I wrote the opposite: an implementation of macOS’ cmd-` (switch between open windows of the same application) for Windows: https://neosmart.net/blog/2017/easy-window-switcher/
AltTab – Windows alt-tab on macOS
101–110 of 144 posts
Re: AltTab – Windows alt-tab on macOS
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
The concept of "an open application with no open windows" is a very OSX thing that other windowing OS's manage to avoid without effort or difficulty. There are lots of ways to represent background tasks, services, VPN's, etc, that don't require the concept of "an app without windows" in a windowing OS (and without polluting the app switching experience as other commenters have complained about).
How does the file manager work on non-macOS in this context? That's probably my most common use case for an app with no (current) open windows.
Re: AltTab – Windows alt-tab on macOS
#103This is cool but as a long time macOS user who is now on Windows at least half time, I really miss Cmd + Tab application switching when on Windows. Anyone know of a way to get that behaviour in Windows?
Context: Cmd-Tab in macOS switches between the foremost windows of open applications (i.e. never between windows of the same app).
I don’t have a solution for you, but if you used the complement feature cmd-` (switch between open windows of the currently focused app) I did implement that for Windows: https://neosmart.net/blog/2017/easy-window-switcher/
Re: AltTab – Windows alt-tab on macOS
#104Seems many people don't know: ⌘ Command + ` to switch between windows of same program
I already posted this in response to another comment but you might be interested to now that I ported that functionality to Windows: https://neosmart.net/blog/2017/easy-window-switcher/
Re: AltTab – Windows alt-tab on macOS
#105For 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…
Windows launched after the Mac Only by a little bit of time in some regards; for Windows 1.0 Microsoft first presented it to the public on November 10, 1983. The first retail release, originally slated for release in April 1984, Windows 1.01, was instead released on November 20, 1985. System 1, the classic Macintosh System Software was released in January 1984. Also, yes, the Lisa was arguably the first to ship with…
Windows 1.0 was technically a thing but as you probably know the thing the rest of the world thinks of as Windows didn't really launch until Windows 3 (and arguably didn't really fully ship until 3.11)
Re: AltTab – Windows alt-tab on macOS
#106I paid for Witch and have been pretty happy with it [1]. Only issue is very occasionally the MacOS switcher and the Witch switcher both appear and fight for control. [1] https://manytricks.com/witch/
I assign them different activation keys. I use option-tab for Witch and cmd-tab for the built-in switcher.
Re: AltTab – Windows alt-tab on macOS
#107This is nice. However, once Alt-Tab is activated, it would be nice to be able to hold Alt and use the ` key to cycle through windows from right to left, instead of left to right (same behavior as Command-Tab on MacOS).
Press shift !:)
Re: AltTab – Windows alt-tab on macOS
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
The concept of "an open application with no open windows" is a very OSX thing that other windowing OS's manage to avoid without effort or difficulty. There are lots of ways to represent background tasks, services, VPN's, etc, that don't require the concept of "an app without windows" in a windowing OS (and without polluting the app switching experience as other commenters have complained about).
Why are you framing "an application with no open windows" as an idea that should be avoided? It's a useful concept, especially when dealing with heavy applications that take a while to launch (perhaps with a splash screen). It's also not how truly background services are represented to the user; only temporarily backgrounded aplications use this paradigm. Stuff that's meant to almost always be in the background with little or no UI (eg. VPNs) generally don't take space in the Dock.
I think it's a lot more fair to say that other desktop environments lack an equivalent because they don't have a cohesive notion of "application" in the first place, though influence from OS X/macOS has been pushing other desktop environments in that direction (see eg. the evolution of the Windows taskbar)
Re: AltTab – Windows alt-tab on macOS
#109For 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 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…
this is actually quite an objective matter, most humans think visually and they will create a mental map of the WINDOWS in their mind, not the APPS. So making the subject of the action an abstract thing they can't see (the app, sometimes) would be the absurd thing.
Re: AltTab – Windows alt-tab on macOS
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
The concept of "an open application with no open windows" is a very OSX thing that other windowing OS's manage to avoid without effort or difficulty. There are lots of ways to represent background tasks, services, VPN's, etc, that don't require the concept of "an app without windows" in a windowing OS (and without polluting the app switching experience as other commenters have complained about).
How does the file manager work on non-macOS in this context? That's probably my most common use case for an app with no (current) open windows.
Windows would just have you open the file manager app when you need a file manager window. No need for the "app" to be always open. To Windows users, it feels extremely strange to have an app that's always open that you can't close.