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AltTab – Windows alt-tab on macOS

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Re: AltTab – Windows alt-tab on macOS

#121

Post by klodolph »

yodon wrote: post #100
klodolph wrote: post #74

Earlier 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).

“Open application without windows” is not the same thing as “background task.” When I run PostgreSQL on my Mac, it doesn’t show up in the application switcher, because it’s not an application.

I find it convenient to be able to have an application with no windows. The big reason is for applications with longer startup times—unfortunately, something we don’t have a good solution for. The other thing I like about it is that I can close a document and create a new document without figuring out if I need to reopen the application after closing a document. Closing a window only closes the application for cases where that makes sense (System Preferences).

Re: AltTab – Windows alt-tab on macOS

#122

Post by klodolph »

yodon wrote: post #110
oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 find it very convenient, because I often have multiple file manager windows open, and it’s easy to accidentally close the last window.

Re: AltTab – Windows alt-tab on macOS

#123

Post by zamadatix »

wtallis wrote: post #114
yodon wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Windows Explorer is exactly this, so this behavior is not at all foreign to Windows. The only meaningful difference in how these two UIs expose this same behind-the-scenes behavior (in recent versions) is that on Windows you have the option of removing Explorer from the taskbar if there are no open windows, while macOS Finder is always present in the dock.

For current Windows I wouldn't say backend behavior of Explorer is very similar to Finder at all. The "always running" Explorer instance is more similar to the system menu bar+dock which are separate components and processes from Finder. The "file browser" Explorer instances are more similar to Finder but are transient, the process only runs and shows as a running app in the task bar when you launch it and ceases to when be a process when you close it. The start menu functionality itself shares some aspects with Finder but that's not explorer anymore.

In Windows XP days the behavior was very different and could be argued to be similar to any or all of those macOS components as Explorer was all of those things under one process for efficiency reasons.

Re: AltTab – Windows alt-tab on macOS

#124

Post by Phrodo_00 »

klodolph wrote: post #90
krferriter wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It enables you to actually switch between windows, not between applications. If you have 3 windows of Chrome open, on Mac if you alt-tab to it it raises all 3 windows to the top of the desktop window stack, hiding any other windows which may overlap with one of these Chrome windows. This is very inconvenient if you want to be able to still see another window, say, TextEdit, you have open but it becomes hidden by Chro…

Command-tab already does this. Just keep holding command, use the up/down arrow to drill into the windows for the selected application. Play around with it you’ll figure it out. It looks like this tool just simplifies it and gets rid of the hierarchy, so you don’t have to remember which application owns the window you’re looking for.

Doing that just brings up that app's exposé for me.

Re: AltTab – Windows alt-tab on macOS

#125

Post by akubera »

cfn wrote: post #117

This is great! Coming from Windows I am always annoyed when cmd-tab does not restore a minimized window in MacOS. I don't really understand the logic of it. If the app window is minimized it is obvious (to me) that it should be restored when I cmd-tab to it. Why doesn't it do this?

cmd-tab to the minimized window then hold option(alt) before removing your finger from cmd will restore a window (or create a new window if none are available). I don't know if it's documented somewhere, which is a real shame because it's not obvious, but I guess that's been the behavior since Leopard (10.5).

Re: AltTab – Windows alt-tab on macOS

#126

Post by nick_ »

flenserboy wrote: post #118
nick_ wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Only seen as such when coming from a Windows background. The Windows paradigm is maddening when approached from the perspective of someone who has used Macs for decades.

It is seen as such when both approaches are compared, point by point.

Re: AltTab – Windows alt-tab on macOS

#127

Post by blacksmith_tb »

saghm wrote: post #79
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…

It's pretty easy to quit the Finder if you don't need to mess with files graphically [1]. Once you've set that you can also use cmd-q to do that when you're cmd-tabbing through apps (if something else re-opens it).

1: https://www.howtogeek.com/259378/how-to-quit-the-finder-in-o...

Re: AltTab – Windows alt-tab on macOS

#128

Post by digisign »

oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #71
alphachloride wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Get ready to have your mind blown because a used-to-be common setup on the X Window system is to be able to fully interact with a window without having to bring it to the foreground. Great for terminals and a few other use cases. I still use it.

Re: AltTab – Windows alt-tab on macOS

#129

Post by flenserboy »

nick_ wrote: post #126
flenserboy wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only seen as such when coming from a Windows background. The Windows paradigm is maddening when approached from the perspective of someone who has used Macs for decades.

It is seen as such when both approaches are compared, point by point.

You assume the conclusion.
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