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Moving a macOS window by clicking anywhere on it
91–100 of 314 posts
Re: Moving a macOS window by clicking anywhere on it
#92I don't understand how MacOS is constently praised for its UI while half the comments here mention a third party app just to make it usable. Maybe it's just me, but I owned a Mac for over 5 years and I could never wrap my head around how MacOS handles windows and open apps.
All depends on what one is used to. On Linux I've had to fight with window borders so narrow by default (on whatever Ubuntu Studio uses) that they practically couldn't be resized. You had to aim at like one pixel. I read somewhere that a window could be resized by holding Alt and clicking with the middle mouse button... but on a Mac you never need to hold down keys and have a three-button mouse to do something that b…
Ugg, I hate that. On Mac OS as well. Windows 8 had something like a 10px border that looked great. Tried to do the same on linux - modify some defaults - and it worked for a while until... it stopped working and I haven't been able to fix it.
But seriously - just make that configurable! Then everybody can be happy with their own settings. But no.... the new hotness is no usability for anybody.
Re: Moving a macOS window by clicking anywhere on it
#93I don't understand how MacOS is constently praised for its UI while half the comments here mention a third party app just to make it usable. Maybe it's just me, but I owned a Mac for over 5 years and I could never wrap my head around how MacOS handles windows and open apps.
Because those like me who don't install any of those apps don't have anything to share on HN. Showing that you have a nearly default desktop isn't interesting except when people are claiming that no one does that.
I completely agree. I have used macOS since 2007 and the only thing I have really used as an extension is Alfred in place of Spotlight (although nowadays I am just using Spotlight). I am very happy with the UI as it is (on Linux I used everything from WindowMaker, KDE, GNOME, to tiling window managers).
Also I have many friends and family members who use macOS and I think none of them have third-party programs installed to modify the UI. So, you won't see them posting here about the extensions that they use.
Re: Moving a macOS window by clicking anywhere on it
#94I don't understand how MacOS is constently praised for its UI while half the comments here mention a third party app just to make it usable. Maybe it's just me, but I owned a Mac for over 5 years and I could never wrap my head around how MacOS handles windows and open apps.
I use computers for media production, Chrome, and VS Code. Considering macOS is a Unix with a UX that is more or less targeted to creative types, it means that I don’t have to do anything other than installing a few apps and homebrew to get a system that does 99.9% of what I want. macOS then becomes a mouse cursor and a few touchpad gestures. The UX customizations I configure are in the programs I use, not the OS. macOS’s UI therefore provides the least friction.
Re: Moving a macOS window by clicking anywhere on it
#95I don't understand how MacOS is constently praised for its UI while half the comments here mention a third party app just to make it usable. Maybe it's just me, but I owned a Mac for over 5 years and I could never wrap my head around how MacOS handles windows and open apps.
The answer is that people confuse operating system with operating environment.
OSX is a wonderful operating system - which is to say, it’s Unix but I can print things and use WiFi properly. I can edit a pdf, etc.
OSX is, in many ways, an absurd operating environment.
If you need any proof of this, just click the little green dot in the upper left of an open window…
Re: Moving a macOS window by clicking anywhere on it
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you grab the right-hand edge of a window, you can drag it left or right to resize the window. However, if you instead drag it up or down, you can move the whole window.
And if you hold option (alt) when dragging left or right, it will mirror the drag on the opposite side, so you can quickly expand or contract the window size
This is incredible, thank you for posting this.
A few things I've discovered after playing with this for a few minutes:
It works for the corners too - option+drag the corner of a window, and the whole thing resizes symmetrically.
Hold shift and it preserves the aspect ratio of the window
Double click + holding option on an edge will expand both edges to full screen size
You can hold and release option / shift while dragging and it'll work as you'd expect.
Re: Moving a macOS window by clicking anywhere on it
#97I don't understand how MacOS is constently praised for its UI while half the comments here mention a third party app just to make it usable. Maybe it's just me, but I owned a Mac for over 5 years and I could never wrap my head around how MacOS handles windows and open apps.
Have you ever noticed that you can't cut and paste files with right click or the drop down menu in OSX? It's been a few years since I've used OSX, but every version I've ever tried has this intentional bug. I say intentional because when I first got a mac in the 10.4 days I noticed that 'cut' was greyed out in the menu so I thoughtfully filed a bug report. To their credit they did answer the bug report several years…
I think this may be a misunderstanding on your part (no disrespect). Cut/paste works slightly differently on macOS compared to Windows. There's no actual concept of "cut". You just "copy" whatever files you want. When you're ready to paste, you can hit Cmd+V to "paste" or Cmd+alt+V to "paste and remove the original file(s)".
The benefit is that you don't have to decide whether you want to just "copy" or "cut" before you're ready to "paste", which makes a lot of sense if you're not coming from a Windows background. But yes, migrating from Windows to macOS makes this feel confusing.
Re: Moving a macOS window by clicking anywhere on it
#98I don't understand how MacOS is constently praised for its UI while half the comments here mention a third party app just to make it usable. Maybe it's just me, but I owned a Mac for over 5 years and I could never wrap my head around how MacOS handles windows and open apps.
There are so many bugs in the OS and I just work around them. Two recent ones I can think of: Issue 1 is: Shift+click selection doesn't work in Finder's Icon view. To reproduce: In finder select the "icons" view. Click on the first item, Hold shift, and while holding shit then click on the tenth item. Expected behavior is to select Items 1-10 including ten. Workaround: Switch to list view. Issue 2: Lock screen keyboa…
I don't think "Issue 1" is a bug; icon view isn't necessarily ordered so it doesn't have meaningful range selection.
Re: Moving a macOS window by clicking anywhere on it
#99I don't understand how MacOS is constently praised for its UI while half the comments here mention a third party app just to make it usable. Maybe it's just me, but I owned a Mac for over 5 years and I could never wrap my head around how MacOS handles windows and open apps.
There are so many bugs in the OS and I just work around them. Two recent ones I can think of: Issue 1 is: Shift+click selection doesn't work in Finder's Icon view. To reproduce: In finder select the "icons" view. Click on the first item, Hold shift, and while holding shit then click on the tenth item. Expected behavior is to select Items 1-10 including ten. Workaround: Switch to list view. Issue 2: Lock screen keyboa…
To reproduce: In finder select the "icons" view. Click on the first item, Hold shift, and while holding shit then click on the tenth item.
I don't think that's a bug. The icon view does not have an inherent ordering, since you can just drag icons around. What is supposed to be the range to select if you have an unordered view.
Issue 2: Lock screen keyboard shortcut doesn't work when mission control is activated.
That looks like a bug. Interestingly, it does work on the new external Apple keyboards when you press the key that also has Touch ID.
Re: Moving a macOS window by clicking anywhere on it
#100I use the kinda hidden three finger dragging gesture that you can activate like this: 1. Choose Apple menu > System Preferences, then click Accessibility. 2. Select Pointer Control in the sidebar. (In earlier versions of macOS, select Mouse & Trackpad.) 3. Click the Trackpad Options button. 4. Select ”Enable dragging,” then choose ”three finger drag” from the menu. 5. Click OK.
I just tried this and it should be warned that this resets existing "three finger drag" (for mission control and switching desktops) to "four finger drag". This took me a while to figure out after thinking something was seriously broken, even after going back and disabling the new setting you mentioned.
ah you're right! I've instinctively changing that to four fingers with every mac I have to setup. Thanks for the clarification.