Another +1 for Divvy. I have a hard time living without it.
When plugged into my large monitor, I have hotkeys set up to put a window on the left 1/3, the middle 1/3, and the right 1/3. It is so unbelievably useful.
Also when doing multiple monitors, if you do a Divvy hotkey it will move the current window to the monitor your mouse is in. This makes moving windows so fast.
Divvy user here as well, for many years at this point. They haven’t updated it in ages, and with every new macOS release I’m expecting it to stop working. But somehow, it’s still going strong. Even the global keyboard shortcuts!
I bought it in '17 for $1 - possibly the best dollar I've spent. Looks like it's $4 now. Coupled with a QMK keyboard, the modifiers are even easier to use.
I find it so strange how resistant people (not you!) are to paying trivial sums of money for things that contribute so much value.
It was $1. Now it’s $4! Like half a Starbucks coffee!
How many people would not even see this app because it’s not free?
And how about the one commented below that “looks like it’s no longer maintained?” Sounds like it’s the free choice…
I have been guilty of agonizing over spending $5 on a phone app while drinking a $5 cup of coffee.
Now I’m at the point where I don’t even want to look at free apps. Just tell me how to pay you enough money to make something good, and keep it good over time.
> I have been guilty of agonizing over spending $5 on a phone app while drinking a $5 cup of coffee.
Couple years ago I was working on a side project that touched upon what you said. The core idea was dead simple: you make a list of things you want to buy or do, along with the price. And, every time you feel like spending money on something that's either excessive or not really necessary (like a $5 coffee), you enter how much you saved. The app will then show, for each item in your wishlist, how close you're to it's price. Imagine a progress bar, inching toward the goal. Along with few other stats to encourage saving (but not to a crazy extent; we gotta live a little too).
I still have the codebase with some APIs ready. Wonder if I should just complete it and launch. I called it WIYS (What If You Saved)
Anyway, I think with software, a combination of necessity, choice & culture plays an crucial role in making people pay. For instance, I badly needed a window manager, so I'd have even paid $50 if there were no viable option. These kinda apps are tricky; if it's simple, the market will be flooded with options. If it's niche & the problem domain isn't a showstopper, people may not care. Also, we enjoy the benefits of so many open source s/w, and I think it creates a subconscious expectation to get everything for free - or at least to hunt for free stuff, even via piracy. While I still have traces of that mindset, these days I value my time more than money, especially if the cost isn't too much.
For me, I think the inhibitor is cognitive overhead.
I have paid for dozens of utilities & apps that I now longer use. Why? Because there's no more room in my head? Because even the minimal effort to keep stuff running seems like a poor ROI? Because after a while, every thing looks the same?
Yup I gauge everything in drink prices, of which buy about one from the list daily. $1-5 = coffee, $5-10 = beer, $10-15 = cocktail. $20 is a bottle of wine.
I almost never think about spending those amounts on those things, so for anything that gets potentially more than one use it's a no-brainer.
When moving from Windows to macOS as my daily driver I really missed the window management keyboard shortcuts and ability to easily snap a window to the left/right of the screen or maximize windows. Magnet gave me everything I wanted and the price was right. I highly recommend it. Even at $4 it’s well worth the price given how well it works and it’s regularly updated.
That being said, reading this thread I’m realizing how many great options there are for these kind of scenarios on macOS.
Snap left/right and maximize are actually built-in by using "Tile Window to Left of Screen" and "Tile Window to Right of Screen" from either the Window menu or option-clicking the green window button:
There's a preference to make double-clicking the window titlebar fill the screen instead of minimizing. And you can add a keyboard shortcut for this too:
I'd like to put my hand up and suggest Magnet, too.
For ages, I used Amethyst, which is a "tiling window manager" for macOS, but somewhere along the way it got annoying to install/keep working properly due to some of Apples shenanigans.
So I moved to Magnet. I still use it daily, but honestly forget its there because I use it so much! Just feels like native macOS behaviour at this point.
Loving Magnet too. Take half screen (crtl+option+arrow), maximise (ctrl+option+enter) and move to another monitor (ctrl+option+cmd+arrow) are pretty much the only shortcuts I use when it comes to window management.
Wow, I didn't know there was a paid Pro option, but the same developer also makes the open source app Rectangle, which sounds like the same thing minus a few features. I use it daily. https://github.com/rxhanson/Rectangle/
I recently started using the pro version for the custom shortcuts. On a portrait mode monitor I like to split the pane vertically into thirds, so it makes that possible. It's also a pretty cheap buy at $10.
Amethyst is another great tiling manager, although it's much more focused on the i3-style tiling than just easy snapping. Used it for a while (although I really still don't like Mac's window management).
Formerly named Hookshot for those who had it a while ago.
That's why tons of people don't realize there was a "Pro" option- because there wasn't one.
The creator (who also made the free open source Spectacle-fork Rectangle app) renamed/rebranded Hookshot into Rectangle Pro sometime about 5 months ago.
I've used https://bahoom.com/hyperdock/ since Mac OS 10.4 on my Powerbook G4. Still works great and is updated for every macOS release. Best $10 I ever spent.
I also use Rectangle, the same developer also make https://hyperkey.app which works very well in tandem with it (you can also get the same features using Karabiner, but I like how polished and plug&play Hyperkey is)
Does anyone know if it's possible to configure Rectangle (the free/OSS version) to use modifier key + Arrow<Vertical> + Arrow<Horizontal> to move a window into one of the four corners?
I currently use Hyper + Arrow<Direction> for TRBL placement but it doesn't let me configure Hyper + two arrow keys for corner placements. Is that something not possible with the free/OSS version?
I use a 55in oled screen as my main monitor and rectangle is fantastic for grid window management. CMD+(1,2,3,F1,F2,F3) to move windows around the grid etc
Same with iPhone. My mind was blown when after years of tapping left-arrow someone showed me what happens when you hold down the space key. Or that dragging the iphone chat message app's background to the left reveals the timestamps of each message.
It's all very clever and elegant and minimal but consumer technology user interfaces seem to be converging on that of a Theremin.
Only on Android, not iOS, I think. You've always been able to do this, even longer than you could pinch-zoom. Unfortunately, it seems to be going away—Chrome no longer zooms on double-tap-drag, nor do any of the Samsung apps (Samsung Internet, Photos, etc.).
I have a workaround for you: assistive touch under accessibility allows you to bring up an on-screen two-handle bar which lets you adjust zoom with one hand.
My full workflow for using this is triple click power key to bring up accessibility shortcuts, press assistive touch and then tap on the circle icon to bring up the bar. You can drag it around by dragging the middle and if you drag either bar end it does the “pinch”.
I put smart invert for pseudo dark mode and zoom in the other two accessibility shortcuts to round out the accessibility shortcut menu.
I so miss the days of the well structured and comprehensive manual. I used to read them end to end. Even if you didn't remember the details you knew what was possible.
I’ve never bought a new iPhone. Is there something included in the box to point people towards the online manuals? I’m making a hopefully safe assumption there wasn’t a manual in the box that GGP ignored.
I just opened my iphone 13 box and there is a paper slip that says "before use, please refer to the user guide <url>" Along with a few of the main safety points printed on the paper itself. When you start the iphone the first thing it makes you do is log in and then click through a series of tips and tricks pages but nothing stops you from clicking next through them without reading. They then put an app on the phone by default called "Tips" which explains all this stuff with images and videos.
At some point you just have to admit that there is realistically nothing more that can be done. Users don't want to read the manual because they can use their phone perfectly fine without it. They might not notice there is a nicer way to move the cursor but it doesn't really matter.
There is a manual and it comes preinstalled as an app out of only around 10 apps on the default screen and yet people still complain about the lack of a manual. I really don't know what they could do other than locking the phone until the user completes a quiz on the manual content.
yeah the mac, with the not even hand gestures, but almost nods and winks at things, is too stupid. If I'm 20 and want to seem hip, and spend 20 hours a day on my phone, then sure, maybe, I think that's cool.
But for the rest of the world, it's not. My mom can't use an iphone or android phone, because they cater too much to... the young? the rich? tech? geeks?
beats me... and I am a dev of > 30 years, that spends more of my time in front of my computer, than almost anyone I know. I love computers and tech, but am amazed that things have not become easier.
They are harder now then they ever were.
But having said that, Macs are all I've used for the last 10 years, because they seem, overall, better than any other OS I've used.
If you grab the right-hand edge of a window, you can drag it left or right to resize the window. However, if you instead drag it up or down, you can move the whole window.
And if you hold option (alt) when dragging left or right, it will mirror the drag on the opposite side, so you can quickly expand or contract the window size
Wait... you can actually maximise without going full screen? I thought Apple would never back down on that - I use a third-party app to do this usually. If there's a similar thing to let me make a window full height and half width, and to center a window, I can get rid of that app altogether...
Holding Option when clicking the green maximize button will expand the window without entering full screen mode. You know you're doing it right if the glyph inside the button turns from two triangles to a plus sign.
When I do this with for instance a Finder window, it just "zooms" it. You can get the same effect if you go to the Window menu -> Zoom. "zoom"ing tells macos to make the window fit the content that's inside of it, however the app feels like doing that, even if you damn well just want the window to be as big as it can be.
BUT, option + double-clicking any window corner will actually make even a Finder window take up the whole visible space of the screen without being "maximized" (without creating a new screen / workspace).
(double-clicking any corner will make the window expand all the way towards the corner you've clicked; if you have a finder window in the middle of the screen and you double-click the NE corner, it'll get bigger in the N and E directions until it hits the menu bar + the right edge of the screen.
similarly, double-clicking any edge will make the window expand all the way to the border of the screen in the direction of the edge you clicked, and option + double-clicking an edge makes it grow both in that direction and the opposite.)
completely undiscoverable, I feel like I'm lost while Maniac Mansion, just trying every possible Verb + Object (+ Indirect Object) combination to try to read the game dev's mind.
> completely undiscoverable, I feel like I'm lost while Maniac Mansion, just trying every possible Verb + Object (+ Indirect Object) combination to try to read the game dev's mind.
I just found out that Apple has a pretty neat guide on all of this [1]. That you can find by googling or searching the builtin system help. I never looked at the system help before, but it looks like Apple did a good job documenting these features. Maybe I should start to RTFM for my OS...
I still agree on the discoverability part but I can't think of a way that would be better. It makes sense that there isn't a button for these commands, but if there isn't you need a manual or a tutorial and who is going to look at these? Maybe someone smarter has a better idea on how to solve this.
I browsed through the guide a bit, but it seems to be anything but comprehensive, rather it's quite similar to comment threads like this where there's a smattering of less-well-known hidden functionality among the more obvious stuff.
> I still agree on the discoverability part but I can't think of a way that would be better.
In Emacs, C-h m runs `describe-mode` which goes through the major mode of the current buffer and all the currently active minor modes, and puts their descriptions and all the mode-specific key/mouse bindings into a new Help buffer.
It would probably be incredible overkill, but I'd adore an overlay view in macos where each screen widget / distinct region had an outline or different shaded color overlaid on it, and when you hover each widget it shows you all the "keymaps" / event bindings for it. Give me all the knowledge; I use Emacs by choice for crying out loud.
That’s a specific setting, under Settings > Dock & Menu Bar > Double-click a window’s title bar to zoom | minimize. It should default to zoom on a fresh install.
Excellent, thanks — that's very helpful! It's not quite perfect — it does the old 'make it big, but not as big as possible' behaviour that macOS used to do, but that seems to be app-specific, so it actually does what I want for some things.
Double clicking on an edge will cause it to expand to the edge of the window. The shift + option trick doesn't just expand to the first edge it hits, it looks like both edges expand as much as possible.
So when combined with double clicking on a window corner, that makes all for edges expand to display size (even if the window was partially off the monitor).
By convention on Macs option more generally means "anchor at the center." The selection tool in a proper Mac graphics program, for example, will pin the center of the selection to the point where you clicked instead of pinning a corner there. Resizing shapes in a well-made diagramming app behaves this way too. Been this way since the '80s.
But you can't drag left or right first. If you do, you won't be able to move the window. You either have to decide which one you want to do on the first click.
It can still be a lot more efficient to grab the scrollbar to jump to a section of a large document. For example, you can instantly get to say 3/4 of the way through by moving the scroll bar a very short distance, which when done with the scroll wheel or trackpad gestures could take a very long time.
The scroll bar is also sometimes a nice visual cue to the size of a document you've just opened for the first time, again something the wheel/gestures don't necessarily inform.
I have permanent scroll bars enabled in macOS too.
It is pretty much required if your primary interaction with the computer is through a drawing tablet. My Wacom has a touch-sensitive wheel on it but it's usually a lot more natural to just poke at the scroll bar with the stylus.
I loathe the modern trend towards hiding all scroll bars everywhere because of this.
Looking at this very page! Using the middle mouse button takes me 3 or 4 seconds to move somewhere close to the bottom of the page, much faster and less frustrating to grab and drag the scroll bar. Is there some easier method I'm missing?
I use the kinda hidden three finger dragging gesture that you can activate like this:
1. Choose Apple menu > System Preferences, then click Accessibility.
2. Select Pointer Control in the sidebar. (In earlier versions of macOS, select Mouse & Trackpad.)
3. Click the Trackpad Options button.
4. Select ”Enable dragging,” then choose ”three finger drag” from the menu.
5. Click OK.
I just tried this and it should be warned that this resets existing "three finger drag" (for mission control and switching desktops) to "four finger drag". This took me a while to figure out after thinking something was seriously broken, even after going back and disabling the new setting you mentioned.
To be explicit, the fix is to go into the trackpad options, more gestures, and change "swipe between full screen apps" (poor name choice) to three fingers.
That's not the same at all, you can still only drag the move bar – and it focuses the window, bringing it to the front. Moving and resizing background windows can very handy.
> "In Unicode, the Private Use Areas (PUA) are three ranges of code points (U+E000–U+F8FF in the BMP, and in planes 15 and 16) that, by definition, will not be assigned characters by the Unicode Consortium. The code points in these areas can not be considered as standardized characters in Unicode itself. They are intentionally left undefined so that third parties may define their own characters without conflicting with Unicode Consortium assignments."
I've enabled this "grab" feature on every Linux window manager that has supported it. Hold alt or the windows key, click, move. Simple usability improvements make a world of difference, but for some reason, they are uncommon.
I actually recommend binding it to something other than Alt (I usually do winkey), since several programs (and in particular browsers) use Alt+drag to allow you to select text that is otherwise unselectable. For example if you drag a link it "drags" the URL allowing you to paste it into other windows, but if you Alt+drag you can select the link text (or parts of it) for copying.
The fact that Alt+right click context menu works anywhere in any window was a godsend. Next best thing to close a program without moving your mouse anywhere.
Hyperdock is one of the best purchases I've ever made. It allows you to assign hot keys to window management - e.g.
alt-left-mouse: grab anywhere in window to move
option-command-left-mouse: resize window from anywhere in window
Hasn't been updated in years but it still works on Monterey though it occasionally requires some kicking. I've looked for alternatives that are more up to date but can never find one that does the above - it's really all I want in a window manager as I don't like automated tiling and other features.
I've had `OnWindow Mod1 Mouse1 :MacroCmd {Raise} {Focus} {StartMoving}` in my fluxbox keys config for a decade or so? My brain will automatically issue and alt-click on a window in some other OS and I'm always jolted back to the reality that I'm not in my usual window manager. Now if only I could rebind that cmd ctrl on macos to alt.
Does it require karabiner-elements even? The Keyboard pane in System Preferences lets you rebind all of the modifier keys -- I use it to make the Caps Lock key a Control key.
My biggest complaint about MacOS is that I use multiple screens. When I swipe from one window to another on a single screen it focuses on the other screen which caused a lot of frustration.
I suspect as of Big Sur that Apple were intending to release touchscreen Macs, but the changes to the OS in future versions makes me suspect that they then changed their mind.
I think Apple prepares for a lot of eventualities internally and only some things end up being released. Eg. they built macOS X on Intel years before they announced the switch.
It's quite possible someone is working on making macOS touch-screen capable, even when they don't have concrete plans for releasing a touch screen Mac.
> they built macOS X on Intel years before they announced the switch.
Not a correction, just adding context: Mac OS X always had Intel builds, even before release. It would be surprising to me if they don’t still maintain Intel macOS builds just in case.
Interesting. I’ve thought about macOS on bigger iPads, but never the mini.
(I confess that personally, after a couple years of trying to make an iPad my main mobile device—and getting pretty good at making it do what I want, learning how capable iPadOS/iOS really is—I’ve retreated to my original circa-2011 understanding of “Macs are computers, iPads are appliances.”)
I highly recommend Swish as an alternative to Rectangle. Recently discovered it and wouldn't go back. The main thing that sold me is the ability to resize two windows by dragging the divider between them (similar to how Windows works).
This looks neat, but it only seems to be useful for touchpads, which is the vast minority of users. And while it's not expensive, it's also not free. Any software I have to manage with an extra license is an added time burden. (even if minimal, it adds up)
I've been using Spectacle for a while now, https://github.com/eczarny/spectacle, it seems to be less feature rich than some of the alternatives other people posted but it's free and works well for what I need it to do. Basically, just keyboard shortcut to move windows do different monitors and resize them to the left, right, or fullscreen.
Ah, didn't realize that. I've been using Spectacle a lot longer than the 3 years since they added that. I guess I'll be sad if it ever stops working or I'll switch to Rectangle.
I've been hesitant about installing software like the previous suggestions, so I opened the Stickies app and resized them to create a guide. I like to have a space between windows so that the wallpaper is still visible in some of my Spaces.
My issue is that it's not efficient and I need to nudge some windows from accidentally moving them.
I don't understand why Apple didn't build this functionality and enabled it by default. It's much easier dragging a window at any corner or side on a Linux/Windows OS.
Can we talk for a moment about how horribly well hidden these shortkeys are for normal users? Why not blend in a shortkey-tooltip when dragging a window around normally using the title bar? Make stuff discoverable again?
This would just be annoying when you reinstall or use a new machine, like going through a tutorial section when playing a game for the second time. Or you would end up with Clippy.
I don't understand how MacOS is constently praised for its UI while half the comments here mention a third party app just to make it usable.
Maybe it's just me, but I owned a Mac for over 5 years and I could never wrap my head around how MacOS handles windows and open apps.
Because those like me who don't install any of those apps don't have anything to share on HN. Showing that you have a nearly default desktop isn't interesting except when people are claiming that no one does that.
I completely agree. I have used macOS since 2007 and the only thing I have really used as an extension is Alfred in place of Spotlight (although nowadays I am just using Spotlight). I am very happy with the UI as it is (on Linux I used everything from WindowMaker, KDE, GNOME, to tiling window managers).
Also I have many friends and family members who use macOS and I think none of them have third-party programs installed to modify the UI. So, you won't see them posting here about the extensions that they use.
And Raycast actually has the Rectangle functionality built in, although I prefer the separate app, there are some ‘defaults write’ values I can change on the command line that I like (to give me a wider bottom margin on my screen - I stick Silicio in the corner of my screen for instance.)
My two preferred macOS UX features (compared to other OSs) are:
- Respect for the user: macOS doesn’t show many confirmation messages, notifications, or ad-like things. Apple promotes products in the AppStore or shows you the usual “What’s new” during a new install. But, overall is very respectful, and that includes notifications about OS upgrades. By contrast, Windows is noisy. It asks for confirmation about everything, it has trial crapware in their home editions, and decides to install an OS update without asking in the worst possible moment.
- It just works (at least for the hardware I use). This is my main complain with Linux DEs. I know it improved a lot, but I still have memories of trying to make the Synaptic trackpad driver work or playing with xrandr to use multiple monitors during a presentation.
About the hidden shortcuts… well discoverability should be better. But, is also fun to discover those tricks.
"It goes full-screen - isn't that an expected outcome?"
Not exactly ...
First of all, for most of the life of OSX, clicking the green dot caused the window to resize larger, but not occupy full screen, by some measure I could never discern. That was always braindead.
Second of all, while the current behavior that I see (expand to literally full screen) is sort of an improvement (that is, at least it makes some sense) it's still badly behaved because bringing a window to literally full screen blanks out my other monitors (!@#) ... and now we're drifting into OSX treatment of multi-monitors which is another few layers of hell.
FWIW, IMO, the correct behavior is to maximize the window in the workspace - which is almost identical, but not quite, to the literal screen.
>it's still badly behaved because bringing a window to literally full screen blanks out my other monitors
Really? That's not what it does for me. Right at this very moment I have a full screen app running on my MacBook Pro screen and a desktop on my monitor. Do you have "Displays have separate Spaces" turned off in Mission Control preferences?
I rather disbelieve in the idea that these things have "correct" semantics; only "what I am used to". At this point, I'm very used to the way macOS works and I find it considerably more pleasant than other windowing environments. Being able to full screen an app and then multi-swipe left or right between spaces or up for App Exposé is natural to me.
I've no doubt I could unlearn this and learn something else though.
Personally, I would find it far, far more useful if it maximised the window rather than full-screening it. At the very least, having it configurable would be nice.
Hmm.. that doesn't quite do what I'm after — make it the full size of the screen. It looks like it's similar to the old macOS behaviour that made the window 'as big as its contents'.
It is exactly that behavior, yes (and that historical oddity is almost certainly why). I wish this was configurable somewhere, and wish the behavior of the green button was also configurable so you could flip it to “maximize with no modifier key, full screen with”.
All depends on what one is used to. On Linux I've had to fight with window borders so narrow by default (on whatever Ubuntu Studio uses) that they practically couldn't be resized. You had to aim at like one pixel. I read somewhere that a window could be resized by holding Alt and clicking with the middle mouse button... but on a Mac you never need to hold down keys and have a three-button mouse to do something that basic.
> but on a Mac you never need to hold down keys and have a three-button mouse to do something that basic
That's really not true at all, even for that exact thing. macOS still has very small clickable areas for resizing a window. Unless an app has focus, you don't even get the little two-sided arrows. And apps that are in dark mode basically all blend together because macOS either has no borders or like 1 pixel wide since macOS relies on shadows delineating windows, which only works for windows that are primarily light colors.
Ugg, I hate that. On Mac OS as well. Windows 8 had something like a 10px border that looked great. Tried to do the same on linux - modify some defaults - and it worked for a while until... it stopped working and I haven't been able to fix it.
But seriously - just make that configurable! Then everybody can be happy with their own settings. But no.... the new hotness is no usability for anybody.
Personally, I find macOS superior in its UI overall, but that doesn't mean it's flawless. Apple has made some very strange decisions and is painfully reluctant to row back on them. Keyboard support, in particular, is woeful.
Moving to double-clicking a folder replaces the open folder and _moves everything around_... argh! I want a visual UI to leave things just where I put them, dammit! Not to mention 30 years of muscle memory when they implemented that — without any System Pref to restore the old way.
Resizing windows is a weakness of Mac OS. It mostly retains the original fully manual method of dragging the edges of individual windows which is a fiddle process. There are some methods like mentioned in the original post, but that is about it. For that reason there are dozens of third-party tools, many free, that people use and like for their particular ways of working. It would be nice if Apple were to look at these and implement a basic verion of one or more of them in the OS.
The “stoplight buttons” on windows are part of a very opinionated solution to window management that works from some people but is a complete mess if you don’t like full-screen apps. I would prefer if we had the option to convert the full-screen button to a maximize window button. Double-clicking on the window header is close.
The other thing that Windows users complain about it that closing a window doesn’t close the app. That one is just a confusion because they are used to how Windows windows. The Mac OS convention of keeping the app active is not wrong, it’s just a different approach and the kind of conceptual change that users need to make when they switch OSs.
Closing the window and not closing the app is great and one of my favourite things from switching to macOS from Windows. At the same time, the Zoom thing is ridiculous. Some apps do the right thing (e.g., Firefox), while some leave you scratching your head (Finder).
Ctrl + Opt + Return is the only reason I have Rectangle installed.
I use computers for media production, Chrome, and VS Code. Considering macOS is a Unix with a UX that is more or less targeted to creative types, it means that I don’t have to do anything other than installing a few apps and homebrew to get a system that does 99.9% of what I want. macOS then becomes a mouse cursor and a few touchpad gestures. The UX customizations I configure are in the programs I use, not the OS. macOS’s UI therefore provides the least friction.
There are so many bugs in the OS and I just work around them.
Two recent ones I can think of:
Issue 1 is: Shift+click selection doesn't work in Finder's Icon view.
To reproduce: In finder select the "icons" view. Click on the first item, Hold shift, and while holding shit then click on the tenth item.
Expected behavior is to select Items 1-10 including ten.
Workaround: Switch to list view.
Issue 2: Lock screen keyboard shortcut doesn't work when mission control is activated.
To reproduce: Open mission control via app or hot corner. Press Control+Command+Q to lock screen. Screen won't lock.
Workaround: Deactivate mission control view before locking screen.
Yea...it's dumb. But in the words of the late great Steve Jobs, 'don't hold it that way'. I get that apple is different. But sometimes it just seems counterintuitive.
To reproduce: In finder select the "icons" view. Click on the first item, Hold shift, and while holding shit then click on the tenth item.
I don't think that's a bug. The icon view does not have an inherent ordering, since you can just drag icons around. What is supposed to be the range to select if you have an unordered view.
Issue 2: Lock screen keyboard shortcut doesn't work when mission control is activated.
That looks like a bug. Interestingly, it does work on the new external Apple keyboards when you press the key that also has Touch ID.
Still, icon view is usually a grid of icons, there is an implied order there, also you can set the sort order to any number of properties. I’m not particularly bothered by this, but it seems like you should be able to select a range of icons with shift-click like any other list of items.
The first one is not a bug, it's designed like that. Icons in icon view can be positioned arbitrarily and have no order. You can't easily extend the selection with shift clicking because in that view, it's not obvious what that gesture is supposed to be extending beyond the thing being clicked on. It's worked like that since MacOS Classic.
Sure one can find all sort of arguments why this is, but it still violates the principle of least surprise. I don't think anyone would go and say, "oh this is an icon view without clear order, so I should not be able to select a group of icons".
It doesn't violate the principle of least surprise if you're basically inventing the convention, which is the case here. There's a slightly different convention in some subsequent systems but they typically don't have arbitrarily positionable icons. The MacOS convention has been around for nearly 40 years.
I hear ya on issue 2, it’s one of the very few gotchas I run into (hot corners don’t work in this view either). If you weren’t aware, you can exit mission control with ESC or F3 again, if you’re used to that shortcut.
There must be something special about the overview screen that is stopping all default behaviour when in this mode, the cursor keys don’t work here either.
A number of the other comments explain how to configure the UI to allow for similar functionality; e.g… with 3 finger drag.
I found the article to be a little odd… awing at 3rd party apps basically replicating baked in features.
Although to be fair I am super meticulous in going through the accessibility and gesture features to get the UI feel just right for my tastes. MacOS, to me, feels like a clunker out of the box.
It feels like they're just being stubborn with the window management. Like they chose how it should all work ages ago, and they don't want to admit that some of the choices are bad. They drug their feet on right-click forever as well.
I have a few quality of life apps that take me a couple minutes to set up on a new machine. I spent like 2 months debugging bluetooth problems on my arch machine. Don't even mention Windows in my presence.
macOS is not usuable without a proper tiling window manager. You double click on a window and it enlarges, but doesn't take all of the screen. Seriously, wtf?
You fail to understand the difference between ‘usable’ and ‘works according to my exotic preferences’.
If you ‘need’ a tiling window manager, MacOS is not for you, Apple is never going to add one and is only going to cripple attempts by third parties to do so.
You fail to understand the difference between owning an OS and merely using it the way Apple intended. macOS is notorious for poor handling of windows, I don't need to explain that.
No, MacOS is an opinionated OS, well known for the droves of armchair UI designers smugly criticizing it while they keep buying the hardware. It has been that way since forever.
I know very few people on any desktop os that don’t use plugins or third party apps to customize their experience but it’s only when macOS is discussed that it gets painted as something outrageous.
Have you ever noticed that you can't cut and paste files with right click or the drop down menu in OSX?
It's been a few years since I've used OSX, but every version I've ever tried has this intentional bug. I say intentional because when I first got a mac in the 10.4 days I noticed that 'cut' was greyed out in the menu so I thoughtfully filed a bug report. To their credit they did answer the bug report several years later but they explained that they would not fix this as it is desired behaviour.
I think this may be a misunderstanding on your part (no disrespect). Cut/paste works slightly differently on macOS compared to Windows. There's no actual concept of "cut". You just "copy" whatever files you want. When you're ready to paste, you can hit Cmd+V to "paste" or Cmd+alt+V to "paste and remove the original file(s)".
The benefit is that you don't have to decide whether you want to just "copy" or "cut" before you're ready to "paste", which makes a lot of sense if you're not coming from a Windows background. But yes, migrating from Windows to macOS makes this feel confusing.
If you want to copy a file in OSX with your mouse you use the menu bar whereas if you want to cut and paste (move) a file in OSX with your mouse then you use the two open windows method that you describe.
They are both very different and one isn't so discoverable.
What's the worst about this is that it's purely a choice and Apple intentionally greys out the cut option in the menu bar.
The mac model since the beginning is direct manipulation, not "select subject then apply verb". Obviously there are plenty of exceptions (for example text editing does include cut/paste!) but that's the baseline approach. And Windows made some specific design decisions to be different from Apple to reduce conflict (i.e. lawsuits).
In addition the UX research on direct manipulation vs select-and-operate seems to have shown that the mac made the right call, but the only work I've read in that area was done long ago.
This BTW is why shift-select doesn't work in icon mode (as a different commenter posted) because it was confusing for some people in a way that just drawing a selection for icons is not.
On my Macbook/Trackpad I use 'Enable dragging > without drag lock'. The best setting i've ever found in macOS, it takes a little getting used to but it's so much better;
' > System Preferences > Accessibility > Pointer Control > Trackpad Options > Enable Dragging. > without drag lock'
It basically allows you to drag everything without 'force clicking' the trackpad. Instead you can now just 'tap twice + hold finger down' and drag.
I'm surprised no one has mentioned https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai -- it takes a little work to setup but it's well worth the effort. It's keyboard centric and auto lays out windows nicely.
Something I use all the time to handle applications which might have multiple instances opened at once. For example, web browsers.
Press CMD-TAB to bring up the list of opened applications and then pressing UP or DOWN over a selected application to show the opened instances. After that use LEFT or RIGHT to select the instance you want to show.
You can also use cmd-` (the `/~ button between shift and z on my keyboard, left of 1 on others) to switch between windows of the currently activated application.
Another question - I've looked before for any documentation on building tools for Mac, and can't really figure out anything besides "run this xyz app to trigger an AppleScript and do magic".
Does anyone know of any Swift APIs for interacting at the level of the OS itself?
Would Hammerspoon fit your use case? It lets you write lua to interact with all kinds of system APIs. It's roughly the first thing I install on a new mac.
If you want to put together keyboard-shortcut-triggered automations on a Mac without any third party software, I think you have to create an automator service and then assign it a shortcut in System Preferences > Keyboard > Services.
I know you asked about Swift, but...
If you're ok with third party software, I would recommend keyboard maestro. In addition to triggers (keyboard-based and others), it offers a pretty high level API over the macOS automation stuff you'd typically hack together with AppleScript, such as "activate app", "bring window at index i to front", "simulate keystroke", "insert text", "move the mouse to x,y relative to Element", "run JS in frontmost browser tab", etc. And that's only roughly 5% of what it can do.
With keyboard maestro I don't see much point in writing one's own native automation apps. The APIs it exposes are just as powerful as what you could write yourself and a heck of a lot easier to use.
I use the feature with the Sway window manager for Linux. With Sway, you can move floating windows like this, and you can also resize or move tiled windows by clicking anywhere in the window while holding down a key.
Sway and i3 stand out to me as “correct” window managers. You get the upsides of tiling (windows don’t occlude one another, no fiddling with exact window placement) but without the typical cost of memorizing loads of keyboard shortcuts (though key combos are still an option).
It’s so intuitive to drag around and resize windows with the little preview outlines showing where the window will end up when you release it. I wish the paradigm were more popular; once you’ve tried it going back to floating windows on macOS or the like feels laborious, even with 3rd party tools. I even feel like some simplified version would work great on touch devices like iPads. It wouldn’t be that different from SplitView, other than supporting more than two windows.
Yes, and i3wm from which sway was modelled from. KDE Plasma also has the same functionality from the default keybindings (mod+lclick to move, mod+rclick resize)
This really should be a standard feature, everyone seems to have their own window manager for Mac desktops. I use an app called Window Mover that's so old the developer and dmg can't be found anywhere online, but it still works flawlessly on Monterey! Much more minimal than some of the populat apps so I keep the package handy. Using other Macs I'm struck by how clumsy it is not to have global window drag to move or resize. Fn is my favorite modifier since it so rarely interacts with the cursor (unlike other mod keys when using eg Photoshop).
Wish you could change the key combo for this, I've been using a long-abandoned tool called Zooom2 to do this with `fn` (and `fn` + `control` to resize`) and fear losing it on my next Mac if it's an M1.
This is exactly when I can't deal with a mac as a desktop. My 30 year old muscle memories created in the late 80s with TWM use alt (on a std kbd, would be cmd on mac) + mouse button 1..3 to move, resize and iconify windows. Kde supports this, ldxe supports this, etc. I tried and abandoned using a mac as a desktop ~15 years ago because I didn't have this feature, and I didn't have true focus-follows-mouse.
I don't want to use some app that could be abandoned and end up like the parent, this kind of configurability should be a core OS feature.
Oddly, on a latop its fine, I somehow have a different set of muscle memories for touchpads.
I acknowledge that I'm still young, but I feel like Apple is introducing changes at a good pace.
UI elements and layouts have stayed consistent. [^1]
Radical changes are usually confined to single apps, and if there is a f*up like Safari 15, they provide a fallback option and quickly revise their decision.
Providing endless backwards-compatibility only bloats the interface and makes it harder to learn for new users. The goal must be slow but steady progress, so that everyone can adapt.
Zooom2 allows for moving/resizing of background windows. Last I checked, BetterTouchTool window manipulation required clicking the window which brings it to the front.
As a mac user, and more importantly, as an admirer of their UX design, I have to agree with this. Not perhaps specifically this point, but in general with the keyboard.
Muscle memory is not to be fucked with. Cmd vs Ctrl still gets me now and then, and even if it's rarer now, I can feel the cognitive context switch in my brain as I switch between devices. Sometimes it's better to play along even if you think you have a better way. Or at least offer the option (there is a time and place for spacebar heating).
I've also been hand-copying my Zooom2 app from machine to machine.
On my new M1, I am using Hookshot (which apparently is now Rectangle Pro https://rectangleapp.com/pro ) – it has support for key combos to Move and Resize windows.
The only downside is that Hookshot/Rectangle focuses the window when you do this, which Zooom2 did not.
Same, but Rosetta 2 won't be around forever. Dreading the day Zooom/2 stops working and I can't find a replacement that lets one move and resize background windows.
By default, command-click enables "focus follows mouse"-like behavior, allowing you to manipulate the widgets of background windows without bringing them to the foreground.
Like moving it accidentally clicking on the chome was not enough! This is the worst feature of macOS - a windows should be moved only by dragging on an obvious area like the title bar. Sometimes I just want to switch the focus and click on a window and it accidentally moves in a random direction by a few pixels!
I wish there was a feature or an app that would prevent moving and lock windows in place instead of this.
For example, Spark (email) annoys me cause you can drag the window by dragging the search box, so sometimes clicking that to focus causes the window to shift by a couple pixels
Anyone know a tool it will automatically arrange all open windows of an application so that they are all of the same size? I often have many open Finder windows, and then arrange them manually on my screen to fill the available space.
Not exactly the same, but Alt+Space, M (selecting Move from the system menu) also moves the mouse pointer to the title bar so that you can immediately use the mouse to drag from there (or alternatively move the window using the arrow keys, of course).
Slightly related, I always use Alt+Space, C to close windows, as I find that easier to press than Alt+F4.
I use zooom2 which is no longer maintained but it allows me to drag/resize windows while holding cmd+shift, option+shift. A feature that existed in windowmaker since the 90s.
Is this the default on Monterey? This behavior is enabled on my system, but I'm 100% sure I've never executed the terminal command from the linked article.
I just tried it on a stock machine and it is not. Do you have any third party system utilities on yours? Or are you clicking near the (larger) title bar area?
I am windows user since windows 95. But it has slowly become a mess since it's peak at Windows 2000. I am currently testing macos. I bought a Mac mini. First thing I learned is that my existing monitor just won't work perfectly cause it is not retina and second there is not easy way to click windows in place!! So now I need to buy very expensive monitor or just get an imac and install a 3rd party app to manage windows. Hmm. I will still do these things. The rest of experience has been good.
MacOS is full of these UI "tricks" that remain undiscovered by 99% of users because they are:
- not obvious
- not discoverable
For example: if you hold option when you click the Wifi button, you actually can view a lot of information about the Wifi networks you are connecting to. This is invaluable when you're dealing with a Wifi issue, and completely undiscoverable!
I think MacOS is a perfectly usable operating system... If you're god and can somehow "just know" all of these hidden secrets.
The option key works on many menubar items and also on menus.
For menus you can even press the button while it's open to see the items that change their behaviour with the option key. And it sometimes extends to keyboard shortcuts. For example, for logging out you can use shift-cmd-q and you will get a window with a choice, holding option along will log you out directly. In the menu this is shown by having '...' or not.
And on the topic of windows, you can cmd-click the titlebar of a window that is not the front most one and move it around whilst keeping it in the background.
It's an interesting definition of "usable" that is qualified on behavior that so many people didn't even know existed, it's worth the top of the front page of HN. In at least some of these cases, the tricks are hidden because they're not useful, and thus don't pay their cognitive freight, for most people.
I suspect it's around 1%, and most of those 1% already know about the hold option trick (which works on many menus). I agree with you it's frustrating how this useful information is obscured, but I also think this is a reasonable compromise for Apple as they try to balance power with usability and simplicity for the sake of the non-technical majority.
To be fair: Most of them are documented in Apples manual. If you open the macOS help on "Manage app windows" you will find all the tricks about moving and resizing discussed here. Or your WiFi trick is mentioned in the help article about debugging your WiFi connection.
The builtin help and documentation on macOS is surprisingly good. Especially if you compare it to Windows. Today was the first day I looked at it. The last 10 years on Windows taught me that the help outside of technet and Office is useless and I assumed this is also true for macOS. I guess I was wrong and I should have read the manual.
I agree. A good GUI can be all things for all users. Keyboard shortcuts can be unknown to a user when they need it the most, and accidentally triggered by a clumsy novice user who could damage their system configuration. Apple's competitors have approaches that, in my opinion, are much better:
In Android, Google often hides advanced functionality under overflow menus. These menus have a 3-dot icon (implying more menu options) or a settings gear, so most users will check them when the visible options aren't satisfactory. In recent Android releases, a lot of settings have clear and concise descriptions so users can understand their impact.
In Windows, Microsoft prefers to use a "properties" or "advanced options" menu, which also works well. If you can't find a desired option in the surface menus, you can dig into those menus.
Both of these approaches do a good job of offering more settings when needed while also warning users that the options can cause undesired effects. Android has clear settings descriptions so it's difficult to make a mistake, and when important settings like a debugging dump are triggered, will also display a clear warning about private information or breaking apps. Windows uses an "advanced" menu that can warn away "mom and pop"/novice users who could dig themselves into a hole. In both cases, there's some precautions to prevent users from mistakenly changing critical settings.
That Wi-Fi button truck also works with the volume and Bluetooth buttons. You can also quickly toggle focus mode by option clicking on the time (or the Notification Center button)
It’s also a normal click in macOS to change the output device. Option + Click is only needed when you want to change the input device without changing the output device
Interesting, on my macbook it doesn't display anything. Must just be hiding output options because I have only the built in speakers. Shucks I can't delete or edit the comment now :(
With a wide range of technical savviness among users, macOS tries its best to make everyone happy and IMO does a pretty decent job at it. It's loved by programmers and grandmas alike. Can't really say that about Linux or Windows.
My wife is non-technical and uses Linux Desktop (KDE) every day and prefers it to the sometimes weirdness of Windows. We never used Mac and have no desire to.
Personally I use Spectacle [0] and a few handy shortcuts to move and resize windows. For me, it's just enough customization without going over the board with scripting a window manager from scratch. As I just discovered, Spectacle is no longer actively maintained, but it still works just fine. The recommended alternative from their readme is Rectangle [1].
The title bar is small and it gets smaller every time our resolution gets higher. In Linux window managers, alt+click anywhere in the window and drag has been a standard way to move windows with or without handles since probably two decades, I know it doesn't seem like much but this is a major "creature comfort" thing for me, a Linux expat now using mostly MacOS.
It mostly takes care of snapping and resizing windows with hot keys, but has a less obvious feature in preferences to use mouse.
My setup is: CMD+SHIFT will move any window under mouse pointer CMD+SHIFT+CTRL will resize any window under mouse pointer