[0]: https://github.com/rxhanson/Rectangle
[1]: https://github.com/jurplel/InstantSpaceSwitcher
Recent discussion on the latter: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47708818
This is a very weird-sounding take to someone who has used Macs for three decades and recalls that for most of that time they never even had a full-screen mode.
Apple's desktop experience DNA is still, for better or worse, deeply anchored to spatial arrangement of partially-overlapping windows (or non-overlapping, if screen is big enough and window small enough), driven by mouse (Expose hot corners back in 2004 were basically the end-game after which they haven't made any new significant changes to this, and haven't had to). Their full-screen/single-app modes are IMO a weird half-baked Windows-maximize alternative.
But yes, it's a very mouse-oriented, single-desktop spatially-organized-and-layered world.
> This is a very weird-sounding take to someone who has used Macs for three decades and recalls that for most of that time they never even had a full-screen mode.
Sorry about that. I should've clarified better. What I meant was that Apple's opinion of an ideal desktop is closely matching a cluttered desk where only the owner knows the position of something and the focus shifts back and forth from one primary task to another task/interruption.
Edit: typos
The ideal desktop is a cluttered desk, where only the desk knows where it has stuck your tasks.
Stretch an app across two monitors? Not with that config! Display port? Oh no! Scaling cleanly? Never heard of it.
Seriously bad stuff. I’ve thought about writing a book with everything wrong with it. It’s bonkers.
You can hide it. I rarely use it as I use a launcher.
Upgraded to Mac OS 26?
> You can hide it. I rarely use it as I use a launcher.
Cmd+Space, type first letters of application name, enter.
MacOS doesn't really have a window manager, it has an app switcher, and a really inconvenient way to pick the context of your workspace.
GNOME does it right, and uses super + <the key above tab>. Works the same as the Mac in the US, but is infinitely better in the rest of the world.
(you might be able to remap it on macos using an undocumented 'hidutil' command, but I've never got it to work on an external keyboard)
Can’t imagine going back.
Yes, it can: https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/mac-window-tiling-i...
You can define additional shortcuts in Keyboard settings: https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/create-keyboard-sho...
The first link is about arranging/tiling the windows. There are zero keyboard shortcuts to move the focus from the window on left to the window on right. It looks like someone used the equivalent of monitor codenames for keyboard shortcuts. Some operations don't even have a keyboard shortcut.
Additionally, while it does show how tiling is performed on macOS, tiling is not treated as a serious feature of the desktop. When "tiling" is used in context of window managers on Linux and BSDs, it implies that the windows are tiled automatically by the WM. It is done for several purposes, but ones that are important to me are:
1. Determinism (for the lack of a better word) of window placement. When I open n^th window, I know where to move my eyes. At the moment, this is arbitrary-ish on macOS. 2. Not having to tile every window manually. I only do this when I have a specific layout in mind. Default tiling behaviour can be configured by the WM's config file(s). At the moment, on macOS, I need to be explicit in tiling every window. 3. Keyboard oriented traversal between tiled windows. This is an extremely important part of a tiling WM. I can move my window or just the focus anywhere, without ever needing to reach for my mouse. Granted, I'm not a superhuman who can take advantage of this speed but I like control over my navigation of the desktop I am interacting with.
None of these are satisfied by macOS natively. Unless some app/plugin is used, which has no guarantee of working in future if Apple wishes to break something. On Linux, this is not the case, the WM is part of the desktop, even more so on Wayland.
> You can define additional shortcuts in Keyboard settings: https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/create-keyboard-sho...
This is about setting keyboard shortcuts for custom actions for applications, not window traversal on the desktop. Something like Ctrl+Left and Ctrl+Right which moves the focus between virtual desktops, but for the current desktop, moving the focus between the windows. I am not aware of this being possible at the moment.
Moving between windows of the same app is cmd+~. Cmd-tab moves to another app, remaining on the same desktop if that has a window there.
The delay in focus can be reduced by turning off animations in “accessibility”.
Regardless, I’m with you on that everything is way more snappy on my Linux machine. Even if it’s running a “full” WM/DM like KDE.
The "All Applications" section lets you define global shortcuts. As long as there is a menu bar item for it (in this case, one from the Window menu) you can define a shortcut for it.
Now I just need to figure out how to make Word stick to these commands and not decide that right half of the screen means the right 3/4 of the screen.
I've always had to use 3rd party tools to achieve this.