111–120 of 144 posts
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No. There is no way to get MacOS to be able to switch between open windows on a desktop via a keyboard shortcut without installing 3rd party software that adds this basic functionality.
not true: ⌘ Command + `
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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'.
The exception to this is applications which can only display one window, such as System Preferences. Close that one window and the application will also be quit. As a lifetime Apple user dating to before the Mac, it's no issue for me, and I can understand the interface logic in play there, but to common users that logic is not apparent. I've seen plenty of average users who switched to Mac from Windows and they are usually baffled because to them the idea of "Xing out the last window" should always means the application is now quit.
Wait what, macOS doesn't have any built in equivalent?
Yup... I tried macOS for a few months... first thing I went looking for (well, second after switching command/alt or whatever it is).
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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.
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…
This 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?
Pinning the app will assign it an index (the icon won't change position) so you can switch to windows of your editor with Win+2 and windows of file explorer with Win+1 without even looking at the taskbar, for example.
Here's a detailed description from HowToGeek[0]:
> Press the Windows key along with a number key to launch the corresponding app. On the taskbar above, for example, Windows+3 would launch Google Chrome, Windows+4 would launch Slack, and so on all the way up through Windows+0 for Outlook. Using these keyboard shortcuts on an app that’s already running will toggle the app between a minimized and maximized state.
> You can also hold down Shift while using those shortcuts to launch a new instance of an app that’s already running. In our example, pressing Shift+Windows+3 would open a new window for Chrome, even if Chrome is already open.
> Using the Ctrl key with those shortcuts displays the most recently launched instance of an app. For example, say you had three File Explorer windows open on your PC, and File Explorer was in the first position on your taskbar. Pressing Ctrl+Windows+1 would show you the File Explorer window you most recently opened.
[0]: https://www.howtogeek.com/276982/the-most-useful-keyboard-sh...
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> 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…
A stack of the most-recently-in-focus windows is more practical than a stack of the most-recently-in-focus apps. The absurd thing to me is that macOS didn't adopt this simpler workflow model. No one is trying to throw out the baby with the bathwater here. macOS is a very good OS. Windows does this one aspect better.
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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…
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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.