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Ask HN: Why does Apple refuse to add window snapping to macOS?

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Re: Ask HN: Why does Apple refuse to add window snapping to macOS?

#451

Post by kitsunesoba »

tnecniv wrote: post #416
kitsunesoba wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea behind macOS window management is to not manage windows at all, instead letting them exist at sizes that fit their content in whichever position they land on your desktop, stacking and overlapping like papers on a desk, letting relevant bits peek through without requiring the entirety of their host windows being visible. Exposé/Mission Control are there when a window gets lost, and virtual desktops are meant…

That’s what I’ve thought, but why would I not want my browser, editor, or any other work app full screened? If hit the green button to make it a work space, it handicaps functions like swipe up

Personally I never want browser or editor windows to be fullscreened unless I’m working on a tiny screen like on the 12” MacBook Air or maybe 12” Macbook. On anything larger doing that makes for tons of blank space that could be used for other relevant windows or at letting my desktop peek around the edges.

IDEs on the other hand I like having fill my screen because of all their editors and panes, but I still don’t use actual fullscreen but rather option-click the green button which resizes the window to fill the desktop without actually going fullscreen.

Re: Ask HN: Why does Apple refuse to add window snapping to macOS?

#452

Post by kitsunesoba »

happymellon wrote: post #403
kitsunesoba wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea behind macOS window management is to not manage windows at all, instead letting them exist at sizes that fit their content in whichever position they land on your desktop, stacking and overlapping like papers on a desk, letting relevant bits peek through without requiring the entirety of their host windows being visible. Exposé/Mission Control are there when a window gets lost, and virtual desktops are meant…

> It's basically the polar opposite of something like a Linux tiling WM It's basically an over-engineered Gnome, where some features like side by side windows there was a red line by UX and someone worked around the law to "sort of" offer the option.

Having used GNOME (and actually, running it on a couple of machines right now), I think macOS is at least a step or two above “overengineered GNOME”, because GNOME itself is basically what you’d get if you asked someone to turn iPadOS into a desktop OS. It feels considerably more restrictive than macOS does.

Re: Ask HN: Why does Apple refuse to add window snapping to macOS?

#453

Post by throwingrocks »

mvdtnz wrote: post #118
throwingrocks wrote: post #100

Seems like you assume everyone likes window snapping because you do. It’s one of the most annoying aspects of using Windows for me.

Huh? What's annoying about something completely optional? If you don't like window snapping, just.... don't?

Huh? I didn’t say I used it. Something optional can still be annoying. That’s I just…don’t.

Re: Ask HN: Why does Apple refuse to add window snapping to macOS?

#454

Post by throwingrocks »

mvdtnz wrote: post #118
throwingrocks wrote: post #100

Seems like you assume everyone likes window snapping because you do. It’s one of the most annoying aspects of using Windows for me.

Huh? What's annoying about something completely optional? If you don't like window snapping, just.... don't?

Huh? I didn’t say I used it. Being optional doesn’t change the thing that it is annoying. It is annoying which is precisely why I just….don’t.

Re: Ask HN: Why does Apple refuse to add window snapping to macOS?

#455

Post by rchaud »

vosper wrote: post #376
rchaud wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Engagement bait doesn't serve any purpose on HN. On other social media it's necessary to send a relevance signal to the algorithm. You don't win any prizes for posting a lot on HN.

Do you not get HN points if the post is heavily upvoted? Individuals with high point counts are perceived as being influential (are, in fact, influential) which has value. Note I'm not claiming the person who posted this Ask HN is trying to build points in order to sell influence. But it's a thing that happens all across the internet.

It happens elsewhere on the internet because other sites encourage the concept of "following".

My HN karma trounces that of the topic poster, and I can assure you no one considers me to be influential on this site.

Re: Ask HN: Why does Apple refuse to add window snapping to macOS?

#456

Post by somat »

vladvasiliu wrote: post #414
somat wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My favorite "weird" thing common in X11 window managers is how they can separate the focus and the raising operations. On windows(and I presume mac) these operations are tightly linked. Why would you want to separate them you might ask? It turns out to be really useful to look at the window on the top and be able to type/control the obscured window underneath. On the one hand X11 sort of sucked with it's inconsistent…

IIRC, it's been possible for a long time to just scroll an inactive window on macOS, without it gaining focus. I was happy to learn that Windows also got that somewhat recently. Having an IDE up front and checking on docs or similar in a background browser with part of the website obscured is something I missed since I moved to Linux and a tiling window manager. Now I have to waste screen space showing the menu or ot…

I use the tiling WM spectrwm. It lets me pull windows out of tiling mode and into window mode. I think a common operation on most tiling window managers. Most of the time I don't want overlapping windows(thus the tiling WM) but every once in a while I do, so the best of both worlds.

It is a bit obscure but I quite like spectrwm, it fills this sweet spot where it is much simpler than I3 but more feature complete than DWM.

https://github.com/conformal/spectrwm

Re: Ask HN: Why does Apple refuse to add window snapping to macOS?

#457

Post by vladvasiliu »

somat wrote: post #456
vladvasiliu wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIRC, it's been possible for a long time to just scroll an inactive window on macOS, without it gaining focus. I was happy to learn that Windows also got that somewhat recently. Having an IDE up front and checking on docs or similar in a background browser with part of the website obscured is something I missed since I moved to Linux and a tiling window manager. Now I have to waste screen space showing the menu or ot…

I use the tiling WM spectrwm. It lets me pull windows out of tiling mode and into window mode. I think a common operation on most tiling window managers. Most of the time I don't want overlapping windows(thus the tiling WM) but every once in a while I do, so the best of both worlds. It is a bit obscure but I quite like spectrwm, it fills this sweet spot where it is much simpler than I3 but more feature complete than…

I use i3, and I can set any window to "floating" mode. You can have all windows in floating mode, which makes the whole desktop behave like a regular stacking WM, though you can't "minimize" them, so it can quickly become a mess. You can even take a group of windows [0] and have the entire group be a floating window, with the individual windows inside the group continuing to follow the tiling model among themselves.

But it's not something I find practical for some reason, even though I have a fairly simple keyboard shortcut to switch between tiling and floating. Maybe because this isn't really how you're supposed to use i3, so there's no "maximize", or "snap to edges" or similar. You have to move the windows around, adjust their size manually, etc. If you unplug your monitor, you're SoL if you need to retrieve some window that's now floating outside your viewport.

I just gave it a try right now, and Firefox became so huge I needed a good 15 seconds to resize it so that it would fit my screen.

---

[0] Windows in i3 are nodes in a tree, so you can detach one node and its children from the tiling tree. The new subtree is floating with respect to the root tree, but the nodes in the subtree are still tiled with respect to one another. This works well in "tabbed" mode, where only a window among its siblings is visible and takes up the full viewport; the others show up as tabs.

Re: Ask HN: Why does Apple refuse to add window snapping to macOS?

#458

Post by 0xr0kk3r »

devnullbrain wrote: post #339
rhinoceraptor wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you look at old screenshots of how people used desktop computers [1], it was rare to see fullscreen windows, even on the tiny monitors of the day, and when most people used only a single monitor. Today, we all have gigantic monitors, many have more than one, but for whatever reason people want to maximize or tile windows. Maybe it's the influence of the fullscreen only, unitasking paradigm from phones and tablet c…

>Maybe it's the influence of the fullscreen only, unitasking paradigm from phones and tablet computers, but it just doesn't make much sense to me on a desktop computer. Completely the opposite. It's the influence of having computers powerful enough to have massive multitasking. Arranging windows like papers on a desk is easy when you have a handful of simple programs and a couple of browser windows - it's very differ…

What is “massive multitasking”? Any modern OS since the 2000s has been running hundreds of processes.

Re: Ask HN: Why does Apple refuse to add window snapping to macOS?

#459

Post by 0xr0kk3r »

ShadowBanThis01 wrote: post #394
SebastianKra wrote: post #256

I always feel like Apple must have some grand 1000IQ concept for window management and I just don't get it. Stage Manager, Spaces, Mission Control, Expose, Window Zooming, Hiding, Minimizing (which is different from Hiding), Fullscreen/Splitscreen... yet the first thing I do is install a third-party window manager. I tried for months to go vanilla and get my head around the features. But why, why do fullscreen window…

Apple has, for 20+ years now, wrestled with workarounds to the Mac's central UI blunder: making all applications share a single menu that's glued to the top of the screen. Every other windowing OS recognized that menus belong on their applications' main window frames, which makes the desktop an unlimited workspace. Apple should have made the same transition with OS X, but, in true Apple fashion, petulantly refused to…

I hate wasting ui space by forcing every application to use their window real estate for a menu bar. There should be only one menu bar in the same location that changes when the context changes. It’s one of my favorite aspects of macOS.

Re: Ask HN: Why does Apple refuse to add window snapping to macOS?

#460

Post by chris37879 »

saghm wrote: post #151
lloeki wrote: post #141

Well, because it has? Hover over the green stoplight, you get a popover with fullscreen options. Press Option and the fullscreen options mutate into snap left/snap right/zoom. These can also be found in the Window menu. Again, press option to mutate the fullscreen ones to snap. And since these are menu options, one can set any keyboard shortcut of their choosing through the keyboard shortcut prefpane+. So it is not "…

The only Apple device I use is the laptop I was given for work, and I've always disliked that the button that would "maximize" the window on other OS instead makes the window "fullscreen" (getting rid of the menu and everything else that entails). I recently discovered that I am actually able to "maximize" by double-clicking the top bar of the window, but I have no idea if this is something that works by default or i…

Holding option and clicking the plus will maximize it like a Window's maximize button.

The option key on macOS enables all sorts of extra functionality, open some drop down menus while holding it and you'll find extra / more advanced options in some. Or if you option click your Wifi, for instance, you get all the network info for the network in a bigger popup than clicking it alone!

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