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Whereas on macOS if you have a use-case not supported by Apple, you're either out of luck completely, or it's going to cost you. macOS still doesn't have even w

Whereas on macOS if you have a use-case not supported by Apple, you're either out of luck completely, or it's going to cost you. macOS still doesn't have even window snapping, nor a decent file manager.

snazz 7y ago
It has an awkward pseudo-tiling “snapping” thing that’s useless compared to a real tiling WM or even Windows. Do macOS users manually drag their windows around and align them just right to fit everything on the display?
- mplanchard 7y ago
  I use a very nice utility called Magnet for this. https://magnet.crowdcafe.com/ https://magnet.crowdcafe.com/
- asdff 7y ago
  That's pretty much what I do. It's a different way of thinking about windows. A tiler is more like feeds from a security camera, where you have everything in focus at once and your gaze shifts accordingly, but your attention is nonetheless divided among however many things you are tiling and compromises are made if you have a smaller screen. A mac desktop behaves very much like an actual desk. My windows are like papers, sized as the devs intended or how the paper is laid out and cut. Sometimes things are in neat little piles or spread around on an external monitor. Overlapping happens but isn't a deal breaker, just like having one paper slightly on top of another on your desk. Swiping with three fingers spreads out all my papers on my desk, and shows me what's going on with my other desks or what I've got stashed in my dock. On my macbook, most of my windows are shifted to the right side of the screen, exposing about an inch and a half of desktop containing all my aliases to currently relevant files, drives, and folders. Icons are sized down to line height to maximize space. Sometimes I want to keep that stretch open and the files handy, other times not. I've tried tilers and I could see how some people like them and could get quick with them, but they just weren't great for how I personally manage and think about using my computer. I'm a papers all over the desk kind of guy, not a security guard. I also have a 13" display, sometimes in practice smaller if I want my desktop files exposed, so tiling on top of each other makes windows too short, and tiling to the sides often makes them too skinny. I'm sure on a 17" laptop or a large monitor tiling isn't so constricting. Lots of apps these days are optimized for using most of a 13" display size, and lots of websites turn into a mobile site if your window is too small. I was spending more time fighting with the tiler, cycling through different tiling layouts, and changing parameters than I was just quickly and loosely dragging windows around as needs changed (After all, it only takes <1 second to move a window, and <1 second to resize, and I don't have to think about it at all, just like laying down a piece of paper on top of my desk). And I was using the tiler that was supposedly the best and most like the famous linux tilers (amethyst).
  - snazz 7y ago
    Thank you for explaining so well. I can now understand your perspective much better.

snazz 7y ago

It has an awkward pseudo-tiling “snapping” thing that’s useless compared to a real tiling WM or even Windows. Do macOS users manually drag their windows around and align them just right to fit everything on the display?

mplanchard 7y ago
I use a very nice utility called Magnet for this. https://magnet.crowdcafe.com/ https://magnet.crowdcafe.com/
asdff 7y ago
That's pretty much what I do. It's a different way of thinking about windows. A tiler is more like feeds from a security camera, where you have everything in focus at once and your gaze shifts accordingly, but your attention is nonetheless divided among however many things you are tiling and compromises are made if you have a smaller screen. A mac desktop behaves very much like an actual desk. My windows are like papers, sized as the devs intended or how the paper is laid out and cut. Sometimes things are in neat little piles or spread around on an external monitor. Overlapping happens but isn't a deal breaker, just like having one paper slightly on top of another on your desk. Swiping with three fingers spreads out all my papers on my desk, and shows me what's going on with my other desks or what I've got stashed in my dock. On my macbook, most of my windows are shifted to the right side of the screen, exposing about an inch and a half of desktop containing all my aliases to currently relevant files, drives, and folders. Icons are sized down to line height to maximize space. Sometimes I want to keep that stretch open and the files handy, other times not. I've tried tilers and I could see how some people like them and could get quick with them, but they just weren't great for how I personally manage and think about using my computer. I'm a papers all over the desk kind of guy, not a security guard. I also have a 13" display, sometimes in practice smaller if I want my desktop files exposed, so tiling on top of each other makes windows too short, and tiling to the sides often makes them too skinny. I'm sure on a 17" laptop or a large monitor tiling isn't so constricting. Lots of apps these days are optimized for using most of a 13" display size, and lots of websites turn into a mobile site if your window is too small. I was spending more time fighting with the tiler, cycling through different tiling layouts, and changing parameters than I was just quickly and loosely dragging windows around as needs changed (After all, it only takes <1 second to move a window, and <1 second to resize, and I don't have to think about it at all, just like laying down a piece of paper on top of my desk). And I was using the tiler that was supposedly the best and most like the famous linux tilers (amethyst).
- snazz 7y ago
  Thank you for explaining so well. I can now understand your perspective much better.