6 ms·

Do people know about CMD+Tilde to switch windows within an app? CMD+Tab to the App and Tilde to the Window? It’s not mentioned in the READMEs description of how

by donatj 7y ago

Do people know about CMD+Tilde to switch windows within an app? CMD+Tab to the App and Tilde to the Window? It’s not mentioned in the READMEs description of how macOS tab switching works, so I’m curious if the author knows.

t34543 7y ago
I use witch and bind it to opt-tab, very happy.
thiht 7y ago
That's not really the same thing, it's a second shortcut for basically the same action. It's really not that good, it's far away from Tab and I don't ever remember that it exists. I remapped it to Option+Tab but it's not good either.
- donatj 7y ago
  Far away from tab? It’s a single key up, at least on a US Qwerty keyboard. Update: Looking into non-us keyboards, this is way less convenient. Italian keyboards don’t even have a tilde? How do they program?
  - mfontani 7y ago
    alt+126 for tilde alt+123 for { (or ralt+shift+è) alt+125 for } (or ralt+shift+"+") ... hence why as a young programmer the best ever present I got from my mother was a US layout keyboard, and never looked back. With AltGr deadkeys I can even write things that are Italian, like "È", but cannot be done on an Italian keyboard (there is no such letter on the keyboard, and one has to rely on the word processing sofware to properly capitalise it if "è" comes after an end of sentence). Italian keyboards are shit for writing Italian, _and_ for programming.
  - aruggirello 7y ago
    On Windows (which I left almost two decades ago) the keyboard has always been a nightmare. Typing Alt+126 may solve the issue with tilde, but you can't possibly learn tens or hundreds of codes you might need if you happen to do any significant work on the keyboard. The Character map provides some relief, but the keyboard is a second-class citizen on Windows IMHO. On Linux, quite comfortably, thanks to the power of Alt modifiers (which I first got acquainted with on the Amiga), tilde is just Alt+"ì". BTW I don't have to recall ASCII codes of accented characters or leave the keyboard unless I have to type some really odd ones. I just type Alt+<accent symbol>. Thus I can type foreign words like Åland or Khazad-dûm in a fraction of a second with ease from the comfort of my keyboard... Würstels, crême caramel... È facile. Yes "È". Italian users on Windows always have issues typing uppercase accented characters... you can easily spot Italian Linux users by their uppercase text: PERCHÈ È COSÌ FACILE? Most (Windows) users will instead type: PERCHè è COSì. The most intrepid ones might even resort to "'" - PERCHE' E' COSI'. So sad. My ~2 cents.
- diffeomorphism 7y ago
  > it's far away from Tab Wait, it is not Alt+"key above tab" by default regardless of layout (like for example in gnome)?
  - winstonschmidt 7y ago
    Sadly, no. I had to remap I manually to cmd+^ on my German keyboard.
  - ymolodtsov 7y ago
    Not on ISO keyboards, which is every European language at least.
lwouis 7y ago
Author here. I'm familiar with this. I have rebinded these, but basically I use them everyday for tab switching, for example within 1 chrome window, of within 1 terminal window. The reason I made this window-switcher is that sometimes I have something I know I opened a while ago, but I don't want to think about which app holds it, then use the macOS app-switcher (command-tab) to switch to that app, then select the tab/window (with the mouse, or by cycling alt-`). I want a big mosaic with my windows, and instantly identify and focus on that window I remember the visual traits of. macOS offers exposé for that purpose, but it is unfortunately not keyboard operable. Also I prefer the Windows approach of having a the thumbnails on a timeline so my eyes have some references instead of scanning the whole screen every time with exposé.
- pazimzadeh 7y ago
  I love your app, but unfortunately Control+Tab is the same shortcut used system-wide to move between tabs. Could you add the ability to choose a custom shortcut?
  - savolai 7y ago
    +1 for this. Now my browser experience is broken. Or is there a way to remap tab switching shortcut in firefox? Seems silly to do that though. Actually, alt+tab seems to do nothing on my macOS. Why not use that? I'd actually have the same shortcuts as on windows, which I also use. I'd also love to adjust the delay. Seems very slow now. Otherwise, this is beautiful.
    - pazimzadeh 7y ago
      Alt+tab would be amazing.
- monting 7y ago
  >macOS offers exposé for that purpose, but it is unfortunately not keyboard operable. Agree with this. Ctrl + ↑ triggers exposé. But the windows cannot be selected with the keyboard, unlike Ctrl + ↓, which triggers exposé(?) within the current app, and one can select a window using arrow keys.
ymolodtsov 7y ago
That shortcut doesn't work at all when you have windows of the same app scattered across multiple spaces.
mollusk 7y ago
I didn't, and when I tried it out, it wasn't working for me, so I looked it up and apparently others have had the same issue. [0] The Shortcut was set to cmd+` in system preferences, but it didn't do anything. Manually entering cmd+` as the shortcut fixed it. 0: https://superuser.com/questions/186863/command-backtick-isnt-working-to-cycle-through-windows-in-some-apps-including https://superuser.com/questions/186863/command-backtick-isnt...
- fimdomeio 7y ago
  cmd+` It's always one of the first things I do on a new install remap to cmd+'. Little bug for international keyboards.
frou_dh 7y ago
Somewhat related... if you're using a Mac and haven't taken the time to understand the difference between Hide (Cmd-H) and Minimize (Cmd-M) then you're missing out.
- climb_stealth 7y ago
  Would you care to elaborate? I'm not an expert and minimising has always been this frustrating accidental combination where you have to use the cursor to get the window back up from the dock and command+tab doesn't work anymore. [0] is the first result on stackoverflow but it still seems unclear to me. [0] https://superuser.com/a/51775 https://superuser.com/a/51775
  - frou_dh 7y ago
    MacOS has a much stronger distinction between applications and windows than MS-Windows does. The Cmd-Tab switcher deals with apps, not windows. Similarly, Hide (Cmd-H) and Hide Others (Opt-Cmd-H) operate on app(s), while Minimize (Cmd-M) operates on a window. When an app is Hidden, it will come back into view when you select it using the Cmd-Tab switcher. The gist is that people who aren't experienced with MacOS overuse Minimize and underuse Hide/HideOthers. And sadly seem prone to being obnoxious in their ignorance on the subject [0] [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21256915 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21256915
    - climb_stealth 7y ago
      Thanks, that is a great explanation! I will give it a try and see if it improves my life at work.
      - basjacobs 7y ago
        There is in fact a way to 'un-minimize' a window [0]: Use cmd+tab to go to the application, while still holding cmd press alt, and release cmd. It helped me out a couple of times when I accidentally minimized a window. [0] https://discussions.apple.com/thread/1615114 https://discussions.apple.com/thread/1615114
mFixman 7y ago
That still makes it impossible to switch from a particular window of an app to a particular window of another. My biggest issue with Cmd+Tab is the surprise factor. Pressing that shortcut may do nothing, raise a window, raise a lot of windows, restore a minimised window, or move to another workspace; there's no way to know what will happen until you press it.
woutr_be 7y ago
I've used MacOS for almost 10 years, and I wasn't aware of cmd+`. My pain point with cmd+tab has always been that it's just switching between applications, not windows.
rcarmo 7y ago
I remap that to Option+Tab and never looked back. It's trivial to change between apps using Cmd+Tab and between individual windows "inside" the app with Option+Tab... Can't really see much point in over-engineering the solution.
deathanatos 7y ago
Yes; it isn't the same. Cmd+backtick swaps only within an application; Alt+Tab on Windows is between all windows of all applications. Window's Alt+Tab also causes the Z-ordering of the windows to be most-recently-used. OS X's Cmd+Tab will surface all windows of a particular application to the top of the stack in their relative order, so if you have say, two browser windows, one you want and one that's been backgrounded with some long running train of thought, that (currently irrelevant) window is surface over the rest of whatever you're working on. Often I find this just gets in the way. The Windows model more closely matches what I as a user want; when I'm switching, I have a particular window in mind, not any window, not all windows. Alt+Tab makes that more easily accomplished than Cmd+Tab/Cmd+`. OS X's WM also seems to have an issue where, for whatever reason, when I Cmd+Tab to an application, it'll choose not the last active window, but one window in particular, even if that window is on a different, not focused workspace and there are windows from that application in this workspace. For whatever reason, it really likes my personal Chrome profile at work, at will switch to it at all costs, which is Grade A annoying during a presentation.
- behnamoh 7y ago
  The strangest part of mission control is when you drag some window thumbnail, all of the thumbnails get smaller. If you keep doing this, they get infinitely smaller and smaller. The first time I saw this I thought it might be a bug, but after a few years it hasn't been fixed and I wonder if there is some reason for that.
rsync 7y ago
"Do people know about CMD+Tilde to switch windows within an app? CMD+Tab to the App and Tilde to the Window?" I am perfectly happy with the default behavior of CMD+TAB for switching between apps - mainly because, as in every other DE, CMD+TAB has a memory and will allow you to toggle immediately between "last used". So, no matter what order the app-stack is in, you can switch to some app with CMD+TAB and then rapidly switch back and forth. BUT, CMD+` has no such memory. You cannot switch to a different window of an app and then rapid-fire CMD+` back and forth. Put simply: the behavior of CMD+` and CMD+TAB are different, but shouldn't be. This has been the case since forever (in my case, Leopard) and it makes me wonder what people who actually work at Apple are doing with their computers that they did not hate-fix this 11 years ago.

by donatj 7y ago

t34543 7y ago

I use witch and bind it to opt-tab, very happy.

thiht 7y ago

That's not really the same thing, it's a second shortcut for basically the same action. It's really not that good, it's far away from Tab and I don't ever remember that it exists. I remapped it to Option+Tab but it's not good either.

donatj 7y ago
Far away from tab? It’s a single key up, at least on a US Qwerty keyboard. Update: Looking into non-us keyboards, this is way less convenient. Italian keyboards don’t even have a tilde? How do they program?
- mfontani 7y ago
  alt+126 for tilde alt+123 for { (or ralt+shift+è) alt+125 for } (or ralt+shift+"+") ... hence why as a young programmer the best ever present I got from my mother was a US layout keyboard, and never looked back. With AltGr deadkeys I can even write things that are Italian, like "È", but cannot be done on an Italian keyboard (there is no such letter on the keyboard, and one has to rely on the word processing sofware to properly capitalise it if "è" comes after an end of sentence). Italian keyboards are shit for writing Italian, _and_ for programming.
- aruggirello 7y ago
  On Windows (which I left almost two decades ago) the keyboard has always been a nightmare. Typing Alt+126 may solve the issue with tilde, but you can't possibly learn tens or hundreds of codes you might need if you happen to do any significant work on the keyboard. The Character map provides some relief, but the keyboard is a second-class citizen on Windows IMHO. On Linux, quite comfortably, thanks to the power of Alt modifiers (which I first got acquainted with on the Amiga), tilde is just Alt+"ì". BTW I don't have to recall ASCII codes of accented characters or leave the keyboard unless I have to type some really odd ones. I just type Alt+<accent symbol>. Thus I can type foreign words like Åland or Khazad-dûm in a fraction of a second with ease from the comfort of my keyboard... Würstels, crême caramel... È facile. Yes "È". Italian users on Windows always have issues typing uppercase accented characters... you can easily spot Italian Linux users by their uppercase text: PERCHÈ È COSÌ FACILE? Most (Windows) users will instead type: PERCHè è COSì. The most intrepid ones might even resort to "'" - PERCHE' E' COSI'. So sad. My ~2 cents.
diffeomorphism 7y ago
> it's far away from Tab Wait, it is not Alt+"key above tab" by default regardless of layout (like for example in gnome)?
- winstonschmidt 7y ago
  Sadly, no. I had to remap I manually to cmd+^ on my German keyboard.
- ymolodtsov 7y ago
  Not on ISO keyboards, which is every European language at least.

lwouis 7y ago

Author here. I'm familiar with this. I have rebinded these, but basically I use them everyday for tab switching, for example within 1 chrome window, of within 1 terminal window. The reason I made this window-switcher is that sometimes I have something I know I opened a while ago, but I don't want to think about which app holds it, then use the macOS app-switcher (command-tab) to switch to that app, then select the tab/window (with the mouse, or by cycling alt-`). I want a big mosaic with my windows, and instantly identify and focus on that window I remember the visual traits of. macOS offers exposé for that purpose, but it is unfortunately not keyboard operable. Also I prefer the Windows approach of having a the thumbnails on a timeline so my eyes have some references instead of scanning the whole screen every time with exposé.

pazimzadeh 7y ago
I love your app, but unfortunately Control+Tab is the same shortcut used system-wide to move between tabs. Could you add the ability to choose a custom shortcut?
- savolai 7y ago
  +1 for this. Now my browser experience is broken. Or is there a way to remap tab switching shortcut in firefox? Seems silly to do that though. Actually, alt+tab seems to do nothing on my macOS. Why not use that? I'd actually have the same shortcuts as on windows, which I also use. I'd also love to adjust the delay. Seems very slow now. Otherwise, this is beautiful.
  - pazimzadeh 7y ago
    Alt+tab would be amazing.
monting 7y ago
>macOS offers exposé for that purpose, but it is unfortunately not keyboard operable. Agree with this. Ctrl + ↑ triggers exposé. But the windows cannot be selected with the keyboard, unlike Ctrl + ↓, which triggers exposé(?) within the current app, and one can select a window using arrow keys.

ymolodtsov 7y ago

That shortcut doesn't work at all when you have windows of the same app scattered across multiple spaces.

mollusk 7y ago

I didn't, and when I tried it out, it wasn't working for me, so I looked it up and apparently others have had the same issue. [0] The Shortcut was set to cmd+` in system preferences, but it didn't do anything. Manually entering cmd+` as the shortcut fixed it. 0: https://superuser.com/questions/186863/command-backtick-isnt-working-to-cycle-through-windows-in-some-apps-including https://superuser.com/questions/186863/command-backtick-isnt...

fimdomeio 7y ago
cmd+` It's always one of the first things I do on a new install remap to cmd+'. Little bug for international keyboards.

frou_dh 7y ago

Somewhat related... if you're using a Mac and haven't taken the time to understand the difference between Hide (Cmd-H) and Minimize (Cmd-M) then you're missing out.

climb_stealth 7y ago
Would you care to elaborate? I'm not an expert and minimising has always been this frustrating accidental combination where you have to use the cursor to get the window back up from the dock and command+tab doesn't work anymore. [0] is the first result on stackoverflow but it still seems unclear to me. [0] https://superuser.com/a/51775 https://superuser.com/a/51775
- frou_dh 7y ago
  MacOS has a much stronger distinction between applications and windows than MS-Windows does. The Cmd-Tab switcher deals with apps, not windows. Similarly, Hide (Cmd-H) and Hide Others (Opt-Cmd-H) operate on app(s), while Minimize (Cmd-M) operates on a window. When an app is Hidden, it will come back into view when you select it using the Cmd-Tab switcher. The gist is that people who aren't experienced with MacOS overuse Minimize and underuse Hide/HideOthers. And sadly seem prone to being obnoxious in their ignorance on the subject [0] [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21256915 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21256915
  - climb_stealth 7y ago
    Thanks, that is a great explanation! I will give it a try and see if it improves my life at work.
    - basjacobs 7y ago
      There is in fact a way to 'un-minimize' a window [0]: Use cmd+tab to go to the application, while still holding cmd press alt, and release cmd. It helped me out a couple of times when I accidentally minimized a window. [0] https://discussions.apple.com/thread/1615114 https://discussions.apple.com/thread/1615114

mFixman 7y ago

That still makes it impossible to switch from a particular window of an app to a particular window of another. My biggest issue with Cmd+Tab is the surprise factor. Pressing that shortcut may do nothing, raise a window, raise a lot of windows, restore a minimised window, or move to another workspace; there's no way to know what will happen until you press it.

woutr_be 7y ago

I've used MacOS for almost 10 years, and I wasn't aware of cmd+`. My pain point with cmd+tab has always been that it's just switching between applications, not windows.

rcarmo 7y ago

I remap that to Option+Tab and never looked back. It's trivial to change between apps using Cmd+Tab and between individual windows "inside" the app with Option+Tab... Can't really see much point in over-engineering the solution.

deathanatos 7y ago

Yes; it isn't the same. Cmd+backtick swaps only within an application; Alt+Tab on Windows is between all windows of all applications. Window's Alt+Tab also causes the Z-ordering of the windows to be most-recently-used. OS X's Cmd+Tab will surface all windows of a particular application to the top of the stack in their relative order, so if you have say, two browser windows, one you want and one that's been backgrounded with some long running train of thought, that (currently irrelevant) window is surface over the rest of whatever you're working on. Often I find this just gets in the way. The Windows model more closely matches what I as a user want; when I'm switching, I have a particular window in mind, not any window, not all windows. Alt+Tab makes that more easily accomplished than Cmd+Tab/Cmd+`. OS X's WM also seems to have an issue where, for whatever reason, when I Cmd+Tab to an application, it'll choose not the last active window, but one window in particular, even if that window is on a different, not focused workspace and there are windows from that application in this workspace. For whatever reason, it really likes my personal Chrome profile at work, at will switch to it at all costs, which is Grade A annoying during a presentation.

behnamoh 7y ago
The strangest part of mission control is when you drag some window thumbnail, all of the thumbnails get smaller. If you keep doing this, they get infinitely smaller and smaller. The first time I saw this I thought it might be a bug, but after a few years it hasn't been fixed and I wonder if there is some reason for that.

rsync 7y ago

"Do people know about CMD+Tilde to switch windows within an app? CMD+Tab to the App and Tilde to the Window?" I am perfectly happy with the default behavior of CMD+TAB for switching between apps - mainly because, as in every other DE, CMD+TAB has a memory and will allow you to toggle immediately between "last used". So, no matter what order the app-stack is in, you can switch to some app with CMD+TAB and then rapidly switch back and forth. BUT, CMD+` has no such memory. You cannot switch to a different window of an app and then rapid-fire CMD+` back and forth. Put simply: the behavior of CMD+` and CMD+TAB are different, but shouldn't be. This has been the case since forever (in my case, Leopard) and it makes me wonder what people who actually work at Apple are doing with their computers that they did not hate-fix this 11 years ago.