in my personal & professional life like this since Leopard and I think it works pretty well.

I've been using a Mac as a work machine for 2 years and I still think its painful to use.

> I think it is not uncommon for Windows folk to find the windowing experience on macs rather painful, at least at first. However, after a while, it sort of "made sense" to me, if that makes any sense at all.

I always feel like Apple optimises UX very heavily for laptops (small screens, fullscreen-first makes a lot of sense), where Microsoft optimises more for desktops (large screens, multiple apps sharing the screen makes more sense). I find windows really clumsy on small laptop screens, even though it works great on my desktop :/

I concur on "it sort of made sense to me" in regard to the windows management and I don't think this is due to the fact that I am getting used to the ways of macOS, at least this part.

When I use Windows occasionally, I miss the command+` to switch between windows of the apps, especially when they are far separated out in the Alt+Tab preview.

Another increase for the number of times I discover that a feature I dislike in gnome has been copied from macOS

If you're a tinkerer and miss i3, try Hammerspoon [1].

[1] http://hammerspoon.org/

I can't shake off the impression that Apple does not offer options for better window management to make your screen more cluttered and thus sell you more displays.

When using macOS, I badly miss window management options available on Linux. (And don't get me started regarding font rendering.)

> I can't shake off the impression that Apple does not offer options for better window management to make your screen more cluttered and thus sell you more displays.

OP here. This is a conspiracy theory I can get behind!

Apparently font rendering is going to get bad on Linux too with gtk4. I believe at some point they decided to stop supporting subpixel rendering with the idea that everyone will have hidpi displays. Unfortunately the display industry is lagging and 1080p is still the norm...

That doesn’t make any sense at all. Apple didn’t sell an up-to-date display for years. It’s only recently that they introduced the Pro Display XDR and the Studio Display. Before the XDR, there was only the LoDPI Thunderbolt Display from 2011.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com