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I use HyperSwitch, by the creator of HyperDock, for this purpose. I switched to Mac for my job.
Made the switch to alt-tab, and glad I did.
> Built-in ⌘ command + ⇥ tab: Only shows apps, not windows (note: can press down to see window of selected app) I've never actually needed to use it, but that sounds like the default can do this without taking your hands off the keyboard?
MacOS is app-centric, so you have a keystroke to switch between apps and a keystroke to switch through the windows of the app. Windows is window-centric rather than app-centric, with a unified window stack so a single keystroke (Alt-Tab) always takes you to the previous window, regardless of what app is responsible for that window. Repeated Alt-Tab's take you back through your most recently used windows, regardless of the Apps involved.
OSX users generally can't imagine not knowing what apps their windows are associated with, and Windows users generally can't imagine being expected to care what apps their windows are associated with.
The difference is largely a historical artifact of the Macintosh operating system not originally supporting "multitasking." When the Mac first came out, it could only run one application at a time. If you wanted to switch between a spreadsheet and a word processor you had to close one application and open the other. Then the concept of a "switcher" was invented, which gave you the sense that the Mac was running multiple applications because it could do app-to-app context switching behind the scenes to make it feel like you were running multiple applications simultaneously. All of this meant there was no OS-level concept of "the window stack" there was only an app-level concept of window history, and a separate OS-level concept of app history.
Windows launched after the Mac, into an era of slightly more powerful processors and better understanding of user behavior on truly multi-application devices. These differences led Microsoft to adopt an OS-level unified window history model. Apple undoubtedly discussed the idea, but even by the time Windows launched Mac users were fully accustomed to the Mac's windowing model and would have complained mightily at the conceptual switch had it been attempted then or at any other point in time.
The more time you spend in one ecosystem, the more natural its approach feels to you, because you adapt to your environment over time.
I use a keyboard mapper (better touch tool in my case) to configure Option+Tab to switch between windows of the same app. So I am constantly using Command+Tab and Option+Tab all the time, I think I could never come back. I also did not understand what this app brings, is it a preview of those windows?
I recently found an old app called Snap which automatically assigns apps to Cmd + number depending on their order in the dock (or you can manually assign them). I have Chrome as the first app in the dock, so it's Cmd+1. Slack is second and is Cmd+2. It's so simple. I love it. I tried to achieve the same with Automator but it was unreliable. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/snap/id418073146?mt=12
What's wrong with Command + Tab?
I use this in combination with my rcmd app ( https://lowtechguys.com/rcmd ) and I can finally say I’ve reached the perfect app/window switching setup on macOS. Instant app switching with rcmd + visual window switching for multi-window apps like Xcode, Sublime Text etc. It’s similar to what I had on Windows with WinKey+number and their integrated AltTab thumbnails but better since I don’t have to count the apps in the…
Woah, rebinding the right command key. I'll need to retrain my brain to get used to it, but this is really, really cool. Thanks!
Most people trying out rcmd tell me that in less than a day it has become something they can’t go back from so it feels pretty nice to know I’ve improved at least a few workflows ^_^