And on the new MacBooks with a notch through the center of the menu bar, it always seems like the icons on the right and the menus for the focused app on the left are ever encroaching towards that space.
It's usually OK if you're in an application that only has File, Edit, View, Window, Help, but once you get into real productivity software you're going to have menu items overflowing to the right side of the notch and your important menu extras (like VPNs) become totally inaccessible when you run out of space.
Well clearly that's not working because every app has a tray icon.
It's time to catch up with Windows XP and let users control which ones are important and which ones get hidden. And the hidden ones should still be accessible.
Bartender really nailed all that and it's sad that a 3rd party has to come in and fix this.
I'd love to know the actual end-user click rate for these tray icons. I bet many are near zero.
These types of things tend to not have a dock icon, because they run in the background and don’t have their own windows that you common interact with or need to activate
Windows management.
File handler.
Menu bar organizers.
The list goes on.
There is no GUI to disable this behavior, you have to drop to a terminal, run a command, and then reboot the machine.
This is the example I now use whenever a Mac user says Linux is a pain to configure.
Also, you don't need to reboot after toggling ApplePressAndHoldEnabled, but you do need to restart apps.
defaults write NSGlobalDomain ApplePressAndHoldEnabled -bool false
expand the save dialog by default:
defaults write NSGlobalDomain NSNavPanelExpandedStateForSaveMode -bool true
defaults write NSGlobalDomain NSNavPanelExpandedStateForSaveMode2 -bool true
defaults write com.apple.desktopservices DSDontWriteNetworkStores true
defaults write com.apple.dock autohide-time-modifier -float 0.15;
spctl --master-disable
https://github.com/linearmouse/linearmouse
I also know of this, but have not tried it: https://github.com/emreyolcu/discrete-scroll
I know we’re talking about this in the context of much-loved utilities going sideways, but if tweaking system prefs is your thing it gets a strong recommend.
There used to be this brilliant utility with a brilliant name called Asepsis that let you corral the files into a specific folder (like the vim cmd directory for .swp files), so you could have the functionality without the mess, or wipe them out like (or using) a tmp dir.
Unfortunately, when SIP arrived you had to disable it to get the functionality and it died off.
One or two defaults settings would do it, c’mon Apple! There’s a reason for not shitting all over network drives, why not local storage as well?
At my current job, we're issues MacBooks. My biggest pet peeve of macOS is the grouping of windows behind a single icon on the dock bar. I hate that if I have two Chrome windows open, it takes two clicks to go between them.
With the exception of modals, if a program has multiple windows open, when I should see each of them as its own item on the dock bar (or in Windows, the taskbar). I don't think even Windows makes this an option anymore, but I use WindowBlinds on my personal Win10 computer to give me that behavior while also skinning everything to look like Win2K, because I can't stand the flat aesthetic that's popular right now.
It does, they added it back into Windows 11.
I‘d imagine the dock would look quite ridiculous for someone working on multiple docs, or a slate of images in photoshop, etc.
Anyway try this app for a different method for what you want to do (switch to a specific window): https://alt-tab-macos.netlify.app/
Right-click the Dock icon (keep holding the button), move your mouse up to the window you want in the menu, then let go to activate that window.
I typically just keep part of each of my windows viable, so I can simply click on them, if I'm going back and forth. So it's still just one click. I got out of the habit of maximizing windows a couple decades ago when I first got a Mac and my first widescreen display.
Pointer Acceleration being the biggest one. One inch of mouse movement should always be the same number of pixels of pointer movement, whether I move my mouse at a snail's pace or at mach 2. A fast, but incredibly short movement of the mouse should not produce the same pointer movement as a slow, but very wide movement.
Second was disappearing scrollbars. Those make sense on a mobile device where screen space is a premium, but on a desktop (or even a laptop!), it doesn't make sense.
Nowadays, both of those actually do have options in the System Settings panel, but when I first got introduced to using a Mac in 2014, both of those requires some archaic shell commands that I had to Google to find.
I love pointer acceleration, and won't use an OS that doesn't feature it.
I _like_ being able to perform pixel-precise movement of the cursor on a ~20MP desktop without also having to drag the mouse across the entire desk or modify mouse DPI to get from one corner to the other.
The disappearing scrollbars are awful though. I have a feeling Apple made that a default to get people to stop clicking on them out of habit.
shrug
I can do pixel-precise movement without acceleration, I just have to move the mouse a lot slower.
The problem is that in my experience, people conflate DPI with sensitivity, and so say things like "1000 DPI is sensitive enough for me". But of course, with only 1000 DPI, without acceleration, and with moderate sensitivity, you kind of get aliasing in pointer movements. You'll move the mouse as slow as you can, but the pointer will jump in 2-4 pixel increments.
I have a 16,000 DPI gaming mouse and set the DPI in the driver to that maximum, then lower sensitivity to compensate. The result is that I can get pixel-perfect movement if I want to, though I admit that it requires a much steadier hand than if I were to just enable acceleration.
Your point though does make we wish that DPI, sensitivity, and the acceleration curve were all configurable directly in the pointer settings for Mac and Windows.
(so is the menu bar, but I just don't know of a bartender alternative, you're right that research and testing takes a lot of effort)
None of the OS are power-user capable for most of the "basics"
So instead they should make it easier to achieve this icon management without too invasive permissions
... or at least allow API access for third-party/OSS apps to do this without needing full screen recording permissions!