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AltTab – Windows alt-tab on macOS

alt-tab-macos.netlify.app

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Re: AltTab – Windows alt-tab on macOS

#71

Post by oneeyedpigeon »

alphachloride wrote: post #54
klodolph wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The difference is largely a historical artifact of the Macintosh operating system not originally supporting "multitasking." This is a nice story, but reading on it seems like you're saying that the way app switching works on Windows as the Obvious and Correct thing to do, and that the Macintosh way of doing things is nothing more than a choice that was made too long ago to change. Honestly, that's absurd. The Macin…

With window-specific menus, I can directly click on and open the menu button of another app/window without first having to focus it first to see the menu options. I find that to be more intuitive. I have always been a windows user and my intuition was shaped accordingly. So to me that is the obvious and correct thing to do.

It's actually surprising to me that the behaviour you describes works as it does. I would expect the first click to focus the window, then a second click to be required to open the menu. Does that mean that, if you want to focus a window, you have to find 'dead space' to click on if you don't want some other side effect?

Re: AltTab – Windows alt-tab on macOS

#72

Post by alin23 »

philsnow wrote: post #51
alin23 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about skhd? https://github.com/koekeishiya/skhd I use it to simply bind hotkeys to shell commands in a single config file. Given the full power of the shell, you can even use AppleScript (through osascript) if you want to automate the UI/system like AutoHotkey does. It can also send key events using the -k flag so you can remap keys to other key combinations.

I haven't used Autohotkey or skhd but I use hammerspoon for any kind of macos UI automation and it's pretty great, and uses lua instead of applescript.

Oh yeah, Hammerspoon is a much better alternative to AutoHotkey, how could I forget about it.

It can even create simple and quite useful UIs, here’s an example of someone using it to create a stack visualizer for the yabai window manager: https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/1683979/90967233-0...

[1] https://github.com/AdamWagner/stackline

Re: AltTab – Windows alt-tab on macOS

#73

Post by oneeyedpigeon »

40four wrote: post #62
jonny_eh wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's say you have Firefox and Chrome open, each with two windows. alt+tab on Windows cycles between all 4. cmd+tab on Mac cycles between each apps most recently focused window. Hold cmd and press tab on a Mac, notice that it doesn't even show windows, it shows app icons.

Ahhh… okay I get it now. I’m a little slow sometimes :) That’s a good example. So “Cmd - tab” brings all the windows of a particular app to the forefront, but shows the most recent, while the others are ‘buried’. Then requiring the “Cmd - `” to dig out the older ones. Yeah it’s subtle, but I see the difference now, thanks for setting me straight!

> but shows the most recent

Apart from when, due to a bug in recent macOS, it brings up a different window. Which is incredibly frustrating.

Re: AltTab – Windows alt-tab on macOS

#74

Post by klodolph »

zamadatix wrote: post #68
klodolph wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On a Mac, you want to be able to switch the foreground application. This is what command-tab does, it switches the foreground application.

I'm on a Mac right now but I'm still having trouble understanding the relation. Say I want to switch the foreground application so I press command-tab, I get that, but how does that relate to menus being inside or outside the application?

Because the menu bar is associated with the application, not with the window. An open application does not need to have any open windows at all.

Re: AltTab – Windows alt-tab on macOS

#75

Post by jaywalk »

jolux wrote: post #29

A recommendation, apropos of this discussion on window management: three finger swipe up on the trackpad for Mission Control/Exposé if you need a specific window. I know trackpads are below most programmers but I’ve found this is faster than hammering alt-tab on Windows if you have a lot of stuff open. Still use Cmd-tab and Cmd-` most of the time though.

You know you can click on the window you want while holding Alt+Tab, right?

Re: AltTab – Windows alt-tab on macOS

#76

Post by oneeyedpigeon »

zamadatix wrote: post #68
klodolph wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On a Mac, you want to be able to switch the foreground application. This is what command-tab does, it switches the foreground application.

I'm on a Mac right now but I'm still having trouble understanding the relation. Say I want to switch the foreground application so I press command-tab, I get that, but how does that relate to menus being inside or outside the application?

On Mac, you can have an application open with no windows. In that situation, you have to be able to switch 'applications', not just 'windows'.

Re: AltTab – Windows alt-tab on macOS

#78

Post by therealmarv »

krferriter wrote: post #56
therealmarv wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

not true: ⌘ Command + `

Nope, that doesn't do it. If I have 2 Chrome windows and 3 terminal windows and 2 text editor windows open on MacOS, there is no way to merely switch from a Chrome window to a specific terminal window. You have to switch to the terminal application, which raises all 3 terminal windows to the top of the window stack on whichever display they are on, then switch between terminal windows. To enable the basic feature of…

I get with keyboard only to a specific window without any 3rd party app this way... I think the question is solved in a way (not saying it's the best way)

Re: AltTab – Windows alt-tab on macOS

#79

Post by saghm »

yodon wrote: post #23

For Mac users asking "how is this different from the keystrokes I already have", this app is designed to give you Windows-style switching which is subtlety but fundamentally different from OSX-style window switching. 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 sta…

The biggest annoyance for me on MacOS is that apps that I need to leave open but don't have windows open still show up in the switcher. When I'm on my work laptop, I still have to tab through Finder, the VPN app, etc. he rare times I need to work on the Java part of our codebase, I use the ssh remote beta for Intellij, which seems to open something called "Gateway", which is totally reasonable except that it adds yet _another_ entry to the cmd-tab menu. At this point, almost half of my cmd-tab menu is stuff that doesn't even have windows open. Back when I used MacOS more I had used something that I had gotten from the App Store way back (I think it was called "Witcher" or something), but with all the management software that the company has running in the background, the system already lags a decent amount every now and then, so I don't really want to add any more stuff for the management softwware to take up CPU time scanning. (I recognize that last part isn't specific to MacOS, but I can't help but feel like a user friendly OS would have better options built in specifically for cases where customization might not otherwise be desirable).

Re: AltTab – Windows alt-tab on macOS

#80

Post by billyhoffman »

I switched to the Mac about 10 years ago. The biggest pain point I haven't really been able to solve (before this app) is switching between 2 specific windows in 2 different applications. On Windows this was as easy as ALT+tab

Perfect example, I'm looking in Safari, and entering some numbers in Excel. I have multiple windows open for each app. I'm in Excel, and CMD+tab to switch to Safari, and all the Safari windows come forward, coving up my Excel window. CMD +` only cycles the windows of the current app. There is no easy way to bounce back and forth between a specific Excel window and a specific Safari window. Instead I have to Hide or rearrange my windows so that switch apps doesn't complete cover the windows I want to see

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