[nik736]

What I am missing with Gnome is the global menu I have with macOS. It's just my preferred way of working. This is also what I liked about Unity. Gnome seems to follow the same direction as Windows.

Additionally miller columns in Finder are just awesome and I don't have them with Nautilus. Those two things are honestly dealbreakers for me.

[amluto]

I would much prefer if MacOS got rid of the global menu. I've contemplated it for literally decades, and my opinion has only gotten stronger.

1. Sometimes a program has no open windows. Understanding when its menu shows up in the menu bar is confusing at best. Explaining to another user "oh, you are in [such and such program already] even though there's nothing there -- click File then Open" is silly.

2. Sometimes a program has two or more open windows. Sure, File/New makes sense in this context, but anything that acts on the current window is not visually linked to the window and is thus confusing.

3. With the advent of multiple monitors, global menus are even worse. Which monitor should they live on? Always primary? Both? There is no right answer.

4. Old-fashioned title bars tell me which window belongs to which program. Global menus try, but only if I'm sure which window's menu is currently displayed, and it does not let me identify a non-selected window without interrupting myself to select it.

5. Opening a menu that's part of a non-current window takes one click. With global menus, it's two clicks.

6. One might imagine that they conserve screen real estate, which is maybe slightly true in our brave new world of notched viewports, but it's barely true and is avoidable. And Apple doesn't seem to care about efficient use of screen real estate anyway.

[rifty]

Personally, I think the trade offs for more window space is worth it versus window positioned app menu bars. If you really are trying to maximally optimize menu bar navigation you go with the menu bar as a context menu wherever your cursor is, or a key command to prompt searching for the menu option you want to use.

As for 3, the way you'd solve this while retaining the 'global' menubar style is by treating screens more individual and having a screen unique menubar. Introduce screen focus, and have the screen focus follow where the cursor is. Further you could make it so that when a screen regains cursor focus it also refocuses the last window on that screen. The menu bar would then serve the purpose of visually indicating and emphasizing which app on which screen has latent focus even when the screen lacks focus itself. (Which now saying it honestly might have been an original MacOS consideration before losing focus caused window dimming)

[dandiep]

100% agree. Will never understand the love for the global menu bar, it makes no sense.

[fragmede]

You don't have to like it, but the global menu bar is at the top of the screen which means you just fling the mouse to the top and then go left or right, instead of having to get to the right vertical.

[amluto]

True. This could be nicely solved by placing a non-global window all the way at the top of the window, so that you can still fling the cursor to the top of the screen if the window is maximized or otherwise along the top edge of the screen.

[anuramat]

I mean, it does take less space (compared to having one per window)

[amluto]

Only if you have two or more windows vertically stacked, which isn’t what you’re likely to be doing when you want to maximize vertical space.

[anuramat]

but if they're stacked horizontally, buttons don't fit

[jlongman]

I had a longer reply but turfed it, but the global menu is based around muscle memory for eye and mouse locations. My personal experience sounds nothing like yours so I suspect we navigate very differently such that it impacts you far more than me.

I’m a heavy keyboard user so rotating apps and windows in apps means I always know where I am and don’t even notice the costs you’re talking about.

[t_mahmood]

In Gnome, the top bar stays in the Primary monitor only, and worse, even the app switcher always displays on Primary monitor, NO MATTER which monitor you are in! Which is absolutely infuriating. I can't imagine how messy the Global menu could be in a multi monitor setup. Why would one want that pain!

[kevincox]

I quite dislike the global menu of macOS. It means that you need to switch windows to see the menu for the window, which can result in a lot of tedious mouse movement.

But what I absolutely love is the menu search. I would love to see GNOME (well GTK I guess) add menu search. Also bring back the ability to bind hotkeys by typing while hovering a menu item while you are at it!

[fragmede]

it’s less tedious after you realize you can just fling the mouse to the top, you don’t have to hit a specific vertical to get there.

[al_borland]

I went looking for a file manager with miller column on Linux once. It seems to be an extremely rare feature. With how popular column view is in Finder, I don’t understand how it hasn’t made its way to other platforms as a commonplace feature.

[dijit]

I had the exact same journey as you, I even very nearly install GNUStep because the file manager had miller columns.

I even started to think that perhaps Apple has an active patent on it or something.

(this happened with the Genie Lamp minimise effect on Compiz/Beryl- why it needed to have at minimum 3 "waves" before it minimised the window; though you could obviously patch it out).

FWIW I found Ranger (TUI) and Pantheon (ElementaryOS) that supports it, if you're still looking.

[t_mahmood]

If you are okay with terminal based one's, Yazi: [https://github.com/sxyazi/yazi/] is pretty nice.

Yes, I would love that in Nautilus, but I'm not very depended on GUI for managing files, so not a big deal for me.

[bigyabai]

This one has it: https://github.com/elementary/files

[nicoburns]

KDE's Dolphin file manager has miller columns. It won't blend in on Gnome, but it will work just fine.

[amelius]

I like that Unity puts the global menu on the side. This makes more sense with all the wide-screens that we have nowadays. A huge oversight in MacOS, if you ask me.

[sparky4pro]

On macOS only the dock can be moved to the side. The application menu (left) and the statusbar menu (right) will always be on top of the screen. Which makes sense to me.

[rectang]

I agree that the side is better and would be a better default. For the record, the location of the MacOS Dock is configurable — I have mine on the right.

[pseudalopex]

Global menu meant menu bar. Unity put the dock on the side. You can move the macOS dock to either side.