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Comment by ashwinnair99 | Hacker News Reader

Cmd+Tab is one of those things that shipped in 2003 and nobody at Apple has touched since. Surprised it took this long for someone to properly replace it.

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I mean to be fair, (1) there are replacements, AltTab and Switcher for example, and (2) why replace ot touch something that isn't broken? Cmd+Tab is supposed to switch to the next open window, and it does exactly that.

No, Cmd+Tab switches to the next application. This is what people get surprised and annoyed by. I've been using Mac for 15 years now and I find it super awkward to switch between windows within an app. On my machine it's Cmd ` or something strange like that. This is also doubly bound sometimes, such that I can only cycle forwards OR backwards. Complete mess.

It's absolutely terrible. Want to get one of your terminals and one of your vs code windows next to each other to check something visually? Can't do it. CMD-tab brings ALL of your terminal windows to the front, or ALL of your vs code windows :/

I still can't understand who ever thought this was a good idea...

> CMD-tab brings ALL of your terminal windows to the front, or ALL of your vs code windows

Cmd+Tab to the app, then press ↓ to choose a window from the app. Arrange using the basic OS window manager or your favorite 3rd-party window manager.

Why are you saying it like it doesn’t suck?

It's a classic case of optimizing the UX for the 20% use case rather than the 80% use case.

Most of the time, people have 2-3 work windows that they just want to swap between quickly, regardless of what "app" they happen belong to. The Windows alt-tab behavior captures that beautifully.

I dug in the docs a little and:

1. command-tab to desired app, keep command held down

2. hit down-arrow to enter an app's windows, you can let go of command now

3. arrow keys + return, or mouse-click, to pick window; some apps may do weird things here - preview starts with no highlights and has a list of recent documents at the bottom, for instance

This is kind of poorly documented and not very discoverable, I couldn't find it in Help>MacOS Help or Help>Tips for Your Mac, I ended up learning it from the online version of the manual.

Alternatively, and what I mostly do:

1. hit the Mission Control key (three little rectangles, usually f3), or 3-fingered swipe up on the trackpad

2. click on the desired window, keyboard is ignored here

(command-Mission Control shows the desktop, control-Mission Control shows only the current app's windows)

Even more alternatively:

1. right/command-click on an app's Dock icon

2. there may be a text list of open windows and/or recent documents, there will always be a Show All Windows entry at the bottom, keyboard nav works here

But IIRC this is the same on Windows and other OSes, no? Like, I'd argue that it's the default behavior then. Also, I think it should be like that.

And yes to switch between windows of the same application it's Cmd+Shift+´. Not the most intuitive, but I feel it should not be combined, because that would mess up the sequence massively. If I want to switch Terminal windows, I don't want to do Cmd+Tab and then manually look through all 15 window icons to select.

Like, IMO the status quo is perfect. Sure, you gotta get used to Cmd+Shift+´, but try to do it for a week, and then it's perfectly natural.

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