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by nicoburns 1112 days ago
My issue with this behaviour is that I often don't want my windows to be grouped by app. I want to be able to group windows by project, and I may want to have multiple projects in the same set of apps. Workspaces (virtual desktops) ought to be perfect for this, but there is no way to get alt-tab like switching between windows in a desktop on macOS.
3 comments
8ytecoder 1112 days ago
It also breaks down when you have a full screen window and a normal window. It's so jarring.
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Tagbert 1112 days ago
One more reason to avoid the dead end of full screen windows.
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derrasterpunkt 1112 days ago
We’ll that’s the thing. Windows is based around windows and macOS is based around applications. I get that you want to use macOS like you use windows but that is the historical usage of these UI.
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rhaway84773 1111 days ago
Except when windows behave like apps and you close a window and it closes the app. Or it’s a single window app but closing the window does not close the app. Or when you full screen a window and now everything is inconsistent. Or when you use Mission Control and now the switching paradigm is based on Windows and not Apps.
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AnonC 1111 days ago
Even Apple’s own applications break the “it’s an app and not a window” paradigm in many instances. Without trying, there’s no way to tell if clicking on the close button will quit the app or just close that window even for apps that only use a single window.
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nicoburns 1111 days ago
That made sense in days gone by when things like photoshop's tool palettes were in separate windows. It makes no sense in 2023 when windows are self contained units. Apple have changed all sorts of other things about their desktop environment. IMO they ought to change this too.
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jbverschoor 1111 days ago
Soo use stage manager, it’ll do cross app switching without delay using cmd-~

Simply drag a number of related windows together

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nicoburns 1111 days ago
Stage manager should be nice, but it takes up a huge chunk of screen real estate for no reason.

EDIT: actually it seems possible to make it "autohide". But it won't let me have more than one window visible at once!

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jbverschoor 1109 days ago
Just drag a window from the sidebar (stage manager) on the desktop. It will take the front most window of that app.

It’s kind of buggy at times though.

I have a stage with a few terminals, vscode, and a development browser

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