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Comment by xlii | Hacker News Reader

Offtopic, but am I the only person surprised how badly Apple stalled when it comes to window management and UX on MacOS?

I feel that today, as a power user/professional, MacOS wouldn't be usable without applications like Bartender, external window manager such as Rectangle/Divvy etc. I feel strong attraction coming from yabai, but disabling SIP is too much for me.

Personally I'm reaching the point where I'd migrate to Linux ONLY for the user experience (I live in Emacs most of the time anyway, and there I could get some minimal WM on top of it, I guess).

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I use Mac for work, Linux/Gnome for personal use, and have used Windows up to and including 11 both personally and professionally in the past (although a lot less recently).

In terms of the desktop environment, I feel Mac is severely lacking behind. I know there are very mixed opinions on Gnome, but to me the Gnome UX feels extremely well thought out in comparison.

The apple ecosystem might be very well integrated, but in terms of the macOS UX it feels the exact opposite. Why can’t I close an app from mission control? Why can’t I launch apps from mission control, but need to e.g. open launchpad first? In Gnome the activities view unities all of those experiences in a way that is seamless and just clicks for me, but in macOS everything seems to be separate apps/features that don’t play together at all (out of the box at least). Add to that all the other small frustrations that you need to address with third party tools, it is - for me at least - a very unproductive out-of-the-box experience.

Of course this is subjective, and might be partially an issue of (my lack of) skill/experience.

Not to disregard your remarks, I suspect they are valid, but they come from habits of uses of others systems, and there's also the good practice to avoid introducing too much ways to do the same thing, because it's dramatically augments your chances that it is known by all (in the end), works well and as expected.

Hence launchpad is only here to shortcut finding your apps in the finder or the dock, mission control just an increment over spaces. Those are not replacement for dock. So quitting app, aside the app shortcut and menu, goes through the dock, either by dock app menu or ⌘+Q on the ⌘+tab app switcher.

This is entirely a skill issue. I don't mean that dismissively, let me teach you the Mac way to close apps.

You hit ⌘-Tab, this brings up a list of every app you have open. Keep the thumb on the ⌘. More tabs go right, ` goes left. For every app you want to close, hit Q. When done, release ⌘.

My preferred way to launch an app is ⌘-Space and the first few letters of its name. This can have some frustrating delays of a second or two, but it will for the most part remember what you've opened. Other users are much more dock-oriented, I keep it hidden on the side and use it seldom.

> ` goes left. For every app you want to close, hit Q

I didn't know about either of these, thanks.

Also apparently, up or down brings up a view of all the windows for that app.

A while ago I put together some hammerspoon lua for making cmd-tab go by window instead of by app because that's how my brain works, but it's slower than the native cmd-tab. Are there other similar hidden tricks for Dock.app (which, I presume, is the thing that makes the cmd-tab overlay appear)?

You can two-finger drag to make the selected app move around, although I rarely do so.

You can also three-finger drag down on the selected app to get Mission Control view for that app, to select a window directly. I do that somewhat more often.

Those are the other ones I know. Discoverability of the various affordances in the macOS interface is terrible, but it stays pretty consistent over the years.

There should be a manual of a couple hundred pages. I miss the days when that was standard.

Window management is fine, what is missing are half-split/full-screen shortcuts. There are many apps which can set them up, but a built-in possibility would fix most issues, since only a very small subset of users cares about tiling wm even on linux. Though, there was a new project the other day on HN, where SIP can remain on: https://github.com/nikitabobko/AeroSpace

I, for my part, have configured window placement shortcuts in Hammerspoon (also possible with KM, BTT and a what feels like a million of other apps) and am completely happy. I mostly look at the maximized terminal anyway, the splits do happen in neovim and tmux.

There are shortcuts to tile windows. Hold the green indicator in an app’s window.

I don't personally care about advanced window management like tiling windows. But I do use Spaces constantly to divide my screen into "work" and "personal", and Apple has introduced a huge, annoying bug macOS Sonoma that is not being fixed.

Since Sonoma, windows regularly are stuck on top of other windows. This has been known since the betas in 2023 [1] and persists till this day. It typically happens during restoring after a reboot, but it can happen at basically any time when a window is created a space that isn't the first one.

The workaround is to drag the window from the second space into the first, release the mouse button, and then drag the window back into the second space. This appears to reset whatever the internal state keeps track of window order.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/MacOS/comments/16bb19g/sonoma_finde...

Totally in the opposite camp, in the sense I think it’s preferable to customize your experience using 3rd party apps and it should be encouraged model by vendor.

Sadly Apple picked neither option. 3rd party apps cannot meaningfully interact with Spaces for example, even basic things like moving windows between spaces or adjusting the animation speed so it's not nauseating on ultrawides.

Agreed, just yesterday I was researching APIs in this area. Still, it’s a different criticism.

There is a way to switch spaces instantly. If anyone actually cares I’ll dig up my solution.

I care! Does your solution involve disabling SIP?

This utility allows it https://totalspaces.binaryage.com/

You hit a keyboard shortcut, you get to the new space with 0 animation/transition. It can work with SIP on but only on macOS older than 10.14.

They mention here this is due to some changes they make to the Dock https://totalspaces.binaryage.com/sip-details I'm not sure if the only part I care about (instant Spaces switching) would continue to work without that / if you turn SIP back on. I haven't tried.

You can get pretty fast Spaces switching by checking Reduce Motion in Accessibility. Obviously that has applied to other things across the system.

> even basic things like moving windows between spaces

I don't really use spaces but I've got "Displays have seperate spaces" turned on and Rectangle Pro has "Next Display" and "Previous Display" which moves the foreground app to, unsurprisingly, the next and previous display (which seems to be a space).

Are you after something like "move this window to space Y" rather than just "next space"?

I’d have said this was insane back when I was a Linux user but after years in Mac land… in practice, man, it’s so much better.

It still feels wrong, but I can’t argue with the results.

[edit] though, I mean, at a certain level wanting to customize your UI in X/Wayland means changing out large portions of your UI stack entirely. Layering on top isn’t really crazier than that.

Stage Manager was introduced in Ventura, which is definitely a form of window management. I don't think you can call that "badly stalled"?

Does anyone actually use Stage Manager though? Probably a bias on my part but I don't know anyone who use it ever

I do. I made myself try it for a week a while back For Science and ended up kinda liking it, at least enough not to bother turning it off again.

Yesterday my coworker asked me what neat window manager I’m using and it took me a moment because I’d forgotten about it.

Stage Manager is confusing as hell. It was designed for iPads in an attempt to give them some semblance of window management but even there it makes no sense. They tried to reinvent window management to be more "simple" but in doing so they made something WAY more complicated to the point where even computer-savvy folks can't figure out how to do basic tasks.

https://youtu.be/sFJuAjyWOc4?t=500

I don't, but was astonished to find out the majority of my team at work uses it, and has been for a while.

Not really a big deal IMO, MacOS has loads of great software available to improve workflow. BetterSnapTool, BetterTouchTool, MOS, Dropzone, Slidepad, Raycast, TotalFinder (visor feature), iTerm2 (dropdown shell) etc.

BetterSnapTool is probably what you are looking for - for normal monitors the keyboard shortcuts for window management (modifier + arrows) are great, and for giant monitors the custom snap zones are great. My favourite feature is the ability to move/resize windows by holding down ctrl/shift while hovering over them.

These kinds of things are a big reason I stick with Mac, great ergonomics and automation.

Seems a better situation than the alternatives? You need a defensive mindset with Windows with their behaviours over the last 5 years

I'm not sure why you're surprised. The macOS GUI has never been designed with power users in mind. If you wanted to enhance your experience as a power user, you always had to resort to 3rd party software. By using Apple products you accept to use them as they were designed to be used, and any customization of the experience is a luxury that could be taken away at any point. Apple knows best how you should use your computers, after all...

Linux is on the other side of that spectrum, but then you lose the benefit of a tightly integrated and curated ecosystem. If you're willing to give that up, and don't mind tinkering and frequently dealing with jank, then Linux might be for you.

This extends across the system - Safari is great for battery life and hit or miss for performance, but it has an infuriating bug where it zooms out every webpage in Split View. There have been so many Stack Exchange and forum posts since 2013 on this issue and no action. Other WebKit browsers like Orion don’t do the same thing; it’s not a browser engine issue, so the only recourse is through Apple’s stupid feedback process that spits out autogenerated answers to everything. Windows is no better, but if Adobe, Affinity and a few medical anatomy apps opened the doors to something similar to Proton… jeez.

I totally agree. But it also seems like a lot of people don't. Frustratingly enough when discussions like that come up a lot of people respond with a "MacOS just works differently, you just need to get used to it" discussion killer.

Yeah, I know some design principles are different. That doesn't always mean they are better or couldn't be better.

In general I feel like UI/UX on MacOS for the most part has stagnated in the past decade or so. Where there has been evolution, it mostly has been things (poorly) ported over from iOS (system preferences for example).

This in contrast to other desktop platforms that have kept evolving and experimenting with other ways of working. Granted, not always improving things but often making things much better. Window management on windows 11 for example is just plain awesome imho. Certainly on wider screens or screens in portrait it is extremely powerful.

Everything I am working on MacOS I feel very limited in that area. Even with tools like Rectangle it still doesn't work as fluid as it does on windows.

> But it also seems like a lot of people don't.

n=1...

I'm one who doesn't care. I didn't like to have a lot of system tray icons when I used Windows, and I don't like having a lot of them in macOS. I turn off the ones I rarely use (when I can).

However, I also feel Apple have reduced the usability of the menu bar icons in recent iterations. Their clickable area/spacing has enlarged, which is counter to having small icons in a focused space. The Clock and Control Centre can't be moved around. I didn't use Control Centre at all until I discovered some setting that can only be toggled. Since I toggled it, I've forgotten what it was and haven't touched Control Centre since. I'd turn it off if I could. Maybe I need Bartender after all.

The menu bar has now to have more icons than in earlier OSX as to run services like dropbox, 1password etc they now need to be in the menu bar whilst previously they were not needed there - now I suspect this might be the app writers fault as well as Apple's but it is an annoyance.

I think this sort of thing is more subjective and dependent on what the user is used to than most are willing to admit. I find the vaunted Aero Snap feature incredibly annoying for example because it’s so “noisy” with its proposed-snap animations and how easily it’s accidentally triggered (especially when multiple displays are involved) — the way the third party app Moom does it with a popover that appears on green traffic light hover or key shortcut is vastly preferable to me.

It’s true that Mac desktop evolution has somewhat stagnated and could use some movement, but that movement shouldn’t necessarily be toward the Win9X desktop paradigm.

Linux pulled ahead of macOS for desktop computing like 3 years ago.

But, that was about 3 years after desktop computing became this niche thing that only GenX/Boomers still do... (T_T)

Fully agree. For work I use Windows 11 and even without any third party tools, its ability to easily group and align windows using either the keyboard or mouse is vastly superior to what macOS has.

The only thing that macOS is still best at is Exposé. The smoothness, animations, superior Apple touchpads to make the gesture and then ths ease of picking the right window are second to none.

> Exposé

KDE 6's new Overview effect works really well

https://kde.org/announcements/megarelease/6/

Neither is even close to how smooth Gnome's overview is.

And macOS still renders only a single desktop for some reason.

Windows' multiple desktops implementation is half-baked and janky too. I was excited when they added that in Windows 10 but didn't end up using it because it's too awkward, slow, and limited.

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