Multiple Displays on a Mac Sucks

> You can support development and unlock all features of the app by purchasing a Pro license for $18 / €18

This is literally on the linked page

I think multiple display support has gone backwards on the Mac, in a way that’s representative of the platform and rather dispiriting.

I remember 20 years ago a colleague pointing out that Apple had put a lot of work in to allow windows to seamlessly cross different monitors, even if the PPI and colour depth were different. At some point between then and now, they ripped that out: windows are now only ever shown on one display.

I have similar feelings around other built-in features like Preview. I used to get the feeling that someone had really thought about these things, and then put in the effort to ensure 99% of use-cases were catered to. Now it seems that much of the time nobody has even bothered to ensure there are no regressions, and you’re lucky if even 80% of cases are supported.

> windows are now only ever shown on one display

Untrue :D

System Preferences > Desktop & Dock > Mission Control > Displays have separate Spaces > Off

So why is it not allowing windows to overlap two displays when that setting is on? Because when it's on a) you can swap spaces independently on each screen and b) you can move individual spaces across displays. If you had overlapping windows, swapping Spaces or rearranging them would produce really weird results.

Same here. I've gotten used to just having my laptop screen (14" mbp m1). It's fine. Having more screens is just confusing/distracting to me. The only time I use external screens is when presenting and I just put them in mirror mode.

Mostly using windows side by side is not a thing for me either. I look at one application at the time and I just give it the full screen. The sole exception to this seems to be finder windows for me.

There are lots of sub optimal things in the mac os UI. The key issue is feature interaction between features introduced over the years combined with obviously slipping standards on QA and UX. Steve Jobs would not have accepted a lot of the crap that slips through these days at Apple.

A good example is the the full screen mode in combination with the notch. You can't actually use the space next to the notch for anything else than the menu bar. Which just means full screen is a glorified "hide the menu bar thing". You don't actually gain any vertical space back if you use it with a lot of apps.

With the recent release, Mac OS defaults to having a transparent menu bar meaning that in dark mode and with the default background the menu bar is very bright. To fix this lovely bit of feature interaction, you just have to use a dark desktop image and turn off dynamic desktop backgrounds constantly changing the color. The sensible default of just making the menu bar background black isn't there because they want the dynamic desktop thing to always be visible unless you are full screen, which is not the same as having you window maximized. But obviously the maximize window button now makes your window full screen.

And speaking of desktop backgrounds. I don't care about them because there usually is something on top of my desktop. The only visible bit would be below the menu bar. The only time you see the damn background is when you are deliberately hiding all your applications. Why would you do that?

And of course full screen pretends that you have extra screens. So it's a hybrid that is like maximizing a window and plugging in a screen. So in terms of window management things get weird. Especially when you actually plugin an actual screen.

This stuff started escalating when they introduced full screen mode (aka. let's pretend hiding the menu is special), which is when they broke their dominant UX of always having the menubar visible and taking up space. Which now that we have the notch is the only use for that screen real estate.

Can we just loose the notch and get our screen real estate back? I just want to maximize windows and alt+tab between them. I mostly want the menubar unless I'm watching a video.

Apple itself is hopelessly confused on this topic. I recently experienced Apple TV on mac os. What were they smoking that it got released in that shape? It always plays the video in full screen but it keeps the main application window open separately. When you alt+tab away, you end back on the wrong thing. And sometimes when you hit escape it closes the full screen video but it keeps on playing. It's bizarrely buggy and dysfunctional. Complete amateur hour.

Seems you're right.