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Native Instant Space Switching on macOS

arhan.sh

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Re: Native Instant Space Switching on macOS

#261

Post by mort96 »

fifafu wrote: post #259
mort96 wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also have a 120Hz Mac, and the animation is indeed slower in 120Hz mode. In my opinion, the animation crossed the line from "too slow but bearable" to "unbearable" with 120Hz. It is as you say; it's not really the animation itself that's the problem, but the delay from when I tell my machine "switch to this other workspace" until the focus switches to a window on that other workspace. The animation has this horribl…

> Sadly, solutions like BetterTouchTool and InstantSpaceSwitcher won't work for me because I prefer to use my trackpad to switch spaces. One of BetterTouchTool's first features ~17 years ago was trackpad gesture customization, it is still one of the most important things you can do with BTT! ;-) You'd just need to assign the "Move Right a Space (without animation)" and "Move Left a Space (without animation)" actions…

I don't want it "without animation", I like that the animation tracks my fingers and that the response is instant and doesn't wait until a "gesture" is "triggered". I just want it to wait a second after I let go until the target workspace starts receiving input.

Re: Native Instant Space Switching on macOS

#262

Post by kingstnap »

godelski wrote: post #196
eviks wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Design good interfaces, with sane defaults They're not doing that either. And unfortunately bad designs are rarely fatal, so can linger for decades. And animation time waste has little to do with power use, everyone suffers

> They're not doing that either. Yeah it's really unfortunate. It doesn't take a genius to figure out transparent windows are not (usually) user friendly. Really it just requires eyes. To be honest I think it's revealing of a bigger problem: yes men. People are too afraid of telling the emperor about his (lack of) new clothes. I see this a lot. Not just with CEOs but even engineers being afraid of pushing back on the…

Is it fear or just a checked out mentality? I can easily see devs at corps just doing whatever is asked by management to the minimum standard and calling it a day.

Particularly if there is a corporate push for efficiency (tautologically true) or the dev is an offshore worker who stands to gain nothing from being prideful in their work.

Re: Native Instant Space Switching on macOS

#263

Post by gryfft »

hmokiguess wrote: post #72

Can you use this with the trackpad gesture though? That's the only thing that has me locked in, the muscle memory of trackpad is hard to beat for me and unfortunately I rather suffer through the animation then move to the keyboard

I'm in the same boat. The thing is that I like the first half of the animation when it matches the speed to the keyboard gesture. The second half of the animation after you let go, the speed suddenly slows. It feels like an attempt to skeumorphically adapt those drawers you can't slam, that have an air cushion that blunts the momentum and have magnets to draw it the last few millimeters shut.

If I could just "slam" back and forth with the three finger gesture I would be happy. Nothing is going to break from slamming my workspace side to side, I don't need to be protected. Those last milliseconds of the animation, when keypresses still don't point to the target space, are really annoying. I would like to just remove the "air cushion"/modify the bezier defining it. I get how it's supposed to feel 'high end' but it's nonsensical in context and just gets in my way, even if it's in a tiny way.

Re: Native Instant Space Switching on macOS

#264

Post by alper »

xz18r wrote: post #44

I see yabai mentioned, definitely check out Aerospace. Ive tried multiple WMs after years of i3 on Linux and this is the best one I found (for me) with quite a margin. It just works (tm) https://github.com/nikitabobko/AeroSpace

The main reason I use Aerospace (after a thorough testing of most macOS third party window managers) is for the space management and instant space switching.

Re: Native Instant Space Switching on macOS

#265

Post by veber-alex »

mort96 wrote: post #255
coldtea wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 3 people from my team recently switched to macOS and they never owned a mac before and they are all complaining about window management. For legit reasons? Because many switchers complain for stupid reasons, like the macOS distinction between apps and windows.

Complaining about the distinction between apps and windows isn't a "stupid reason" to complain though. Say I use Slack, Teams and Outlook. If I use their Electron versions, I switch between them with cmd+tab. If I use them in separate browser windows, I switch between them by using cmd+tab to switch to Firefox, then cmd+` to cycle through windows until I find the one I want. That's weird; how you switch between these…

I would also add to this that in order to open two instances of an app the app explicitly needs to support this. For example, you can't open 2 instances of Calculator.app side by side.

This is really annoying.

Re: Native Instant Space Switching on macOS

#266

Post by piskov »

cosmic_cheese wrote: post #137
piskov wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don’t get it Spaces are not for fullscreen but for basically virtual desktops i3 linux style Here is superior user experience: 1. Install moom. Its keyboard windows arrangement is second to none. Its two-step tiling is a killer. Ie caps-a to show a popup with all the shortcuts, then “a” letter for vertical 1/3 of the screen. Or s for middle 2/3. Or q for top left third — you can assign any letter for any portion…

This is similar to how I use Spaces. I haven't hotkeyed desktops, but each one is designated for a particular task or theme. The concept extends further with a secondary display, with the primary monitors' spaces being assigned "main task" duty while the secondary displays' spaces get "aux task" duty — so e.g. IDEs and browser windows immediately relevant to the task at hand go on a main monitor desktop while seconda…

Like I’ve said, on windows you have komorebi that does exactly that

Re: Native Instant Space Switching on macOS

#267

Post by igregoryca »

mort96 wrote: post #255
coldtea wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 3 people from my team recently switched to macOS and they never owned a mac before and they are all complaining about window management. For legit reasons? Because many switchers complain for stupid reasons, like the macOS distinction between apps and windows.

Complaining about the distinction between apps and windows isn't a "stupid reason" to complain though. Say I use Slack, Teams and Outlook. If I use their Electron versions, I switch between them with cmd+tab. If I use them in separate browser windows, I switch between them by using cmd+tab to switch to Firefox, then cmd+` to cycle through windows until I find the one I want. That's weird; how you switch between these…

The (shift+)cmd+` order also resets to match the window z-order whenever you switch apps. So if the order is windows A, B, C, then you select window B, cmd+tab away, then cmd+tab back, the order will now be B, A, C.

I've developed an intuitive understanding of this, but I had to experiment just now to describe the behavior precisely. And my intuition is still wrong sometimes (like if the app has windows on multiple monitors, it's hard to predict the z-order).

> if I Slack open in Firefox in workspace 1 and Outlook open in Firefox in workspace 2, there is no way to switch between Slack and Outlook

My local maximum is to never use workspaces – just cmd+tab, cmd+`, and sometimes cmd+h to reduce screen clutter.

Re: Native Instant Space Switching on macOS

#269

Post by piskov »

weakfish wrote: post #138
piskov wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don’t get it Spaces are not for fullscreen but for basically virtual desktops i3 linux style Here is superior user experience: 1. Install moom. Its keyboard windows arrangement is second to none. Its two-step tiling is a killer. Ie caps-a to show a popup with all the shortcuts, then “a” letter for vertical 1/3 of the screen. Or s for middle 2/3. Or q for top left third — you can assign any letter for any portion…

I'm really confused - I downloaded Moom because of this comment, but can't find a feature to switch Spaces. Am I missing something?

Moom is not for switching spaces.

You can use the app in in this post for that.

—

Or if you want the animation, switching is built-in on macos

What you need to do:

1. Create 6 spaces. This is a crucial first step.

2. Go to system settings — keyboard — keyboard shortcuts… — mission control — expand mission control — manually set “switch to desktop 1” to alt-1; rinse-repeat till 6.

3. Go to system settings — desktop and dock — disable “automatically rearrange spaces based on most recent use”

Re: Native Instant Space Switching on macOS

#270

Post by naikrovek »

drob518 wrote: post #223
harrall wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My pet opinion is that Steve Jobs was an asshole but an asshole that used his own products and used his powers of complaining to steer the whole ship to fix major "this annoys me everyday" bugs. From my experience, "annoying but not blockers" bugs are often very neglected compared to (1) bugs that actually break things and (2) feature work. Neglecting quality of life issues leads to the "do you even use your product?…

Steve Jobs knew what he wanted and was willing to put his foot down in order to get it. Yea, I’m sure he was difficult to work with and drove people insane, but he was the plumb line that kept Apple driving in (mostly) the right direction. Now, it seems like they have bored designers trying to make a name for themselves with a “new” and “revolutionary” interface in Liquid Glass, which nobody likes and is less usable…

Well, the UI leader behind Liquid Glass is no longer with the company, replaced by a long time Apple employee known for his eye for detail.

I do t think Liquid Glass is going to go away soon, Apple doesn’t seem to reverse itself ever, but I do expect Liquid Glass to become better over time. We’ll see what WWDC brings on that front I guess.

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