[eightys3v3n]

I've seen half a dozen Mac users and none of them maximized the window very often. They usually had a mishmash of like 12 windows open and randomly all over the screen. Then they used the Alt-Tab to get between them. Basically wherever it opened is where it stayed.

[wmil]

Window management is one thing that MacOS has long been weirdly bad at.

I think there's a conflict between the users who use it on studio displays and users who use it on 13 inch laptops. The Mac team at apple won't pick a side or come up with two solutions.

That's not completely true, they've been pushing swipe between fullscreen apps for a while.

But that doesn't make any sense on an iMac.

So the recommendation from pro users is to use Alfred to manage windows.

[eszed]

This is me. I tend to order projects onto their own desktops[0], each with several app windows open. With an external monitor there's plenty of space, and... Yeah: with command-tab thoroughly committed to muscle memory it usually doesn't matter much if they end up on top of each other. If it does, I'll put them next to each other. Stickies usually go out of my eye-line to the left side of the screen, so I'll keep that otherwise clear.

I sometimes maximize something - other than video calls: those are always full-size - on the laptop screen, but otherwise not at all.

I can see how a full-screen IDE makes sense, but I don't use one, so I always want a couple of terminal sessions running alongside my editor.

There are vanishingly few contexts in which I find full-screen helpful. Not criticizing anyone else, or recommending my way of working, but it's what works for me.

[0] I would like better support for desktop management: naming and shortcutting, particularly. Years ago I tried some (I think it was Alfred, or a predecessor) add-on that promised that, but it was super flaky. Does anything exist that works well?

[cosmic_cheese]

This is me almost exactly. Windows pile up being whatever size feels appropriate, organized only by virtual desktop. If screen #2 is a laptop screen or the program in question is an IDE with a billion panes I might resize it to fill the screen, but otherwise it’s rare. I practically never use full-on fullscreen.

It’s so ingrained I tend to get frustrated on other desktops, which are nearly all built around the Windows mentality of keeping displays filled to the brim with tiled or maximized windows.

Even on the handful of times with maximize/tile on macOS, it’s with a gap of a few pixels of desktop peeking through so it doesn’t feel as “boxed in” and claustrophobic.

[Spunkie]

Maybe this explains some of the bizarre questions I've gotten from mac designers.

The other day I was explaining to one that their designs fixed width looks silly once it got up towards 4k resolutions. But the designers main concern was if people actually used full screen browsers on 4k monitors and if there was any point in thinking about the design at that resolution.

There are plenty of times I enjoy have 2 browsers side by side of even 4 browsers in a square, and being able to do that is one of the benefits of having a 4k monitor. But without a doubt the majority of my time is spent with a full size browser window open, and I observe the same from all the other windows/linux users I manage that use a 4k monitor.

In service of keeping this post simple, I've ignore system display/ui scaling. But still... the question/assumption from the mac designer completely blew my mind.

[Spunkie]

And actually typing that all out just unlocked a bunch of memories about how many times I've been:

    1. On a screen share support call with a mac user
    2. Asked them to pull up a webpage
    3. They pull up a super tiny ass browser window to the point I can't really see anything
    4. I ask them to full screen the browser so we can actually read shit
    5. The mac user just straight up panics or acts like like I've spoken an alien language to them.

The same process happens when I need a mac user to get to an apps settings that on a windows/linux computer would normally be under something like File > Preferences/Settings. They have no idea what I'm talking about or know just barely enough to know they don't remember how to do it and panic.

Then I have to go google it and remember that CMD+comma(⌘+,) exists and reveal it to the mac user like it's actual black magic. And then I immediately forget about it until 6 months later when I need to support a mac user again and I repeat the whole cycle again.

[alpaca128]

On Mac OS Settings is located in the menu named after the program, left of File and Edit. For example Firefox > Settings.

[akdev1l]

Yes MacOS breaks down the user until they give up on window management

[LtWorf]

That's because windows management on osx is terrible.