I do this using Win+1,2,3,4,etc on Windows and Gnome 3. I believe this has been a feature since Windows 7. It's one of the first features I look for when trying out a new Linux desktop environment since it's so convenient.
Function keys productivity trick
61–70 of 221 posts
Re: Function keys productivity trick
#62For the macOS folks, I prefer rcmd to accomplish the same thing with less cognitive overhead: https://lowtechguys.com/rcmd/
I have this set-up but after alt-tabbing for 20 years its kinda hard to stop.
Re: Function keys productivity trick
#63For the macOS folks, I prefer rcmd to accomplish the same thing with less cognitive overhead: https://lowtechguys.com/rcmd/
Yep, I can certainly recommend ⌘ rcmd as well!
Source: am developer of the app ^_^
Re: Function keys productivity trick
#64You know, the CTRL-Fn combinations are usually mapped to virtual workspaces on Linux, what is much more powerful than applications and give you the same kind of speedup. Who organizes things around application anyway, instead of windows? Anyway, no, it's bad to remap the Fn keys. They have been used to fast intra-application navigation since they appeared, and they are still in wide use. (Does the author not use appl…
> Who organizes things around application anyway, instead of windows?
macOS. There's no Alt+Tab, for example: no way to switch between two arbitrary windows on the Z-stack¹. The not-equivalent that exists is ⌘+Tab, and it switches apps; the usability of it, vs. Alt+Tab, is horrendous. (It fronts stuff you don't want, covering up stuff you do want.)
There are workspaces … but I have found them hard to get productive with: macOS will reorder keystrokes around workspace changes. That is, the keyboard input "abc ^→ (workspace change) def" is a race condition: typed quickly (within the animation delay), it becomes as if you typed "abcdef ^→".
¹no, ⌘+` does not count.
Re: Function keys productivity trick
#65f1 key in its default 'help' function is so remarkably useless, i just remap it to Enter. and then, remap tilde to to Left and Caps Lock to Right, and you've got a neat little navigation block on the left side of the keyboard.
Re: Function keys productivity trick
#66If macOS didn't added a very annoying fade-out/fade-in delay when switching Spaces, you could simply use them with maximized apps and hotkeys for switching them. Another design mistake from Apple.
Sounds a bit pedantic, but this was the reason I could just not use macOS as a daily driver. IIRC, there was a brief period of time where this anti-feature could be disabled by some obscure command, and the switch was instantly. But this was later gone in an update, which ultimately taught me the lesson that one should not be at the complete mercy of some OS updates.
Re: Function keys productivity trick
#67A better "hack" for linux users: Linux supports a "digital-only" modifier called "Hyper". You can use Xmodmap to set a key as hyper on press, and set Hyper-F[X] to whatever functions you wish to.
Alternatively, use a keyboard with QMK, or install a dedicated application like KMonad.
Re: Function keys productivity trick
#68If macOS didn't added a very annoying fade-out/fade-in delay when switching Spaces, you could simply use them with maximized apps and hotkeys for switching them. Another design mistake from Apple.
Is there any way to change the delay for that? I would think that tucked away somewhere under the hood there’s a setting that controls the animation duration.
Being able to turn that down or off would be a boon to my productivity.
Re: Function keys productivity trick
#69You know, the CTRL-Fn combinations are usually mapped to virtual workspaces on Linux, what is much more powerful than applications and give you the same kind of speedup. Who organizes things around application anyway, instead of windows? Anyway, no, it's bad to remap the Fn keys. They have been used to fast intra-application navigation since they appeared, and they are still in wide use. (Does the author not use appl…
> Who organizes things around application anyway, instead of windows? macOS. There's no Alt+Tab, for example: no way to switch between two arbitrary windows on the Z-stack¹. The not-equivalent that exists is ⌘+Tab, and it switches apps ; the usability of it, vs. Alt+Tab, is horrendous. (It fronts stuff you don't want, covering up stuff you do want.) There are workspaces … but I have found them hard to get productive…
You can use the up arrow with an application highlighted in the command-tab picker to select a particular window of the application.
Re: Function keys productivity trick
#70While talking of function keys— My greatest annoyance with keyboards is that Fn keys (as found to one side of the left Ctrl/Control key; ubiquitous on laptops and common on other keyboards) are always implemented in firmware, and simply don’t do anything with most of the keys, but implement them in such a way that I can’t either. My laptop’s keyboard has one Fn key, and 82 others.¹ I can only use Fn with 20 of them—o…
If you haven't already gone down the custom keyboard rabbit hole, I suspect you might like it. There's a pretty large enthusiast community out in the world, and there's a lot of ways to go custom - build your own from scratch, use a kit, use a pre-built with flashable firmware, etc.
The firmwares used (e.g. QMK) allow you to build the sort of thing you're talking about into your keyboard and more.