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by markogresak 2302 days ago
I always wonder how much of a productivity impact does a complex setup like this have over a single screen with multiple desktops.

A few years ago, I have bought LG 34UC98, a 34" 21:9 ultra-widescreen monitor. I thought "Look at all that screen space, it will be great for my performance". I've used it maybe a few weeks, and now it's almost exclusive to gaming and movies. My girlfriend likes to use it for large research tasks, to open 3 documents side by side. So at least someone is using the monitor for productivity improvement.

Now I'm back to a 15" macbook and I use 3 desktop setup, with apps assigned to a specific desktop, so they always open in the same space. I also disabled the feature where macOS tries to be smart and arranges the desktops based on frequency, which makes the position unpredictable. From left to right: 1. Mainly terminal, with an occasional GUI for git or database. 2. Editor (VS Code), using the native tabs feature so different projects are grouped under one app. 3. Browser, slack, mail, spotify, and other currently open apps (notes, iMessages, etc.).

Note: I changed the display setting to "More space", which increases the resolution from the default 1680x1050 to 1920x1200 to have some more space. But I had a 13" macbook before, which was 1680x1050 at "More Space" setup, and it worked well too.