[SamuelAdams]

There are so many small apps that really ought to be part of the OS by now. A few that come to mind:

Rectangle, or some sort of default way to control application windows with your keyboard.

Mos / UnnaturalScrollWheels: if you use a docking station, you may want natural scrolling when using your laptop as a laptop, and normal scrolling when using a mouse. Windows and Linux both have this solved for 15 years now, I am amazed Apple continues to ignore this.

Alfred: Apple’s Spotlight app has come a long way but I want to lock, restart and shut down my computer with my keyboard. There are some shortcuts but honestly I can never remember the key combinations. It would be much easier to command + space, type “shut down” and the computer shuts down.

https://rectangleapp.com/

https://mos.caldis.me/

https://github.com/ther0n/UnnaturalScrollWheels

https://www.alfredapp.com/help/features/system/

[jwells89]

Alfred is truly excellent. Not only is it capable of a wide array of things but is built extremely well, being exceptionally lightweight, stable, extensible, and tiny. It’s increasingly rare for software to be even two of those these days, let alone all of them.

[eric-hu]

> I want to lock, restart and shut down my computer with my keyboard. There are some shortcuts but honestly I can never remember the key combinations.

If you don’t already know this combo, cmd-? (AKA cmd-shift-/) will drop down the “help” menu in most applications that run in macOS. From there, I use the arrow keys to move to other menus. It’s just one nearly universal hotkey and it works for almost all menu items.

[somehnguy]

Rectangle user for years, great app. Today I got frustrated enough to find AltTab (https://alt-tab-macos.netlify.app/), huge improvement to my workflow already.

Sometimes when cmd+tab'ing between apps it'll bring the selected window to the foreground, and sometimes it won't. They'll regain focus for typing, but are hidden behind another window for whatever reason. Fully open windows too, not minimized or anything. Was driving me mad having to click between IntelliJ and Chrome hundreds of times while doing web UI work instead of quick switching with the keyboard.

[yodon]

+1 for Alt-Tab-MacOS, which lets you have Windows-style alt-tab behavior on Macs.

Finding it was quite literally what enabled me to finally move from Windows to Mac.

[Tagbert]

Do you use cmd + ` (tilde key) to cycle through windows within an app? Its the key just above Tab and that's probably why it was chosen.

[somehnguy]

Yes, that combination to cycle between windows of an app never gives me any trouble. It's when cycling between different apps (cmd + tab) that I run into issues.

[fragmede]

contexts.app for windows style alt-tab behavior

[pxc]

Contexts is a great (proprietary) app but I forgot it even had this functionality! To me, that's the least useful thing it does.

[somehnguy]

Looks nice. I don't really have any use for the extra features though, AltTab does what I wanted and is free.

[LgWoodenBadger]

FYI, you can use the Keyboard preferences page in System Settings to assign things like “lock screen” (I forget exactly what it’s called) to a key (F15 I think I used).

I don’t know if Restart or Shutdown are allowable choices.

[ewoodrich]

Alfred is fantastic since it let me remove all the junk I don't care about in Spotlight. Which makes search ridiculously fast for the only things I ever want to use search for: opening applications and basic OS functions you mentioned like locking, entirely using the keyboard. There's a fantastic Alfred feature of an additional locking shortcut that blacks out the display immediately instead of meandering on the lock screen afterwards.

I have never had any desire on any OS to search the web, or the app store, or even my files for that matter (without doing so deliberately). Having everything mangled together is so distracting to me and only slows me down. Started liking my M1 Macbook Pro so much more after I discovered Alfred while searching for any tricks that would let me pare down Spotlight to essentially nothing.

I debloated my Windows 11 search to do close to the same thing (although not quite as good as Alfred) and remapped search hotkeys to be consistent across both platforms which is just so pleasant as someone who routinely needs to switch between MacOS and Windows.

[eviks]

on Windows you can also use a standalone launcher like Keyprinha to do the same - only choose the stuff you want to be indexed. And then use Everything to find any file anywhere instantly (can be setup to show results in the same launcher)

[gaws]

> Alfred

Raycast[1] is the new (and preferred) kid on the block.

[1] https://www.raycast.com/

[blinded]

damn! thanks for the list ill check them out.

[luckman212]

lock: ctrl + cmd + Q

logout: cmd + shift + Q