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macOS Tips and Tricks (2022)

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Re: macOS Tips and Tricks (2022)

#221

Post by rubslopes »

traceroute66 wrote: post #193
etrautmann wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Things that are hard: launching a terminal at a location, viewing or copying a files path, navigating a deep file system, column width in the column view, searching for files, finding file info, and lots of other.

> searching for files Erm, what ? I use Mac, Windows, Linux and BSD daily. Of all four, searching for files on a Mac is a dream. Apple Spotlight is and always has been lightyears ahead of whatever garbage Microsoft use on Windows. And don't get me started on the inconvenience of searching for files on Linux or BSD, I mean, for starters you have to download a non-default tool like `fd` if you want to search at any rea…

I agree with OP, searching for files is awful. Many times it doesn't find a file I know it is inside a subdirectory of where I am right now.

Things got much better when I moved from Spotlight to Raycast.

Re: macOS Tips and Tricks (2022)

#222

Post by KineticLensman »

eviks wrote: post #198
traceroute66 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> searching for files Erm, what ? I use Mac, Windows, Linux and BSD daily. Of all four, searching for files on a Mac is a dream. Apple Spotlight is and always has been lightyears ahead of whatever garbage Microsoft use on Windows. And don't get me started on the inconvenience of searching for files on Linux or BSD, I mean, for starters you have to download a non-default tool like `fd` if you want to search at any rea…

This just tells me you've never used they only file search dream - Everything search, unfortunately Windows only. Spotlight has never come close to that

> Everything

I was going to say Everything was awesome as a file searcher except for its non-easily searchable name.

But when I checked in a raw Edge instance it was in fact the first result. Ho hum.

It's produced by Voidtools in case YMMV: https://www.voidtools.com/downloads/

Re: macOS Tips and Tricks (2022)

#223

Post by radlad »

frereubu wrote: post #220
tannhaeuser wrote: post #108

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…

> when I click a window, Mac OS brings to top all windows of the respective app Do you mean Cmd + Tab? Because this doesn't happen for me at all. When I click on a window, just that window is focused, but if I Alt + Tab to an app all those windows come to the front, which I find annoying too.

Hijacking for a quick tip I'm not sure everyone is familiar with. On macOS, most know that Cmd + Tab will cycle through the open apps. Less well-known, Cmd + ` will cycle through windows within an app.

Re: macOS Tips and Tricks (2022)

#224

Post by zanderwohl »

reddalo wrote: post #145
danielvaughn wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Anyone who thinks finder is the worst file browser hasn't used Windows for 25+ years. Explorer can't even search files on the hard drive of the computer it's running on.

Explorer has its thumbnail processor on the same thread as the UI so if you have a lot of pictures in a directory it'll just hang indefinitely. Sometimes if you have too many files it won't display any at all.

If explorer crashes, it's the same process as your desktop and taskbar, so that disappears too.

Re: macOS Tips and Tricks (2022)

#225

Post by n8henrie »

andelink wrote: post #146
hansvm wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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/9…

I was using Karabiner for years just to remap caps to a hyper key. A few months ago replaced it with a launchagent to run something like this remapping caps to F19 (and using F19 instead of hyper, in hammerspoon) -- has been working great.

Re: macOS Tips and Tricks (2022)

#226

Post by n8henrie »

gluteart wrote: post #60
nomilk wrote: 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 lived with Alfred for many-many years, but Raycast seems much better this days. Simpler yet richer and constantly developed, many plugins, it's simple to do your own and... it has window manager

Development has been slow lately, but Quicksilver[0] is still around as a FOSS alternative. We have an upcoming release that should refresh things a bit for Seqouia.

[0]: https://github.com/quicksilver/Quicksilver

Re: macOS Tips and Tricks (2022)

#227

Post by ctippett »

colddevil wrote: post #170
danielvaughn wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, I was thinking the same.. For several years, I'm pretty happy with PathFinder by Cocoatech: https://cocoatech.io/ The things I miss the most when I accidentically open a Finder window: Cut files wit CMD+X to move them (never understood this when coming from Windows), cycle the files in a folder (start on top if you reach bottom and vice versa) and the comprehensive info bar on the right for files and folders. Gi…

There's an app from Sindre Sorhus that adds CMD+X functionality to Finder.

https://sindresorhus.com/command-x

Re: macOS Tips and Tricks (2022)

#228

Post by n8henrie »

theshrike79 wrote: post #144
nomilk wrote: 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 ha…

Is your config publicly avail anywhere?

Also, I was only using Karabiner for caps remapping and was able to satisfactorily replace it with this type of built-in hidutil call: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43203239 -- remaps to F19, which I use as a hyper modal in hammerspoon. Works well, and I was happy to let go of Karabiner given how deeply it has to dig into the OS, and I wasn't using any of its more powerful features anyway.

Re: macOS Tips and Tricks (2022)

#229

Post by setopt »

traceroute66 wrote: post #193
etrautmann wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Things that are hard: launching a terminal at a location, viewing or copying a files path, navigating a deep file system, column width in the column view, searching for files, finding file info, and lots of other.

> searching for files Erm, what ? I use Mac, Windows, Linux and BSD daily. Of all four, searching for files on a Mac is a dream. Apple Spotlight is and always has been lightyears ahead of whatever garbage Microsoft use on Windows. And don't get me started on the inconvenience of searching for files on Linux or BSD, I mean, for starters you have to download a non-default tool like `fd` if you want to search at any rea…

> Apple Spotlight is and always has been lightyears ahead of whatever garbage Microsoft use on Windows.

I certainly agree on that, and I also find it more convenient than the desktop search options I’ve tried on Linux (there I usually drop to the command line to search).

But despite really wanting to like Spotlight, e.g. its integration with Apple Mail with email previews is great, I find it unusable for heavy work. I’ve tried customizing it to disable lots of search backends that I don’t need, but still for reasons I don’t understand, it sometimes takes 5+ seconds to process my search results before showing anything, and even the average search often takes a second and is not well-sorted.

In comparison, Alfred is always instant at searching on my computer, and I really prefer how you can explicitly tell it what you are searching for (e.g. `'filename`, `in file contents`, `=math`, etc.) whereas Spotlight tries to guess this and often guesses wrong. It’s also easier to customize if you want to integrate e.g. specific web searches in it.

I’ve tried Raycast since lots of people praise it, but I still find Alfred to have a nicer and more responsive interface, but perhaps it’s just what I’m used to.

Re: macOS Tips and Tricks (2022)

#230

Post by chrisweekly »

danielvaughn wrote: post #138
tannhaeuser wrote: post #108

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 recommend Alfred to replace Finder, Divvy for window management, iTerm2 for terminal, and homebrew to manage CLI utils.

This combination has served me well for many years.

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