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macOS Tips and Tricks (2022)

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141–150 of 360 posts

Re: macOS Tips and Tricks (2022)

#141

Personal-Bookmarks:: Press ⇧⌘/ to search all of the current app's menu items. Then use the Up/Down arrow keys to navigate the results and press Return to execute that menu bar action. Hold Option while resizing a window to resize from the center of the window. Hold Shift while resizing a window to lock the aspect ratio. When a window is inactive, use the Command key to interact with it without making it active. If an…

> Press ⇧⌘/ to search all of the current app's menu items

This is the one feature I miss most from using macos. I got used to it back when Ubuntu used unity as its DE and called it "HUD". Didn't work everywhere (looking at you, java), but a huge timesaver.

Re: macOS Tips and Tricks (2022)

#142
This might interest you too:

https://gist.github.com/devnoname120/4767a0aa18879217170fd0c...

Disclaimer: I wrote this. It's a random gist that I wrote for me but it somehow got 150+ stars. Tbh I'm not even sure how people even heard about it because I didn't post it anywhere… Either way I guess people seem to like it, so hopefully you will find it useful too!

Re: macOS Tips and Tricks (2022)

#143
It's interesting but also annoying because localized versions of macOS don't have the same shortcuts, or at least I cannot make them work. The main problem is that some special characters such as / are in a different key and they also require modifier keys to type them.

Re: macOS Tips and Tricks (2022)

#144
post #20

Love that this is straight to the point. My tips: - Use Alfred. Game changer. It's an immediate improvement on spotlight search, you can run commands with three keystrokes (rather than opening a terminal, just command + space, then > ), it gives clipboard history and fast append (lets you press command + c twice fast to append to clipboard, and opt + command + c to search clipboard history), and lets you make 'workfl…

I just made my own window manager with Hammerspoon. First I copied whatever rectangle/magnet was doing and then added my own logic on top of it to fit the style I work with windows.

As a bonus I can hit hyper-l (L for layout) and it'll open the correct apps + place them correctly depending on where I am and how many monitors are connected.

And caps-lock is of course mapped as hyper with Karabiner Elements, it even has a preset for it.

Re: macOS Tips and Tricks (2022)

#145

All I want is an app that can fix the "broken window" focus management. Like when I click a window, Mac OS brings to top all windows of the respective app, and when an app (say, Finder) has no window open currently, bringing it to front also unaskedly manipulates the stacking order such that other app's windows become the top most one, completely destroying the visual context. Also, back in the days I used Expose a l…

I just want a Finder that actually works. It’s pretty incredible just how bad Finder is. It’s by far the worst piece of software I’m forced to use on a daily basis.

I honestly think that Explorer on Windows 11 is way worse than Finder. But I'd love a FilePilot [1] for macOS...

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43091466

Re: macOS Tips and Tricks (2022)

#146
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Spotlight search does quite well for me. I think there is a discoverability problem with native mac functionality. People tend to install lots of software that duplicates native features

> install lots of software that duplicates native features I installed some software for key remapping and window tiling (karabiner and rectangle) when I couldn't figure out how to do it natively. You seem like you know what you're talking about; do you happen to have native recommendations?

Welp. I don't know what I'm talking about. But at least for key remapping, I use `hidutil`. For example, to remap right ctrl to fn:

  hidutil property --set '
    {
      "UserKeyMapping": [
        {
          "HIDKeyboardModifierMappingSrc": 0x7000000E4,
          "HIDKeyboardModifierMappingDst": 0xFF00000003
        }
      ]
    }
  '
To make it stick through reboots, you can run it in a launch agent. Posted my notes and plist file here: https://gist.github.com/andelink/9df452c8cafb6790f196277705c...

For window tiling, can't say I've ever looked into it.

Re: macOS Tips and Tricks (2022)

#147

All I want is an app that can fix the "broken window" focus management. Like when I click a window, Mac OS brings to top all windows of the respective app, and when an app (say, Finder) has no window open currently, bringing it to front also unaskedly manipulates the stacking order such that other app's windows become the top most one, completely destroying the visual context. Also, back in the days I used Expose a l…

I'll never get over the fact that I had to pay $8 just to have two windows split side-by-side without using the obtuse and intrusive fullscreen mode.

Made an account just to reply.

I use https://rectangleapp.com/ on Mac and it's great. I mostly use shortcuts Left Half and Right Half, and also Maximize (Not the fullscreen mode thank God)

Might as well recommend enabling moving windows around with by clicking anywhere on the window with a keybind just like in most Linux desktop environments https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/321918/move-window...

Re: macOS Tips and Tricks (2022)

#149
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fwiw I hear good things about aerospace but haven’t yet had a chance to give it a shot.

Came here to recommend aerospace. It’s been amazing. My whole desktop is like a tmux session now. It’s very much changed how I work/use my computer. More than Rectangle did, more than LLMs have. (I still adore hookshot/rectangle though :)

What does aerospace provide that yabai can't? I'm using yabai pretty much like I used to in Arch with i3

Re: macOS Tips and Tricks (2022)

#150

All I want is an app that can fix the "broken window" focus management. Like when I click a window, Mac OS brings to top all windows of the respective app, and when an app (say, Finder) has no window open currently, bringing it to front also unaskedly manipulates the stacking order such that other app's windows become the top most one, completely destroying the visual context. Also, back in the days I used Expose a l…

> [Expose] has completely lost any spatial determinism

Could you elaborate on that?

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