28 ms·

macOS Setup after 15 Years of Linux

347 points by def- 5y ago

olliej 5y ago
"apple's builtin music player" Are they talking about iTunes? oof. I'm an apple all the way person, and even I would say "noooooooooo" if you don't have an existing collection of iTunes music
- labster 5y ago
  May I ask what you use as a music player on Mac? Are we stuck loading music on an iPhone with iTunes? I remember the days when iTunes was good and snappy, but that was centuries ago
  - okprod 5y ago
    cmus works on Mac
  - olliej 5y ago
    I use iTunes because I have an itms library. The app is still super frustrating.
- Klonoar 5y ago
  It hasn't been iTunes for a few years now. It's literally just called "Music", which is likely why the author just said music player.
  - olliej 5y ago
    oh good point - it's just permanently iTunes in my head
- Yizahi 5y ago
  What is people problem with iTunes? I've used it voluntarily as a main music player and catalog app on Windows since Win2k. Amazing app, very nice interface, a lot of options, stable. I don't use it now only because I've switched to Spotify streaming.
softwarebeware 5y ago
Give https://rectangleapp.com/ https://rectangleapp.com/ a try if you want a window manager that can place your windows around the screen nicely.
- chrenn 5y ago
  Also check out https://highlyopinionated.co/swish/ https://highlyopinionated.co/swish/ for a gesture-based window manager by swiping on titlebars. It also features snake-selector keyboard shortcuts, so there's really nothing to memorize. Disclaimer: I made this.
- kitten_mittens_ 5y ago
  I've been using https://apps.apple.com/us/app/magnet/id441258766?mt=12 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/magnet/id441258766?mt=12 with my ultra wide I got for work. I like that it lets me do things in thirds.
  - camkego 5y ago
    As a Linux to Mac adopter I also use Magnet. No relationship to company.
  - movedx 5y ago
    So does Rectangle. I'm using it right now on a 49" U/W, with this Firefox window on the right-hand third, VSCode in the center third, and Discord in the top-left 6th, and Dune (2021) playing in IINA in the bottom-left 6th :-) All tied to global keyboard shortcuts too. Free, open source, and does exactly what you've asked for.
    - k1rcher 5y ago
      This sounds really nice… I’m now quite keen on looking into ultrawides.
- dtctech 5y ago
  I recently started using MacOS. Rectangle is one the most useful apps I’ve come across… and free. I like that you can add padding to the windows. With keybind customization it’s a nice replacement for a tiling window manager.
SavantIdiot 5y ago
I've been using Moom since 2013 as a window tiler on macOS. That combined with the new window snapping is much better than macOS tiling IMHO.
shmerl 5y ago
I wouldn't trade KDE for macOS. Not even close.
knowmad 5y ago
Hammerspoon has been really helpful in tiling windows with my keyboard and adding keybings like "jump to application". Also, there are a lot of useful plugins that add even more functionality like a fuzzy searchable clipboard history.
- aulin 5y ago
  Used to do my custom basic tiling with hammerspoon. I remember I loved it but at some point I started using Rectangle and I gradually forgot what I was using hs for other than window management.
- spudlyo 5y ago
  I love Hammerspon, I use it for keyboard switching to/launching specific apps, telling my iTerm2 + tmux session to ssh into certain remote hosts, automagically putting all my windows where I want them, manipulating my audio volume from the keyboard, toggling different input/output device pairs, etc.
gigatexal 5y ago
I recently went back to Linux after using MacOS for seemingly ever. I’m on Ubuntu LTS with ZFS and i3 and while I miss the amazing hardware of my 2020 MacBook (non M1) I just love the flexibility of the Linux setup: package management is a first class thing, containers are too; Magnet was nice but it’s no i3. And overall things just work which is really nice. I do miss airdrop and access to messages and other aspects of the apple ecosystem that I enjoy from lock-in but I’m happy for now and going to keep at it.
- heavyset_go 5y ago
  > I do miss airdrop and access to messages Check out KDE Connect[1]. It works outside of KDE, too. [1] https://kdeconnect.kde.org/ https://kdeconnect.kde.org/
- qudat 5y ago
  After using macs for the better part of a decade and recently moving to Linux: the Linux desktop ecosystem is vibrant and fun if you like to tinker. There are things that aren’t as streamlined like power management but I’ve been able to get my framework laptop to pretty much exactly how I like it. I was nervous about sleep/hibernation but honestly using systemd and a couple of tweaks (enabling sleep-then-hibernate) and everything is super reliable, rarely any issues. Wayland + Sway is a killer combination and everything is super snappy. I fell in love with workspaces in Mac with touchpad gestures but on a high refresh rate monitor the animation is so slow and it cannot be tweaked. On sway there is no animation and it is instant. I think once the steam deck matures we are going to truly see a year of Linux desktop soon.
  - alsetmusic 5y ago
    I didn’t bother to test this because I don’t use multiple desktops, but maybe this is what you were looking for: > defaults write com.apple.dock expose-animation-duration -float 0 https://osxdaily.com/2012/02/14/speed-up-misson-control-animations-mac-os-x/ https://osxdaily.com/2012/02/14/speed-up-misson-control-anim...
    - 5y ago
mkurz 5y ago
I am thinking about getting a MacBook Pro M1 Max as well, however I would prefer running Linux on it... hopefully Asahi Linux (https://asahilinux.org https://asahilinux.org) is usable soon. Or is there (or will there be) a serious competition to the MacBooks in 2022? It doesn't look like.
- fartcannon 5y ago
  Asahilinux will always be second class on locked down hardware and there are already better performing laptops for half the price. Don't financially support locked down systems if you care even the slightest bit about freedom of computing.
  - mkurz 5y ago
    > there are already better performing laptops Which ones?
    - brink 5y ago
      I don't know about better performing, but Manjaro on my Dell xps 9310 is near flawless. I never think about performance, everything is immediate.
      - chrisseaton 5y ago
        > I never think about performance, everything is immediate. It performs all compute tasks immediately? I should start compiling LLVM on that instead!
        brink 5y ago
        Hah, yeah sorry, you get what I mean.
- mattrighetti 5y ago
  I love macOS because it gives me pretty much every Linux tool and commodity since it's Unix based but is well organised and with a nice GUI design, you should try it out definitely!
jacobsenscott 5y ago
Amethyst has some quirks, and you need to restart it at least once a day. But releases are fairly frequent and I use it daily. I really like it. I've been using alacritty with tmux because I don't need all the bells and whistles in iterm2. macos mostly has bsd versions of command line tools which tend to lack a lot of features, so `brew install coreutils gsed` gives you sane versions of these tools at the cost of having to prefix everything with `g`. But good enough.
nineteen999 5y ago
Somebody changes the OS they are using for personal use and this qualifies as "news" now?
- SamuelAdams 5y ago
  Personally I read these posts for tools discovery. There’s all sorts of small random tools / packages for odd little things. If I read about what other programmers use I might learn about a new tool that makes my life easier.
- azangru 5y ago
  - :s/for personal use/for work/ - it's actually an interesting question how usable MacOS is for a Linux user; especially given how great Macbooks are from the hardware point of view
  - nineteen999 5y ago
    Some of us switch the OS we use for coding and testing multiple times a day; the idea that one OS is superior over another is laughable. Each one has its own design problems.
- Koshkin 5y ago
  I know but: 1) what might be hiding behind the title is an interesting opinion piece, and 2) it is the discussion that may be interesting, sometimes more so than the post itself.
- yesenadam 5y ago
  It seems a common misconception that HN submissions must or should be news. From the guidelines under What to Submit: "Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity." The guidelines also say stuff like "Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate", "Please don't post shallow dismissals", "Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community" etc.
JasonFruit 5y ago
It sounds like this could be the year of OS X on the desktop! I jest, but this all sounds like a lot more trouble to get the experience you want than most Linux distros would give you. It's not the primary audience of OS X, sure, but it's nice to see how well-served by Linux a sizable slice of users is.
- movedx 5y ago
  > I jest, but this all sounds like a lot more trouble to get the experience you want than most Linux distros would give you I feel like this is an opportunity to delve into a classic, IRC like "Windows vs Linux vs macOS" debate here, but instead I'll simply state a well known, agreed upon truth in our industry: Linux is an absolute joke on the desktop. Even Torvalds thinks it's a mess. Build your desktop from scratch if you like. It's your time. It's your life. But please don't mislead people into thinking Linux (on the desktop) comes even remotely close to Windows or macOS in terms of a good user experience out of the box.
  - akho 5y ago
    > I feel like this is an opportunity to delve into a classic, IRC like "Windows vs Linux vs macOS" debate here Congrats on seizing the moment and living your life to its full potential.
    - movedx 5y ago
      What have you done with your life, again? What books have have you written? Is it you or me that runs a Discord with 2,000+ members? Have you got 6,000 members for your video courses? Sit back down.
      - akho 5y ago
        All amazing achievements, and I’m really happy for your productivity and freedom of self-expression. (I’m very comfortable where I am, thank you for your concern)
  - 5y ago
nerdponx 5y ago
Possibly worth taking a look at MacPorts and Pkgsrc, both of which are arguably better package managers than Homebrew, although the latter has a hell of a lot more packages (and is pretty easy to roll your own packages for).
- yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
  Also nix, depending on your personal tastes
SamuelAdams 5y ago
Ought to use Mos for the mouse scrolling fix. Works pretty well. I think there is a brew cask for it too. https://mos.caldis.me/ https://mos.caldis.me/ I also used Linux for years and that has separate options (Gnome) for mouse and trackpad scroll direction. Really sad that this isn’t built in functionality. But hey, we got more emojis and FaceTime faces! /s
spudlyo 5y ago
This is great guide to making macOS more comfortable for Linux users. I'm a pretty serious macOS (and Linux) user and was pleased to have learned something valuable from this article. defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.mDNSResponder.plist NoMulticastAdvertisements -bool YES It drives me crazy that my desktop Hackintosh wakes up every couple of hours, and I'm really hoping this fixes it.
- vesinisa 5y ago
  > It drives me crazy that my desktop Hackintosh wakes up every couple of hours, and I'm really hoping this fixes it. Oh, I hear you! I've personally just given up and disabled sleep altogether, and moved to forcing the system to always hibernate instead of sleep with pmset.
cuillevel3 5y ago
Never tried it, but you should be able to copy `StandardKeyBinding.dict` to your library, convert it to XML and edit keybindings directly. I also like 'Spectacle' to move windows around.
cyberpunk 5y ago
What’s the current state of tiling managers on macOS? Seems Rectangle, Magnet and Amethyst are all mentioned below, has anyone done the “pepsi challenge” and cares to share their findings? I’d be grateful but I guess I just have to try all three myself…
- smoldesu 5y ago
  I gave all three of those a try when I was trying MacOS a year or so ago. Rectangle and Magnet basically fill the same niche, except Rectangle is free and kinda eliminates the need for Magnet (I don't quite remember what Magnet did better but I don't remember it being enough to convince me to use it). Amethyst is entire beast of it's own though, and I almost immediately decided it wasn't for me. It doesn't replace the default window server, so it ends up running like a bad TWM and an even worse desktop option. Of the three, Rectangle is the only one I can't live without on MacOS. Amethyst kinda just feels like a waste of resources.
  - cyberpunk 5y ago
    Thanks! I’d give you a beer but you’ll have to settle for internet points :)
  - hsbauauvhabzb 5y ago
    Complete outsider here, when you say ‘replace the default window server’ are you referring to the manager or the entire display server with something like X?
    - smoldesu 5y ago
      Nope, my bad for the ambiguous wording. What I really mean is that all of the memory-intensive GUI elements are also running alongside it, which makes it pretty unweildly for regular use. Nothing against Quartz, it's one of the few Apple technologies that I'll give credit where credit is due :p
- wraptile 5y ago
  Yabai gave me the best results by far! It's as fast as you can really go on MacOs and it feels like a true twm system. Unfortunately, due to restrictions of the OS itself (you can see the issue tracker) you can't really have the same quality of tilling as you can on Linux's X or Wayland.
weffwe 5y ago
> 3 times the CPU performance of my desktop system with an Intel i7 6700k I love those performance comparisons with 5-10 years old processors. Let's compare M1 with 80186 from 1982, then it will look even faster! Here is comparison with the new mobile Intel processor that will be released next month: https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/compare/11905527?baseline=11714129 https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/compare/11905527?baseli...
- bsuvc 5y ago
  When I click that link, I get some fake popups saying my "phone has been hacked" and that my "phone has viruses". I didn't even bother to try to read any of the content.
  - weffwe 5y ago
    You should install uBlock Origin plugin for browsers. It will block any advertising and other unwanted content. I don't know how you guys living without an ad blocker.
    - edoceo 5y ago
      Would it be possible to provide a link that is from some low budget ass website?
      - weffwe 5y ago
        I updated the link and now you should see results on the official Geekbench website.
    - Debug_Overload 5y ago
      I am running uBlock, and almost none of the images on the page load right now. And seeing the way the title on that page is written, I'm not expecting quality content from there. Maybe share a link to a page that doesn't suck?
    - bsuvc 5y ago
typhonius 5y ago
You can show/hide terminal windows with a hotkey natively using iTerm2. Under Preferences > Keys > Hotkey I've set the system-wide hotkey to option+space which means if I need a terminal, I can press those keys and have iTerm pop up over my active window. Pressing them again hides the window and brings focus back to the previously active window which has been great for productivity.
vladdoster 5y ago
I highly recommend Hammerspoon[1] for any macOS automation tasks you want to do. It is not only extensible but alleviates the need for using multiple tools due to its broad feature set. The only downside after two years of using Hammerspoon is that the community is small since it isn't as user-friendly as yabai, amethyst, etc. However, you'll probably enjoy its open-ended nature, given your article. [1] https://github.com/Hammerspoon/hammerspoon https://github.com/Hammerspoon/hammerspoon
- 9935c101ab17a66 5y ago
  Hammer spoon is the shit. It’s super rewarding to be able to add really complex functionality (like menu bar applets) with ease.
mattrighetti 5y ago
I used to love iTerm2 but the only thing that it was missing was that I couldn't set it up as I wanted with a script when I needed to install a new macOS from scratch (there's probably a feature that allows that and I didn't notice). I moved to tmux + Alacritty [1] (Rust hype and speeed) which is cross-platform and only needs its config file, a nice and clean yaml, in the right place to restore it as I want. Now when I full wipe my Mac I just need to run the script that pulls the config file from GitHub and tada! Also, the configuration file is almost identical to my Linux one so I can move around similarly and have a consistent look. I'm also used to replace macOS programs like `sed`,`grep`,`getopt`,`ssh` (macOS OpenBSD one won't work with Yubikey),`coreutils` and `awk` with the GNU version. You can download them with Homebrew and to replace them with the macOS default ones you just need to put them at the beginning of your path like this: export PATH=/usr/local/opt/coreutils/libexec/gnubin:$PATH [1]: https://github.com/alacritty/alacritty https://github.com/alacritty/alacritty
- euoia 5y ago
  iTerm2 3.4.14 Preferences > General > Preferences > Load preferences from a custom folder or URL You can save your preferences and load them as required.
  - smohare 5y ago
    You entirely miss the point. Folk want to do this from a bootstrap script. iterm makes this difficult.
    - varenc 5y ago
      iTerm doesn't make a bootstrap script easy, but it's still possible. I do it. Use this to command to set the location of the iterm config folder: defaults write com.googlecode.iterm2 PrefsCustomFolder -string "/path/to/iterm config folder" Then as long as that folder exists and contains your preferred settings, when iTerm opens up it'll be exactly like you want it. (though it would have been nice if this just defaulted to $HOME/.config/iTerm)
    - 5y ago
ploxiln 5y ago
I wasn't satisfied with the Automator way to make a new-terminal shortcut, it was kinda slow, and not 100% reliable. I found FastScripts and was able to make it fast and reliable. (I still use version 2.8, version 3 was just released, haven't tried it.) https://redsweater.com/fastscripts/ https://redsweater.com/fastscripts/ For the mouse wheel, there's a nice minimal proper fix: https://github.com/emreyolcu/discrete-scroll https://github.com/emreyolcu/discrete-scroll
lido 5y ago
But why did you stop using linux?
- tra3 5y ago
  Says “for work” in the article.
iscmt 5y ago
Try Swinsian[1] for music, significantly better than the default app IMO. [1] https://swinsian.com/ https://swinsian.com/
iscmt 5y ago
Further reading: [1] https://wiki.nikitavoloboev.xyz/macos https://wiki.nikitavoloboev.xyz/macos [2] https://wiki.nikitavoloboev.xyz/macos/macos-apps/ https://wiki.nikitavoloboev.xyz/macos/macos-apps/
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
obert 5y ago
some other suggestions (free): * window management/positioning: Spectacle, Easy Move+Resize * screenshots: Lightshot screenshot * status bar icons management: Hidden Bar * calendar on status bar: itsycal * battery: Battery Monitor * hex file viewer: Hex Fiend * folder/file compare: Meld
- russelg 5y ago
  As covered elsewhere in these comments, Rectangle is the new Spectacle. https://rectangleapp.com/ https://rectangleapp.com/
  - obert 5y ago
    thanks - looks like they chose a different set of shortcuts, that's a bit annoying after years and so much muscle memory
    - klohto 5y ago
      You can rebind easily. I find Rectangle to be much more lightweight than Spectacle
- innocentoldguy 5y ago
  Thanks for the list. Regarding screenshots, I like macOS' built-in screenshot keybindings: Command+Shift 3: Captures the entire screen. Command+Shift 4: Captures a specific region (You have to select the area each time). Command+Shift 4, Space: Captures a specific window. Command+Shift 5: Captures a specific region (Remembers the last selected region). Command+Shift 5 also displays a menu at the bottom of the screen that lets you select any of the screenshot options as well as options to record a specific window or the entire screen.
  - obert 5y ago
    yup thanks for the reminder, I usually go with the app above because it allows to draw on top of the screenshot and to copy in memory (e.g. to copy and paste into some IM), e.g. adding arrows, text, lines, something I use for example to highlight areas of the screenshot
dopeboy 5y ago
As a linux user since the Ubuntu 5.04 Hoary Hedgehog days, this is the first time in 16 years I've been tempted to switch to a mac. From what it looks like, the M1 seems to be deliver incredible performance at little power consumption. If there was a way to put linux on it without tinkering, I'd do it in a heartbeat. But because I can't, I'm seriously considering what it'd take to switch from my current setup (ubuntu 20.04, cinnamon, slide dock) to a mac. Keyboard shortcuts and workspaces are top of mind. I've also never been a fan of mac's dock where it groups all instances of an application together - I much prefer a classic Windows tray where each instance of an application has its own box I can easily alt-tab between. I also think mac's file manager isn't great. Much appreciated OP - may shoot you some questions over email.
wraptile 5y ago
I really tried to like macOS for an entire year. I used Yabai[1] as tilling window manager which is much better than Amethyst mentioned in the article. I also wrote my own compose key tool macos-compose[2] and rofi-like clone choosem[3] (eventually bought into Alfred). Yet with all of this effort I still went back to linux after a year (Arch with Qtile and Gnome). What really killed macos for me was the fact that animations could not be disabled entirely and everything felt like it's behind several ms of a delay. I work on the move so I don't have the luxury of multi-screen setup so switching between programs, workspaces and windows is the most important part of my workflow - it just drove me nuts. Now I run simple Lenovo yoga laptop with arch+qtile+gnome and honestly, my performance at work at least doubled. That's my anecdote anyway. 1 - https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai 2 - https://github.com/Granitosaurus/macos-compose https://github.com/Granitosaurus/macos-compose 3 - https://github.com/Granitosaurus/choosem https://github.com/Granitosaurus/choosem
- gammadist 5y ago
  The animations are a real pain. Who decided to make the animation to switch desktops almost one second in length?
  - hatf0 5y ago
    Have you ever tried “Reduce Motion” in Accessibility -> Display?
    - gammadist 5y ago
      Yes. Instead of a sliding animation with a one second duration, I get a crossfade animation with a one second duration.
      - aniforprez 5y ago
        This. I keep typing right after I switch screens and it ALWAYS misses the first couple of keys. It's absolutely infuriating
jrm4 5y ago
Seriously? Whyyyyy? I mean I completely get why my dad uses MacOS over Linux; nothing for him to think about and all his devices just sort of work. But if you're at this level of customization, why would you take the chance? (I.e. you know Apple's just going to change something weird on you.)
- tizio13 5y ago
  He did choose the new MacBook Pro. It's the unix based laptop you can buy. I think its perfectly reasonable to make the switch
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- innocentoldguy 5y ago
  I can't speak for the author but as a Linux user since 1994, I use macOS because I want to use Studio One, Logic, Cubase, Final Cut Pro, Affinity apps, and other proprietary software that doesn't run on Linux. I also love the M1 Max chip's performance and battery friendliness. I still use Linux too.
- aidenn0 5y ago
  Sounds like it was what was provided at work.
- suction 5y ago
  Your Dad is way ahead of you. "Just works" is the key to having a better life. I get it though, when I was younger I thought not tinkering with one's computer setup was a mark of the amateur, while customising was the mark of the pro.
  - temptemptemp111 5y ago
  - jrm4 5y ago
    Or, smarty pants, we do different things. He's a lawyer with a set of tech-needs, I'm a teacher in IT who experiments with different ways of doing things to possibly pass them on to others. But, thanks for playing.
hipsterstal1n 5y ago
Who cares?
ostenning 5y ago
Two must have productivity apps for macOS: Rectangle and Alt-Tab.
_abox 5y ago
I did the exact opposite. I was on MacOS since 10.2. But lately I felt things have become way too locked down (both hardware and software), too dumbed down (too many apps resemble mobile apps with limited functionality) and too opinionated. Sometimes I just want things differently. Another reason was that many new features are specific to iCloud integration and as I use many OSes (both computer and mobile) I could not take advantage of those anyway. I need cross platform. So a lot of selling points became irrelevant. I moved to FreeBSD with KDE on top and it felt like a breath of fresh air finally being able to set up my system the way I want it. This is so empowering. It became my daily driver about a year ago and I haven't looked back though I still use Mac and Windows for work, Windows personally for gaming and Linux for some servers. Of course I lost some stuff too like Apple's excellent multi DPI and great hardware integration. And many apps that were great like pixelmator. But I gained a lot of configurability and the ability to upgrade my hardware again.
- lytedev 5y ago
  Interesting! Why FreeBSD over Linux out of curiosity?
  - _abox 5y ago
    Good question. I had several reasons. - I had used it until 7.0 in the past and missed the simplicity of having one single platform (rather than Linux with its kernel and the many distributions all doing things differently). - The excellent handbook - Almost devoid of corporate influence. Linux is being steered into the warm and fuzzy corporate domain. Many big players try to get their IP adopted by the Linux mainstream. Canonical with Snaps for example, Redhat with Gnome, etc. The big tech players are the biggest kernel contributors now. It moves from choices good for customers to the ones that are good for big tech. - Non-opinionated platform. Some distros are also becoming quite opinionated like Mac. I did try to play the Apple game for a while (like I said it was my daily driver since 10.2) but they kept annoying me more and more by deprecating things I used. I want choices again. - Stable platform but with rolling app packages. For example if KDE comes out with a new version I will see it usually a day or 2 later. - Couldn't find a Linux distro I really liked. I like minimalism but without Arch's elitism. Debian would have been the closest but I have bad experiences with major upgrades. What I would have preferred would be something like Alpine for the desktop. I looked at Adelie Linux which is exactly that but it was too premature. - The ports tree is really amazing. You're always able to change default package settings and recompile them - Jails are more powerful than linux containers, though they lack a framework a la docker. This is why I still use Linux on servers. So this was mainly it :) Unfortuantely running KDE did require installing some linuxisms like Dbus but overall it's not too bad.
nowahe 5y ago
A few tips/software recommendation in no particular order: - On iTerm2 you can setup a system wide hotkey to toggle a floating terminal in front of all your windows, whatever you're doing [1]. This works even in full screen apps. It really changed my workflow with iTerm, and is really handy. - For system stats in the menubar, I really recommend iStat Menu [2]. It's paid (12$ for a license), but the quality of the graphs and interface makes it well worth it imo. - If you have an external display and want to precisely tweek your resolution, I recommend SWitchResX [3]. It's mostly a GUI that wraps some display CLI tools. With it I adjust the resolution of my 4k external monitor currently, running it at 3200x1800 with HiDPI, and adjust it based on my eye fatigue. - As a more powerful and versatile replacement to Spotlight (Cmd+Space), Alfred [4]. You can customize it to run anything you want, from converting timestamps to dates, opening apps, search the whole system, run scripts, etc - If you have too many icons in your menubar and want to hide some (either totally or behind a button click), Bartender [5] [1]: https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/48796/iterm-as-a-slide-out-terminal-from-the-top-of-the-screen https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/48796/iterm-as-a-s... [2]: https://bjango.com/mac/istatmenus/ https://bjango.com/mac/istatmenus/ [3]: https://www.madrau.com/ https://www.madrau.com/ [4]: https://www.alfredapp.com/ https://www.alfredapp.com/ [5]: https://www.macbartender.com/ https://www.macbartender.com/
- lenn0x 5y ago
  Hidden Bar is good as well, that's what I am using. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/hidden-bar/id1452453066?mt=12 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/hidden-bar/id1452453066?mt=12
cheetor 5y ago
Mouse acceleration: to disable it I've been using SteelSeries ExactMouse Tool (https://steelseries.com/engine https://steelseries.com/engine -> expand Miscellaneous at the very bottom). It's very lightweight and I just install it once and never think about it again. Mouse scrolling: I always found this to be a bad experience on OSX/macOS so I've been using Smooze. It allows you to set the scroll curve to your own liking. It has other features that I don't use and although it's not free, iirc it was cheap and definitely worth it. Window management: a lot of others have mentioned great tools like Rectangle, but I've found Moom to be slightly better for my use cases. I prefer it over Rectangle (although Moom doesn't have window snapping so I actually use both) because you can set a custom grid e.g. 12x12 and have windows resize anywhere on the grid. With Rectangle, you can only choose from the (many) presets but unfortunately no customization.
- Brajeshwar 5y ago
  You might want to look at the Command-line options[1] for Rectangle. For instance, if you want the "AlmostMiximized" size to be not so big, you can set that to something of your choice, similar to the 12x12. Hope that helps and you can reduce to one app instead of two. :-) 1. https://github.com/rxhanson/Rectangle/blob/master/TerminalCommands.md https://github.com/rxhanson/Rectangle/blob/master/TerminalCo...
- pxc 5y ago
  Disabling mouse acceleration that way hasn't worked right since Catalina at least, maybe even since Mojave. You can test it with a high-resolution gaming mouse: slide it across your mousepad once as slowly as you can, and then flick it across once. There's still a difference in how far the cursor travels, even with SteelSeries ExactMouse. The only tools I know of that actually work for this (if you comoletely disable speed/sensitivity controls as well as acceleration) are SteerMouse and CursorSense, which use some kind of driver hack: https://www.plentycom.jp/en/index.html https://www.plentycom.jp/en/index.html
amznbyebyebye 5y ago
<Unpopular Opinion> I’ve used msft windows most of my life. Recently switched to a macOS and for the life of me just can’t get used to the switch between alt tab and cmd tab behavior. Also windows explorer > finder. Yes Mac OS looks cooler I guess, but I’ve found windows very practical.
- radlad 5y ago
  Just in case you're not aware, Command+` is a necessary secondary shortcut for use with Command+Tab.
  - vesinisa 5y ago
    Is there any way to disable this behaviour altogether? After almost a year of being forced to use MacOS at work, I still can't wrap my head around having two sets of window to switch between (inter-app level + intra-app level). I REALLY wish they included an option to just treat all the windows as top level! Edit: found elsewhere on the thread this app that purports to fix it: https://alt-tab-macos.netlify.app/ https://alt-tab-macos.netlify.app/
    - deergomoo 5y ago
      There’s never gonna be a first party way to change this because macOS has always been “app-centric” whereas Windows has always been “window-centric”. It’s two different takes on the desktop metaphor—same reason that apps (usually) remain running on macOS even once you’ve closed the last window, which is another difference that often annoys both sides when they have to use the other OS.
- Sunspark 5y ago
  The switch between Android and iOS is more jarring. Once you get really used to Android, iOS seems very unintuitive by comparison.
- gsinclair 5y ago
  I’d love to hear what’s good about Windows Explorer. I used Windows for many years and never found it (edit: Explorer) satisfactory.
MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
jwmoz 5y ago
Moved to mac from Linux around 2010 after being exposed to it by a few other developers. Never ever looked back. Sitting on a 2013 mbp maxed out, just required a battery change this year. Still usable but will move to the M1 2022. Blows my mind devs are still stuck on windows and linux machines.
- ReactiveJelly 5y ago
  For me it's partly because I want to cross-train for our IoT stuff that runs Linux, and partly because of FOSS idealism that I don't ever want to give up on.
theanirudh 5y ago
> A better solution for me was using Karabiner-Elements to only swap the right command and option keys: macOS has a built in tool called hidutil[1] for simple keyboard remapping. Prefer to use that since Karabiner-Elements has some issues on M1 and macOS Big Sur. I use this[2] tool to generate a simple launchd config. 1 - https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/technotes/tn2450/_index.html https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/technotes/tn2450... 2 - https://hidutil-generator.netlify.app https://hidutil-generator.netlify.app
- BruceEel 5y ago
  Excellent tip, thank you!
- def- 5y ago
  Thanks, added to the article!
- 9935c101ab17a66 5y ago
  That tool is awesome! Thank you.
Brajeshwar 5y ago
On macOS, over the years, I have been trying to stay with the default native apps and programs that comes with the OSes as much as possible. You might need to tinker and learn the nuances (shortcuts, etc). However, I continue to tinker with other must-have tools, utilities, and programs to get things done. 1Password, Alfred, Lulu, Rectangle, Bartender (Hidden Bar is the open source alternative) - https://oinam.fyi/digital/apple/ https://oinam.fyi/digital/apple/
__mp 5y ago
I faced similar issues with the Swiss keyboard layout. I suggest switching to the “US International“ layout and use the dead keys to obtain the umlauts. There’s also a keyboard option that enables a umlaut menu with a long press on the keyboard- if you really want to avoid the dead keys (this might help: https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/254094/character-accent-menu-doesnt-appear-anymore-in-macos-sierra https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/254094/character-a...). The Apple “English International“ keyboard has a big enter key - if you dislike the small enter key of the US keyboard layout.
watersb 5y ago
I'm always interested in these setup stories and comments on HN. This one seems to be lacking the obligatory XKCD 1806. So here it is. https://xkcd.com/1806/ https://xkcd.com/1806/
varenc 5y ago
From the article: > "My current assumption is that the videotoolbox hardware decoding support doesn’t support the same codecs in mpv yet as it does in Firefox" mpv supports videotoolbox hardware decoding of h264/h265, it's just not enabled by default. It prevents the use of most filters and has slightly lower quality decoding in my experience. To get hardware decoding in mpv and hopefully get the same minimal CPU usage as Firefox just call mpv with `--hwdec=videotoolbox` or add `hwdec=videotoolbox` to your `~/.config/mpv/mpv.conf` file. Also from the article: > "here I noticed a major difference in how Homebrew seems to work compared to Arch Linux for example. On Arch Linux applications are built from source code centrally instead of relying on binaries from a vendor." This is true for Homebrew formula as well, like the mpv formula, just not Homebrew casks. Most casks are proprietary closed source applications.
- def- 5y ago
  I forgot to mention that I have set hwdec=videotoolbox already, but vp9 and av01 from youtube don't get hw-decoded anyway. > This is true for Homebrew formula as well, like the mpv formula, just not Homebrew casks. Most casks are proprietary closed source applications. But even open source casks seem to be taken centrally instead of built again. My guess is that this is to keep the original developers' certificates.
  - varenc 5y ago
    Thanks for the reply! Also wow I hadn't realize that Apple supports hardware decoding of Google's VP9 codec. Googling a bit, it looks like this is new in the M1 Macs. Though not sure if it supports AV01 yet? When I browse Youtube in Firefox I seem to get AV01 encoded videos. Are you sure Firefox on an M1 Mac is using hardware decoding? I wonder if they might just be using an optimized software decoder. Wish I had an M1 mac to test! Frustratingly I couldn't find any description of videotoolbox codec support on Apple's documentation, though I did find that this VP9 constant exists: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/coremedia/kcmvideocodectype_vp9 https://developer.apple.com/documentation/coremedia/kcmvideo... (but couldn't find an AV01 constant) Re: Casks, I hadn't thought about it but you're totally right that this is probably mostly due to macOS developer signing issues.
meling 5y ago
> Putting the display to sleep easily by moving the mouse cursor in the corner is nice (I’d still prefer a keyboard shortcut), and can be enabled in the system preferences: You can lock the screen with cmd+ctrl q. Control–Shift–Power button* or Control–Shift–Media Eject : Put your displays to sleep. Here are some other keyboard shortcuts: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201236 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201236
- def- 5y ago
  There is no power button anymore: > * Does not apply to the Touch ID sensor. I have not found a way yet to reliably put the device to sleep from keyboard. With a shortcut it wakes immediately, maybe because it registers the letting go of the keys as a wakeup signal.
  - tzguide 5y ago
    If you mean sleeping the display and not the whole computer, I ended up defining a hot corner to do it in the Displays preference pane in System Preferences. Then I can just swipe the mouse/trackpad to that corner without worrying about overshooting, works every time. I used to use the keyboard shortcut until I got a Mac without the power/eject keys.
ronenlh 5y ago
> So here I noticed a major difference in how Homebrew seems to work compared to Arch Linux for example. On Arch Linux applications are built from source code centrally instead of relying on binaries from a vendor. Homebrew also builds from source, but it uses cached builds they call bottles. I believe other package managers that build from source also used cached builds, I don’t know about Arch.
- def- 5y ago
  Strange, I had multiple Homebrew builds that took a dmg from some central place, even open-source software like mpv and (my own) DDNet.
lwouis 5y ago
Lots of links/tips on windows management on macOS in this thread. For people interested, you can check out my FLOSS app which brings Windows alt-tab to macOS: https://alt-tab-macos.netlify.app/ https://alt-tab-macos.netlify.app/ I investigated this space for years so check out the list of alternatives on the page linked above as well. Also note that i'm looking for someone to take over the project: https://github.com/lwouis/alt-tab-macos/issues/1179 https://github.com/lwouis/alt-tab-macos/issues/1179
EugeneOZ 5y ago
Author, to help you with the mouse scrolling direction: https://github.com/ther0n/UnnaturalScrollWheels https://github.com/ther0n/UnnaturalScrollWheels
28304283409234 5y ago
I have been using computers for over 30 years, and each and every one has issues, bugs, finicky bits that suck the life out of you and the minutes out of the hours. DOS, SunOS, *BSD, Linux and Mac. All of em. Just pick your poison everyone, and let us all get on with our lives. Edit: ...and Windows 3.11 and up.
- Joeri 5y ago
  Your comment reminds me of the 20 year old song “Every OS sucks”. Every OS wastes your time, from the desktop to the lap, Everything since Apple Dos, Just a bunch of crap. From Microsoft, to Macintosh, to Lih-- lie-- lih-- lie... nux, Every computer crashes, 'cause every OS sucks. https://songmeanings.com/songs/view/76280/ https://songmeanings.com/songs/view/76280/
- rsanheim 5y ago
  Yup. This is why I use exclusively macs now for work and most non-work things (still PC for gaming, for obvious reasons). Of course I'm on linux systems almost daily when it's required, but thats via SSH or maybe a virtualized env if I really need it. For day to day its just a m1 mac with ridiculous performance and amazing hardware. All OS'es and computing environments are horrible. Its just that Mac OS is less horrible and more in line with getting shit done as opposed to constant fiddling and fighting with your environment. To each their own of course, but this is has been my experience after 25+ yrs of computing.
darthrupert 5y ago
I was on macs during 2015-2021 and went back to Linux this year. I'm not entirely happy, although sway/i3 is so much better than macos's desktop. But I miss things like Bluetooth, wlan, sound, graphics just working. Yes, that's still a thing in Linux even if not quite as badly as 5ish years ago. I think I'll be going back to macs.
- jackosdev 5y ago
  Using i3 with Arch? I used to have problems with all the things you mentioned, takes a bit to learn what the best tools are and how to set them up. But now any other OS feels like I'm missing a limb
  - darthrupert 5y ago
    Sway, actually. Yeah, I just recently learned that network managers are not equal at all. Iwd keeps screwung up my tethered connections whereas networkmanager happily works with everything. With sway, graphics are almost totally problem-free, now that almost everything I need are wayland-native. As for sound... pipewire might deliver that some day but not quite yet. Especially my DAC and usb headset make some troubles there.
kukabynd 5y ago
You might want to try Ionica (https://ionica.app https://ionica.app). UX will be better than Foobar’s, that’s for sure.
freedom2099 5y ago
I don’t get all this hate for animations… they really are barely noticeable! Relax a bit! And also windows manager… I hardly need to have more that 2 windows at the same time together in the same screen!
globular-toast 5y ago
> macOS is working better than expected for me so far, and definitely better than Windows would. Which begs the question, why did he switch to MacOS in the first place?
alexruf 5y ago
Since a few people already have mentioned Rectangle for Window management, I wanted to point out that there is also a payed version of it called Hookshot (https://hookshot.app/ https://hookshot.app/). The same developer also offers a great app called Hyperkey (https://hyperkey.app/ https://hyperkey.app/) which defines CAPS as your hyper-key.
rcarmo 5y ago
Folk interested in exploring the macOS window manager landscape are welcome to check out my annotated list at https://taoofmac.com/space/apps/window_managers https://taoofmac.com/space/apps/window_managers I have been bouncing between Moom and Phoenix of late, and still looking for a good auto-tiling option that isn’t Amethyst (which is OK, but doesn’t do all I want).
asdff 5y ago
What works best for me is to not really fiddle with the setup too much beyond the defaults or to install redundant stuff, like using brew to get a fresher version of ssh or installing iterm2 when terminal does the job, or otherwise spending time on window dressing. I try and lean into the philosophy of the mac, which is that its a desktop which behaves like a real desk. Right now I have 15 windows from various applications open on this one desktop, and its in a giant pile just as if I had a bunch of papers and files in a messy pile on my desk. This works great because you can press a button or swipe along the trackpad and spread out this pile, exposing everything that's in it along with all your other desktops, as if you are spreading out the stacks of papers on your desk. IMO this method is how you focus on stuff anyway. Your eyes aren't looking at the 12 different things in your tiling window manager at once, so you might as well just have a few things pulled up on top of your pile of windows that are of focus and take advantage of your screen real estate rather than have a bunch of tiny panes artfully spaced. The mouse makes it easy to do fast and sloppy window adjustments which are good enough.
- alkonaut 5y ago
  Same. Even if I don't like the defaults, I try as hard as humanly possible not to start fiddling with them. I learn to live with them, until the defaults become my preference. Now any clean VM or freshly installed machine or borrowed computer at work is set up to my preference. Do I maximize my productivity or have everything exactly perfect? No. But I'd rather have my nails pulled out than tweaking things. If I have to edit a configuration textfile, the computer goes out the window. My OS isn't an important part of my workday. It should just start my IDE and get out of the way.
- Torwald 5y ago
  <cmd-F3> shows Desktop and <Swipe up with three fingers> shows Exposé
kgarten 5y ago
I mostly switched to librem 14, arch linux (i3wm, gnome from time to time), still using a mac for work (mostly presentations, video conferencing). Development tends to get more and more difficult on the mac for me (the security check for running shell programs is sometimes annoying. Currently hunting down a node compile error ... works perfectly under arch). For my mac: I tried Amethyst, as others mentioned Yabai seems better. Yet, I switched to just to hammerspoon scripts, for tiling/desktop management etc.: http://www.hammerspoon.org/ http://www.hammerspoon.org/ It fits my needs and is adjustable. For shell: iterm2 is ok, yet I'm currently in love with kitty. https://github.com/kovidgoyal/kitty https://github.com/kovidgoyal/kitty Brew alternatives: macports, nix (https://nixos.org https://nixos.org) I love the idea, yet still haven't gotten around to use it much. shell: fish editor: nvim / neovide
jarym 5y ago
I see way more people advocating. Homebrew now than a few years ago. I chose MacPorts back then since it seemed a bit better designed as a package manager but these days I see few people suggesting it. What’s the current consensus - is homebrew now good enough to consider switching?
- hughrr 5y ago
  I don’t use either. I mostly use my mac as an AWS and linode terminal. I think the only things I install locally are VScode and Go and both of those arrive as dmg/pkg format.
- akvadrako 5y ago
  Homebrew has been good enough since the beginning, hence why it took over from Macports. But it hasn't changed any of it's major design decisions, so if you didn't like it then you wouldn't like it now.
  - disgruntledphd2 5y ago
    It puts everything in /opt/homebrew/ now, which I believe was an issue for some people before.
    - pxc 5y ago
      That's good to hear! When did this change happen?
      - disgruntledphd2 5y ago
        Dunno, relatively recently as I set up a new Mac a few weeks ago, and it was like that then.
        Toutouxc 5y ago
        AFAIK the new prefix is only used on M1 Macs, x86 Homebrew uses the old one.
anticodon 5y ago
For me Linux is about freedom. Other systems might be better in UI/UX or performance (e.g. give more FPS in games for NVidia cards), but I remember the times when Microsoft dominated the IT world and it looked scary. All corporations strive to fragment the market using non-compatible technologies and then to monopolize the market by consuming other fragments. This strategy failed in the 90s with the arrival of Linux. Although many times I felt like the whole world will become Microsoft/Wintel, I think we barely missed. Now, corporations are trying to do it e.g. via forcing everybody into the cloud and killing open protocols. E.g. I have several email accounts and I can't gather mail from all of my mailboxes in one application. Situation is even worse with Calendars. I have two jobs and also my own personal calendar server and I can't collect all my calendars in one app also. I have to routinely check Google Calendar, because even though I can add it to my Thunderbird Calendar, moved or canceled events changes are not propagating to Thunderbird. And I can't integrate Microsoft Outlook calendar into my Thunderbird at all. I really don't want to rely on whims of one corporation. Also, regarding MacBooks: I remember when the touchbar had no alternatives and it is really awful. This is what monopoly means: you have to live with bad decisions. You have to pay absurd money for a piece of cloth or a roller for the desktop case.
- def- 5y ago
  Since this is for work my choice was between a MacBook or Windows-based laptop. Personally I wouldn't even have considered using anything else than Linux.
seumars 5y ago
Regarding shortcuts: one that often gets overlooked is Move focus to next window under Shortcuts > Keyboard which lets you cycle between windows of the active application. I have it mapped to ⌘`.
- def- 5y ago
  Thanks, that's good to know, one less thing to need the mouse for!
thiht 5y ago
> So I decided to use the native macOS window management instead and try to get used to it instead of actively fighting against it. That’s something I wouldn’t have expected to read here, as I myself find it quite hard to change paradigms. I learned that the hard way when I had to use a Mac for the first time after using Windows and Linux my whole life, and tried to use it as I wanted instead of how it’s intended to be used. Once you know how the paradigm works, you can try to adapt it to your workflow, but not before or you’ll be frustrated quickly.
peakaboo 5y ago
I read all this and after seeing all the workarounds and special fixes to get back to a good workflow he had on the mac... I just have one question: Why use a Mac? So he likes the extra performance (which he won't use 99.99% of the time), and he likes the screen (why not use an external screen like most sane people?). I still don't understand. Why give up the amazing arch Linux for shitty Mac OS? Makes no sense whatsoever.
- ossusermivami 5y ago
  I agree, if you are savy enough working and maintaining your linux desktop I don't think I have any attraction to go back to OSX..... maybe Alfred was the only nice things about OSX i miss on Linux (even with a bunch of wofi/rofi scripts).... ah yeah the hardware gestures, I use libinpute-gestures which is nice but come nowhere the builtin osx gestures. aside of that linux (nixos/sway for me) is IMHO a 100 time more efficient,
- how_gauche 5y ago
  In my case: your employer only gives out MacBooks and expects you to use them.
  - timbit42 5y ago
    They are a nice thin wedge shape. Use them as a doorstop.
ossusermivami 5y ago
I switched back to linux because I enjoyed it more than OSX, maybe I am strange but I find Gnome more "focus". I was using ubuntu for the last year and hardly customized it, just using Gnome and my tools. (altho i mostly just need a terminal/web browser/vscode and compilers) last three months I have been ill and had to stay at the hospital with plenty of time in my hand in between chemo so I decided to dig more into linux internals and went with nixos.... I learned so much during that time about my system and how it works. I think I actually enjoy more computing since then...
traceroute66 5y ago
Reasonably well written blog post all things considered, although I'm not clear as to why the author felt the need to install vim, ssh and rsync using brew when all three are provided by default on MacOS ?
- def- 5y ago
  You are right, vim is not required. SSH I misremembered, didn't install that. The rsync version on macOS is quite old (2006!) and didn't support all the options I wanted to use.
somewhereoutth 5y ago
A well curated Debian based Linux distribution on a 2015 Mac Book Pro with hash key added would be the best laptop experience ever.
lighthammer 5y ago
Thinkpad x220 with Xubuntu and a Mac Mini. My two daily drivers with a Windows VM sitting on a NAS. Nice to have options.
flippinburgers 5y ago
No xmonad no possible.
0xriyu 5y ago
I have the same MX Master 3 Mouse and had lots of troubles getting the acceleration and scroll feel "normal" on macOS. SmoothScroll[1] was the best for correcting the inconsistent rate of scrolling down pages -- however it was not free, so I stopped using it. I ended up using the free version of USB Overdrive[2] as it allows you to disable acceleration among other things. 1 - https://www.smoothscroll.net/win/ https://www.smoothscroll.net/win/ 2 - https://www.usboverdrive.com/ https://www.usboverdrive.com/

347 points by def- 5y ago

"apple's builtin music player" Are they talking about iTunes? oof. I'm an apple all the way person, and even I would say "noooooooooo" if you don't have an existing collection of iTunes music

labster 5y ago
May I ask what you use as a music player on Mac? Are we stuck loading music on an iPhone with iTunes? I remember the days when iTunes was good and snappy, but that was centuries ago
- okprod 5y ago
  cmus works on Mac
- olliej 5y ago
  I use iTunes because I have an itms library. The app is still super frustrating.
Klonoar 5y ago
It hasn't been iTunes for a few years now. It's literally just called "Music", which is likely why the author just said music player.
- olliej 5y ago
  oh good point - it's just permanently iTunes in my head
Yizahi 5y ago
What is people problem with iTunes? I've used it voluntarily as a main music player and catalog app on Windows since Win2k. Amazing app, very nice interface, a lot of options, stable. I don't use it now only because I've switched to Spotify streaming.

softwarebeware 5y ago

Give https://rectangleapp.com/ https://rectangleapp.com/ a try if you want a window manager that can place your windows around the screen nicely.

chrenn 5y ago
Also check out https://highlyopinionated.co/swish/ https://highlyopinionated.co/swish/ for a gesture-based window manager by swiping on titlebars. It also features snake-selector keyboard shortcuts, so there's really nothing to memorize. Disclaimer: I made this.
kitten_mittens_ 5y ago
I've been using https://apps.apple.com/us/app/magnet/id441258766?mt=12 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/magnet/id441258766?mt=12 with my ultra wide I got for work. I like that it lets me do things in thirds.
- camkego 5y ago
  As a Linux to Mac adopter I also use Magnet. No relationship to company.
- movedx 5y ago
  So does Rectangle. I'm using it right now on a 49" U/W, with this Firefox window on the right-hand third, VSCode in the center third, and Discord in the top-left 6th, and Dune (2021) playing in IINA in the bottom-left 6th :-) All tied to global keyboard shortcuts too. Free, open source, and does exactly what you've asked for.
  - k1rcher 5y ago
    This sounds really nice… I’m now quite keen on looking into ultrawides.
dtctech 5y ago
I recently started using MacOS. Rectangle is one the most useful apps I’ve come across… and free. I like that you can add padding to the windows. With keybind customization it’s a nice replacement for a tiling window manager.

SavantIdiot 5y ago

I've been using Moom since 2013 as a window tiler on macOS. That combined with the new window snapping is much better than macOS tiling IMHO.

shmerl 5y ago

I wouldn't trade KDE for macOS. Not even close.

knowmad 5y ago

Hammerspoon has been really helpful in tiling windows with my keyboard and adding keybings like "jump to application". Also, there are a lot of useful plugins that add even more functionality like a fuzzy searchable clipboard history.

aulin 5y ago
Used to do my custom basic tiling with hammerspoon. I remember I loved it but at some point I started using Rectangle and I gradually forgot what I was using hs for other than window management.
spudlyo 5y ago
I love Hammerspon, I use it for keyboard switching to/launching specific apps, telling my iTerm2 + tmux session to ssh into certain remote hosts, automagically putting all my windows where I want them, manipulating my audio volume from the keyboard, toggling different input/output device pairs, etc.

gigatexal 5y ago

I recently went back to Linux after using MacOS for seemingly ever. I’m on Ubuntu LTS with ZFS and i3 and while I miss the amazing hardware of my 2020 MacBook (non M1) I just love the flexibility of the Linux setup: package management is a first class thing, containers are too; Magnet was nice but it’s no i3. And overall things just work which is really nice. I do miss airdrop and access to messages and other aspects of the apple ecosystem that I enjoy from lock-in but I’m happy for now and going to keep at it.

heavyset_go 5y ago
> I do miss airdrop and access to messages Check out KDE Connect[1]. It works outside of KDE, too. [1] https://kdeconnect.kde.org/ https://kdeconnect.kde.org/
qudat 5y ago
After using macs for the better part of a decade and recently moving to Linux: the Linux desktop ecosystem is vibrant and fun if you like to tinker. There are things that aren’t as streamlined like power management but I’ve been able to get my framework laptop to pretty much exactly how I like it. I was nervous about sleep/hibernation but honestly using systemd and a couple of tweaks (enabling sleep-then-hibernate) and everything is super reliable, rarely any issues. Wayland + Sway is a killer combination and everything is super snappy. I fell in love with workspaces in Mac with touchpad gestures but on a high refresh rate monitor the animation is so slow and it cannot be tweaked. On sway there is no animation and it is instant. I think once the steam deck matures we are going to truly see a year of Linux desktop soon.
- alsetmusic 5y ago
  I didn’t bother to test this because I don’t use multiple desktops, but maybe this is what you were looking for: > defaults write com.apple.dock expose-animation-duration -float 0 https://osxdaily.com/2012/02/14/speed-up-misson-control-animations-mac-os-x/ https://osxdaily.com/2012/02/14/speed-up-misson-control-anim...
  - 5y ago

mkurz 5y ago

I am thinking about getting a MacBook Pro M1 Max as well, however I would prefer running Linux on it... hopefully Asahi Linux (https://asahilinux.org https://asahilinux.org) is usable soon. Or is there (or will there be) a serious competition to the MacBooks in 2022? It doesn't look like.

fartcannon 5y ago
Asahilinux will always be second class on locked down hardware and there are already better performing laptops for half the price. Don't financially support locked down systems if you care even the slightest bit about freedom of computing.
- mkurz 5y ago
  > there are already better performing laptops Which ones?
  - brink 5y ago
    I don't know about better performing, but Manjaro on my Dell xps 9310 is near flawless. I never think about performance, everything is immediate.
    - chrisseaton 5y ago
      > I never think about performance, everything is immediate. It performs all compute tasks immediately? I should start compiling LLVM on that instead!
      - brink 5y ago
        Hah, yeah sorry, you get what I mean.
mattrighetti 5y ago
I love macOS because it gives me pretty much every Linux tool and commodity since it's Unix based but is well organised and with a nice GUI design, you should try it out definitely!

jacobsenscott 5y ago

Amethyst has some quirks, and you need to restart it at least once a day. But releases are fairly frequent and I use it daily. I really like it. I've been using alacritty with tmux because I don't need all the bells and whistles in iterm2. macos mostly has bsd versions of command line tools which tend to lack a lot of features, so `brew install coreutils gsed` gives you sane versions of these tools at the cost of having to prefix everything with `g`. But good enough.

nineteen999 5y ago

Somebody changes the OS they are using for personal use and this qualifies as "news" now?

SamuelAdams 5y ago
Personally I read these posts for tools discovery. There’s all sorts of small random tools / packages for odd little things. If I read about what other programmers use I might learn about a new tool that makes my life easier.
azangru 5y ago
- :s/for personal use/for work/ - it's actually an interesting question how usable MacOS is for a Linux user; especially given how great Macbooks are from the hardware point of view
- nineteen999 5y ago
  Some of us switch the OS we use for coding and testing multiple times a day; the idea that one OS is superior over another is laughable. Each one has its own design problems.
Koshkin 5y ago
I know but: 1) what might be hiding behind the title is an interesting opinion piece, and 2) it is the discussion that may be interesting, sometimes more so than the post itself.
yesenadam 5y ago
It seems a common misconception that HN submissions must or should be news. From the guidelines under What to Submit: "Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity." The guidelines also say stuff like "Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate", "Please don't post shallow dismissals", "Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community" etc.

JasonFruit 5y ago

It sounds like this could be the year of OS X on the desktop! I jest, but this all sounds like a lot more trouble to get the experience you want than most Linux distros would give you. It's not the primary audience of OS X, sure, but it's nice to see how well-served by Linux a sizable slice of users is.

movedx 5y ago
> I jest, but this all sounds like a lot more trouble to get the experience you want than most Linux distros would give you I feel like this is an opportunity to delve into a classic, IRC like "Windows vs Linux vs macOS" debate here, but instead I'll simply state a well known, agreed upon truth in our industry: Linux is an absolute joke on the desktop. Even Torvalds thinks it's a mess. Build your desktop from scratch if you like. It's your time. It's your life. But please don't mislead people into thinking Linux (on the desktop) comes even remotely close to Windows or macOS in terms of a good user experience out of the box.
- akho 5y ago
  > I feel like this is an opportunity to delve into a classic, IRC like "Windows vs Linux vs macOS" debate here Congrats on seizing the moment and living your life to its full potential.
  - movedx 5y ago
    What have you done with your life, again? What books have have you written? Is it you or me that runs a Discord with 2,000+ members? Have you got 6,000 members for your video courses? Sit back down.
    - akho 5y ago
      All amazing achievements, and I’m really happy for your productivity and freedom of self-expression. (I’m very comfortable where I am, thank you for your concern)
- 5y ago

nerdponx 5y ago

Possibly worth taking a look at MacPorts and Pkgsrc, both of which are arguably better package managers than Homebrew, although the latter has a hell of a lot more packages (and is pretty easy to roll your own packages for).

yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
Also nix, depending on your personal tastes

SamuelAdams 5y ago

Ought to use Mos for the mouse scrolling fix. Works pretty well. I think there is a brew cask for it too. https://mos.caldis.me/ https://mos.caldis.me/ I also used Linux for years and that has separate options (Gnome) for mouse and trackpad scroll direction. Really sad that this isn’t built in functionality. But hey, we got more emojis and FaceTime faces! /s

spudlyo 5y ago

This is great guide to making macOS more comfortable for Linux users. I'm a pretty serious macOS (and Linux) user and was pleased to have learned something valuable from this article. defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.mDNSResponder.plist NoMulticastAdvertisements -bool YES It drives me crazy that my desktop Hackintosh wakes up every couple of hours, and I'm really hoping this fixes it.

vesinisa 5y ago
> It drives me crazy that my desktop Hackintosh wakes up every couple of hours, and I'm really hoping this fixes it. Oh, I hear you! I've personally just given up and disabled sleep altogether, and moved to forcing the system to always hibernate instead of sleep with pmset.

cuillevel3 5y ago

Never tried it, but you should be able to copy `StandardKeyBinding.dict` to your library, convert it to XML and edit keybindings directly. I also like 'Spectacle' to move windows around.

cyberpunk 5y ago

What’s the current state of tiling managers on macOS? Seems Rectangle, Magnet and Amethyst are all mentioned below, has anyone done the “pepsi challenge” and cares to share their findings? I’d be grateful but I guess I just have to try all three myself…

smoldesu 5y ago
I gave all three of those a try when I was trying MacOS a year or so ago. Rectangle and Magnet basically fill the same niche, except Rectangle is free and kinda eliminates the need for Magnet (I don't quite remember what Magnet did better but I don't remember it being enough to convince me to use it). Amethyst is entire beast of it's own though, and I almost immediately decided it wasn't for me. It doesn't replace the default window server, so it ends up running like a bad TWM and an even worse desktop option. Of the three, Rectangle is the only one I can't live without on MacOS. Amethyst kinda just feels like a waste of resources.
- cyberpunk 5y ago
  Thanks! I’d give you a beer but you’ll have to settle for internet points :)
- hsbauauvhabzb 5y ago
  Complete outsider here, when you say ‘replace the default window server’ are you referring to the manager or the entire display server with something like X?
  - smoldesu 5y ago
    Nope, my bad for the ambiguous wording. What I really mean is that all of the memory-intensive GUI elements are also running alongside it, which makes it pretty unweildly for regular use. Nothing against Quartz, it's one of the few Apple technologies that I'll give credit where credit is due :p
wraptile 5y ago
Yabai gave me the best results by far! It's as fast as you can really go on MacOs and it feels like a true twm system. Unfortunately, due to restrictions of the OS itself (you can see the issue tracker) you can't really have the same quality of tilling as you can on Linux's X or Wayland.

weffwe 5y ago

> 3 times the CPU performance of my desktop system with an Intel i7 6700k I love those performance comparisons with 5-10 years old processors. Let's compare M1 with 80186 from 1982, then it will look even faster! Here is comparison with the new mobile Intel processor that will be released next month: https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/compare/11905527?baseline=11714129 https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/compare/11905527?baseli...

bsuvc 5y ago
When I click that link, I get some fake popups saying my "phone has been hacked" and that my "phone has viruses". I didn't even bother to try to read any of the content.
- weffwe 5y ago
  You should install uBlock Origin plugin for browsers. It will block any advertising and other unwanted content. I don't know how you guys living without an ad blocker.
  - edoceo 5y ago
    Would it be possible to provide a link that is from some low budget ass website?
    - weffwe 5y ago
      I updated the link and now you should see results on the official Geekbench website.
  - Debug_Overload 5y ago
    I am running uBlock, and almost none of the images on the page load right now. And seeing the way the title on that page is written, I'm not expecting quality content from there. Maybe share a link to a page that doesn't suck?
  - bsuvc 5y ago

typhonius 5y ago

You can show/hide terminal windows with a hotkey natively using iTerm2. Under Preferences > Keys > Hotkey I've set the system-wide hotkey to option+space which means if I need a terminal, I can press those keys and have iTerm pop up over my active window. Pressing them again hides the window and brings focus back to the previously active window which has been great for productivity.

vladdoster 5y ago

I highly recommend Hammerspoon[1] for any macOS automation tasks you want to do. It is not only extensible but alleviates the need for using multiple tools due to its broad feature set. The only downside after two years of using Hammerspoon is that the community is small since it isn't as user-friendly as yabai, amethyst, etc. However, you'll probably enjoy its open-ended nature, given your article. [1] https://github.com/Hammerspoon/hammerspoon https://github.com/Hammerspoon/hammerspoon

9935c101ab17a66 5y ago
Hammer spoon is the shit. It’s super rewarding to be able to add really complex functionality (like menu bar applets) with ease.

mattrighetti 5y ago

I used to love iTerm2 but the only thing that it was missing was that I couldn't set it up as I wanted with a script when I needed to install a new macOS from scratch (there's probably a feature that allows that and I didn't notice). I moved to tmux + Alacritty [1] (Rust hype and speeed) which is cross-platform and only needs its config file, a nice and clean yaml, in the right place to restore it as I want. Now when I full wipe my Mac I just need to run the script that pulls the config file from GitHub and tada! Also, the configuration file is almost identical to my Linux one so I can move around similarly and have a consistent look. I'm also used to replace macOS programs like `sed`,`grep`,`getopt`,`ssh` (macOS OpenBSD one won't work with Yubikey),`coreutils` and `awk` with the GNU version. You can download them with Homebrew and to replace them with the macOS default ones you just need to put them at the beginning of your path like this: export PATH=/usr/local/opt/coreutils/libexec/gnubin:$PATH [1]: https://github.com/alacritty/alacritty https://github.com/alacritty/alacritty

euoia 5y ago
iTerm2 3.4.14 Preferences > General > Preferences > Load preferences from a custom folder or URL You can save your preferences and load them as required.
- smohare 5y ago
  You entirely miss the point. Folk want to do this from a bootstrap script. iterm makes this difficult.
  - varenc 5y ago
    iTerm doesn't make a bootstrap script easy, but it's still possible. I do it. Use this to command to set the location of the iterm config folder: defaults write com.googlecode.iterm2 PrefsCustomFolder -string "/path/to/iterm config folder" Then as long as that folder exists and contains your preferred settings, when iTerm opens up it'll be exactly like you want it. (though it would have been nice if this just defaulted to $HOME/.config/iTerm)
  - 5y ago

ploxiln 5y ago

I wasn't satisfied with the Automator way to make a new-terminal shortcut, it was kinda slow, and not 100% reliable. I found FastScripts and was able to make it fast and reliable. (I still use version 2.8, version 3 was just released, haven't tried it.) https://redsweater.com/fastscripts/ https://redsweater.com/fastscripts/ For the mouse wheel, there's a nice minimal proper fix: https://github.com/emreyolcu/discrete-scroll https://github.com/emreyolcu/discrete-scroll

lido 5y ago

But why did you stop using linux?

tra3 5y ago
Says “for work” in the article.

iscmt 5y ago

Try Swinsian[1] for music, significantly better than the default app IMO. [1] https://swinsian.com/ https://swinsian.com/

iscmt 5y ago

Further reading: [1] https://wiki.nikitavoloboev.xyz/macos https://wiki.nikitavoloboev.xyz/macos [2] https://wiki.nikitavoloboev.xyz/macos/macos-apps/ https://wiki.nikitavoloboev.xyz/macos/macos-apps/

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

obert 5y ago

some other suggestions (free): * window management/positioning: Spectacle, Easy Move+Resize * screenshots: Lightshot screenshot * status bar icons management: Hidden Bar * calendar on status bar: itsycal * battery: Battery Monitor * hex file viewer: Hex Fiend * folder/file compare: Meld

russelg 5y ago
As covered elsewhere in these comments, Rectangle is the new Spectacle. https://rectangleapp.com/ https://rectangleapp.com/
- obert 5y ago
  thanks - looks like they chose a different set of shortcuts, that's a bit annoying after years and so much muscle memory
  - klohto 5y ago
    You can rebind easily. I find Rectangle to be much more lightweight than Spectacle
innocentoldguy 5y ago
Thanks for the list. Regarding screenshots, I like macOS' built-in screenshot keybindings: Command+Shift 3: Captures the entire screen. Command+Shift 4: Captures a specific region (You have to select the area each time). Command+Shift 4, Space: Captures a specific window. Command+Shift 5: Captures a specific region (Remembers the last selected region). Command+Shift 5 also displays a menu at the bottom of the screen that lets you select any of the screenshot options as well as options to record a specific window or the entire screen.
- obert 5y ago
  yup thanks for the reminder, I usually go with the app above because it allows to draw on top of the screenshot and to copy in memory (e.g. to copy and paste into some IM), e.g. adding arrows, text, lines, something I use for example to highlight areas of the screenshot

dopeboy 5y ago

As a linux user since the Ubuntu 5.04 Hoary Hedgehog days, this is the first time in 16 years I've been tempted to switch to a mac. From what it looks like, the M1 seems to be deliver incredible performance at little power consumption. If there was a way to put linux on it without tinkering, I'd do it in a heartbeat. But because I can't, I'm seriously considering what it'd take to switch from my current setup (ubuntu 20.04, cinnamon, slide dock) to a mac. Keyboard shortcuts and workspaces are top of mind. I've also never been a fan of mac's dock where it groups all instances of an application together - I much prefer a classic Windows tray where each instance of an application has its own box I can easily alt-tab between. I also think mac's file manager isn't great. Much appreciated OP - may shoot you some questions over email.

wraptile 5y ago

I really tried to like macOS for an entire year. I used Yabai[1] as tilling window manager which is much better than Amethyst mentioned in the article. I also wrote my own compose key tool macos-compose[2] and rofi-like clone choosem[3] (eventually bought into Alfred). Yet with all of this effort I still went back to linux after a year (Arch with Qtile and Gnome). What really killed macos for me was the fact that animations could not be disabled entirely and everything felt like it's behind several ms of a delay. I work on the move so I don't have the luxury of multi-screen setup so switching between programs, workspaces and windows is the most important part of my workflow - it just drove me nuts. Now I run simple Lenovo yoga laptop with arch+qtile+gnome and honestly, my performance at work at least doubled. That's my anecdote anyway. 1 - https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai 2 - https://github.com/Granitosaurus/macos-compose https://github.com/Granitosaurus/macos-compose 3 - https://github.com/Granitosaurus/choosem https://github.com/Granitosaurus/choosem

gammadist 5y ago
The animations are a real pain. Who decided to make the animation to switch desktops almost one second in length?
- hatf0 5y ago
  Have you ever tried “Reduce Motion” in Accessibility -> Display?
  - gammadist 5y ago
    Yes. Instead of a sliding animation with a one second duration, I get a crossfade animation with a one second duration.
    - aniforprez 5y ago
      This. I keep typing right after I switch screens and it ALWAYS misses the first couple of keys. It's absolutely infuriating

jrm4 5y ago

Seriously? Whyyyyy? I mean I completely get why my dad uses MacOS over Linux; nothing for him to think about and all his devices just sort of work. But if you're at this level of customization, why would you take the chance? (I.e. you know Apple's just going to change something weird on you.)

tizio13 5y ago
He did choose the new MacBook Pro. It's the unix based laptop you can buy. I think its perfectly reasonable to make the switch
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
innocentoldguy 5y ago
I can't speak for the author but as a Linux user since 1994, I use macOS because I want to use Studio One, Logic, Cubase, Final Cut Pro, Affinity apps, and other proprietary software that doesn't run on Linux. I also love the M1 Max chip's performance and battery friendliness. I still use Linux too.
aidenn0 5y ago
Sounds like it was what was provided at work.
suction 5y ago
Your Dad is way ahead of you. "Just works" is the key to having a better life. I get it though, when I was younger I thought not tinkering with one's computer setup was a mark of the amateur, while customising was the mark of the pro.
- temptemptemp111 5y ago
- jrm4 5y ago
  Or, smarty pants, we do different things. He's a lawyer with a set of tech-needs, I'm a teacher in IT who experiments with different ways of doing things to possibly pass them on to others. But, thanks for playing.

hipsterstal1n 5y ago

Who cares?

ostenning 5y ago

Two must have productivity apps for macOS: Rectangle and Alt-Tab.

_abox 5y ago

I did the exact opposite. I was on MacOS since 10.2. But lately I felt things have become way too locked down (both hardware and software), too dumbed down (too many apps resemble mobile apps with limited functionality) and too opinionated. Sometimes I just want things differently. Another reason was that many new features are specific to iCloud integration and as I use many OSes (both computer and mobile) I could not take advantage of those anyway. I need cross platform. So a lot of selling points became irrelevant. I moved to FreeBSD with KDE on top and it felt like a breath of fresh air finally being able to set up my system the way I want it. This is so empowering. It became my daily driver about a year ago and I haven't looked back though I still use Mac and Windows for work, Windows personally for gaming and Linux for some servers. Of course I lost some stuff too like Apple's excellent multi DPI and great hardware integration. And many apps that were great like pixelmator. But I gained a lot of configurability and the ability to upgrade my hardware again.

lytedev 5y ago
Interesting! Why FreeBSD over Linux out of curiosity?
- _abox 5y ago
  Good question. I had several reasons. - I had used it until 7.0 in the past and missed the simplicity of having one single platform (rather than Linux with its kernel and the many distributions all doing things differently). - The excellent handbook - Almost devoid of corporate influence. Linux is being steered into the warm and fuzzy corporate domain. Many big players try to get their IP adopted by the Linux mainstream. Canonical with Snaps for example, Redhat with Gnome, etc. The big tech players are the biggest kernel contributors now. It moves from choices good for customers to the ones that are good for big tech. - Non-opinionated platform. Some distros are also becoming quite opinionated like Mac. I did try to play the Apple game for a while (like I said it was my daily driver since 10.2) but they kept annoying me more and more by deprecating things I used. I want choices again. - Stable platform but with rolling app packages. For example if KDE comes out with a new version I will see it usually a day or 2 later. - Couldn't find a Linux distro I really liked. I like minimalism but without Arch's elitism. Debian would have been the closest but I have bad experiences with major upgrades. What I would have preferred would be something like Alpine for the desktop. I looked at Adelie Linux which is exactly that but it was too premature. - The ports tree is really amazing. You're always able to change default package settings and recompile them - Jails are more powerful than linux containers, though they lack a framework a la docker. This is why I still use Linux on servers. So this was mainly it :) Unfortuantely running KDE did require installing some linuxisms like Dbus but overall it's not too bad.

nowahe 5y ago

A few tips/software recommendation in no particular order: - On iTerm2 you can setup a system wide hotkey to toggle a floating terminal in front of all your windows, whatever you're doing [1]. This works even in full screen apps. It really changed my workflow with iTerm, and is really handy. - For system stats in the menubar, I really recommend iStat Menu [2]. It's paid (12$ for a license), but the quality of the graphs and interface makes it well worth it imo. - If you have an external display and want to precisely tweek your resolution, I recommend SWitchResX [3]. It's mostly a GUI that wraps some display CLI tools. With it I adjust the resolution of my 4k external monitor currently, running it at 3200x1800 with HiDPI, and adjust it based on my eye fatigue. - As a more powerful and versatile replacement to Spotlight (Cmd+Space), Alfred [4]. You can customize it to run anything you want, from converting timestamps to dates, opening apps, search the whole system, run scripts, etc - If you have too many icons in your menubar and want to hide some (either totally or behind a button click), Bartender [5] [1]: https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/48796/iterm-as-a-slide-out-terminal-from-the-top-of-the-screen https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/48796/iterm-as-a-s... [2]: https://bjango.com/mac/istatmenus/ https://bjango.com/mac/istatmenus/ [3]: https://www.madrau.com/ https://www.madrau.com/ [4]: https://www.alfredapp.com/ https://www.alfredapp.com/ [5]: https://www.macbartender.com/ https://www.macbartender.com/

lenn0x 5y ago
Hidden Bar is good as well, that's what I am using. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/hidden-bar/id1452453066?mt=12 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/hidden-bar/id1452453066?mt=12

cheetor 5y ago

Mouse acceleration: to disable it I've been using SteelSeries ExactMouse Tool (https://steelseries.com/engine https://steelseries.com/engine -> expand Miscellaneous at the very bottom). It's very lightweight and I just install it once and never think about it again. Mouse scrolling: I always found this to be a bad experience on OSX/macOS so I've been using Smooze. It allows you to set the scroll curve to your own liking. It has other features that I don't use and although it's not free, iirc it was cheap and definitely worth it. Window management: a lot of others have mentioned great tools like Rectangle, but I've found Moom to be slightly better for my use cases. I prefer it over Rectangle (although Moom doesn't have window snapping so I actually use both) because you can set a custom grid e.g. 12x12 and have windows resize anywhere on the grid. With Rectangle, you can only choose from the (many) presets but unfortunately no customization.

Brajeshwar 5y ago
You might want to look at the Command-line options[1] for Rectangle. For instance, if you want the "AlmostMiximized" size to be not so big, you can set that to something of your choice, similar to the 12x12. Hope that helps and you can reduce to one app instead of two. :-) 1. https://github.com/rxhanson/Rectangle/blob/master/TerminalCommands.md https://github.com/rxhanson/Rectangle/blob/master/TerminalCo...
pxc 5y ago
Disabling mouse acceleration that way hasn't worked right since Catalina at least, maybe even since Mojave. You can test it with a high-resolution gaming mouse: slide it across your mousepad once as slowly as you can, and then flick it across once. There's still a difference in how far the cursor travels, even with SteelSeries ExactMouse. The only tools I know of that actually work for this (if you comoletely disable speed/sensitivity controls as well as acceleration) are SteerMouse and CursorSense, which use some kind of driver hack: https://www.plentycom.jp/en/index.html https://www.plentycom.jp/en/index.html

amznbyebyebye 5y ago

<Unpopular Opinion> I’ve used msft windows most of my life. Recently switched to a macOS and for the life of me just can’t get used to the switch between alt tab and cmd tab behavior. Also windows explorer > finder. Yes Mac OS looks cooler I guess, but I’ve found windows very practical.

radlad 5y ago
Just in case you're not aware, Command+` is a necessary secondary shortcut for use with Command+Tab.
- vesinisa 5y ago
  Is there any way to disable this behaviour altogether? After almost a year of being forced to use MacOS at work, I still can't wrap my head around having two sets of window to switch between (inter-app level + intra-app level). I REALLY wish they included an option to just treat all the windows as top level! Edit: found elsewhere on the thread this app that purports to fix it: https://alt-tab-macos.netlify.app/ https://alt-tab-macos.netlify.app/
  - deergomoo 5y ago
    There’s never gonna be a first party way to change this because macOS has always been “app-centric” whereas Windows has always been “window-centric”. It’s two different takes on the desktop metaphor—same reason that apps (usually) remain running on macOS even once you’ve closed the last window, which is another difference that often annoys both sides when they have to use the other OS.
Sunspark 5y ago
The switch between Android and iOS is more jarring. Once you get really used to Android, iOS seems very unintuitive by comparison.
gsinclair 5y ago
I’d love to hear what’s good about Windows Explorer. I used Windows for many years and never found it (edit: Explorer) satisfactory.

MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago

jwmoz 5y ago

Moved to mac from Linux around 2010 after being exposed to it by a few other developers. Never ever looked back. Sitting on a 2013 mbp maxed out, just required a battery change this year. Still usable but will move to the M1 2022. Blows my mind devs are still stuck on windows and linux machines.

ReactiveJelly 5y ago
For me it's partly because I want to cross-train for our IoT stuff that runs Linux, and partly because of FOSS idealism that I don't ever want to give up on.

theanirudh 5y ago

> A better solution for me was using Karabiner-Elements to only swap the right command and option keys: macOS has a built in tool called hidutil[1] for simple keyboard remapping. Prefer to use that since Karabiner-Elements has some issues on M1 and macOS Big Sur. I use this[2] tool to generate a simple launchd config. 1 - https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/technotes/tn2450/_index.html https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/technotes/tn2450... 2 - https://hidutil-generator.netlify.app https://hidutil-generator.netlify.app

BruceEel 5y ago
Excellent tip, thank you!
def- 5y ago
Thanks, added to the article!
9935c101ab17a66 5y ago
That tool is awesome! Thank you.

Brajeshwar 5y ago

On macOS, over the years, I have been trying to stay with the default native apps and programs that comes with the OSes as much as possible. You might need to tinker and learn the nuances (shortcuts, etc). However, I continue to tinker with other must-have tools, utilities, and programs to get things done. 1Password, Alfred, Lulu, Rectangle, Bartender (Hidden Bar is the open source alternative) - https://oinam.fyi/digital/apple/ https://oinam.fyi/digital/apple/

__mp 5y ago

I faced similar issues with the Swiss keyboard layout. I suggest switching to the “US International“ layout and use the dead keys to obtain the umlauts. There’s also a keyboard option that enables a umlaut menu with a long press on the keyboard- if you really want to avoid the dead keys (this might help: https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/254094/character-accent-menu-doesnt-appear-anymore-in-macos-sierra https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/254094/character-a...). The Apple “English International“ keyboard has a big enter key - if you dislike the small enter key of the US keyboard layout.

watersb 5y ago

I'm always interested in these setup stories and comments on HN. This one seems to be lacking the obligatory XKCD 1806. So here it is. https://xkcd.com/1806/ https://xkcd.com/1806/

varenc 5y ago

From the article: > "My current assumption is that the videotoolbox hardware decoding support doesn’t support the same codecs in mpv yet as it does in Firefox" mpv supports videotoolbox hardware decoding of h264/h265, it's just not enabled by default. It prevents the use of most filters and has slightly lower quality decoding in my experience. To get hardware decoding in mpv and hopefully get the same minimal CPU usage as Firefox just call mpv with `--hwdec=videotoolbox` or add `hwdec=videotoolbox` to your `~/.config/mpv/mpv.conf` file. Also from the article: > "here I noticed a major difference in how Homebrew seems to work compared to Arch Linux for example. On Arch Linux applications are built from source code centrally instead of relying on binaries from a vendor." This is true for Homebrew formula as well, like the mpv formula, just not Homebrew casks. Most casks are proprietary closed source applications.

def- 5y ago
I forgot to mention that I have set hwdec=videotoolbox already, but vp9 and av01 from youtube don't get hw-decoded anyway. > This is true for Homebrew formula as well, like the mpv formula, just not Homebrew casks. Most casks are proprietary closed source applications. But even open source casks seem to be taken centrally instead of built again. My guess is that this is to keep the original developers' certificates.
- varenc 5y ago
  Thanks for the reply! Also wow I hadn't realize that Apple supports hardware decoding of Google's VP9 codec. Googling a bit, it looks like this is new in the M1 Macs. Though not sure if it supports AV01 yet? When I browse Youtube in Firefox I seem to get AV01 encoded videos. Are you sure Firefox on an M1 Mac is using hardware decoding? I wonder if they might just be using an optimized software decoder. Wish I had an M1 mac to test! Frustratingly I couldn't find any description of videotoolbox codec support on Apple's documentation, though I did find that this VP9 constant exists: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/coremedia/kcmvideocodectype_vp9 https://developer.apple.com/documentation/coremedia/kcmvideo... (but couldn't find an AV01 constant) Re: Casks, I hadn't thought about it but you're totally right that this is probably mostly due to macOS developer signing issues.

meling 5y ago

> Putting the display to sleep easily by moving the mouse cursor in the corner is nice (I’d still prefer a keyboard shortcut), and can be enabled in the system preferences: You can lock the screen with cmd+ctrl q. Control–Shift–Power button* or Control–Shift–Media Eject : Put your displays to sleep. Here are some other keyboard shortcuts: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201236 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201236

def- 5y ago
There is no power button anymore: > * Does not apply to the Touch ID sensor. I have not found a way yet to reliably put the device to sleep from keyboard. With a shortcut it wakes immediately, maybe because it registers the letting go of the keys as a wakeup signal.
- tzguide 5y ago
  If you mean sleeping the display and not the whole computer, I ended up defining a hot corner to do it in the Displays preference pane in System Preferences. Then I can just swipe the mouse/trackpad to that corner without worrying about overshooting, works every time. I used to use the keyboard shortcut until I got a Mac without the power/eject keys.

ronenlh 5y ago

> So here I noticed a major difference in how Homebrew seems to work compared to Arch Linux for example. On Arch Linux applications are built from source code centrally instead of relying on binaries from a vendor. Homebrew also builds from source, but it uses cached builds they call bottles. I believe other package managers that build from source also used cached builds, I don’t know about Arch.

def- 5y ago
Strange, I had multiple Homebrew builds that took a dmg from some central place, even open-source software like mpv and (my own) DDNet.

lwouis 5y ago

Lots of links/tips on windows management on macOS in this thread. For people interested, you can check out my FLOSS app which brings Windows alt-tab to macOS: https://alt-tab-macos.netlify.app/ https://alt-tab-macos.netlify.app/ I investigated this space for years so check out the list of alternatives on the page linked above as well. Also note that i'm looking for someone to take over the project: https://github.com/lwouis/alt-tab-macos/issues/1179 https://github.com/lwouis/alt-tab-macos/issues/1179

EugeneOZ 5y ago

Author, to help you with the mouse scrolling direction: https://github.com/ther0n/UnnaturalScrollWheels https://github.com/ther0n/UnnaturalScrollWheels

28304283409234 5y ago

I have been using computers for over 30 years, and each and every one has issues, bugs, finicky bits that suck the life out of you and the minutes out of the hours. DOS, SunOS, *BSD, Linux and Mac. All of em. Just pick your poison everyone, and let us all get on with our lives. Edit: ...and Windows 3.11 and up.

Joeri 5y ago
Your comment reminds me of the 20 year old song “Every OS sucks”. Every OS wastes your time, from the desktop to the lap, Everything since Apple Dos, Just a bunch of crap. From Microsoft, to Macintosh, to Lih-- lie-- lih-- lie... nux, Every computer crashes, 'cause every OS sucks. https://songmeanings.com/songs/view/76280/ https://songmeanings.com/songs/view/76280/
rsanheim 5y ago
Yup. This is why I use exclusively macs now for work and most non-work things (still PC for gaming, for obvious reasons). Of course I'm on linux systems almost daily when it's required, but thats via SSH or maybe a virtualized env if I really need it. For day to day its just a m1 mac with ridiculous performance and amazing hardware. All OS'es and computing environments are horrible. Its just that Mac OS is less horrible and more in line with getting shit done as opposed to constant fiddling and fighting with your environment. To each their own of course, but this is has been my experience after 25+ yrs of computing.

darthrupert 5y ago

I was on macs during 2015-2021 and went back to Linux this year. I'm not entirely happy, although sway/i3 is so much better than macos's desktop. But I miss things like Bluetooth, wlan, sound, graphics just working. Yes, that's still a thing in Linux even if not quite as badly as 5ish years ago. I think I'll be going back to macs.

jackosdev 5y ago
Using i3 with Arch? I used to have problems with all the things you mentioned, takes a bit to learn what the best tools are and how to set them up. But now any other OS feels like I'm missing a limb
- darthrupert 5y ago
  Sway, actually. Yeah, I just recently learned that network managers are not equal at all. Iwd keeps screwung up my tethered connections whereas networkmanager happily works with everything. With sway, graphics are almost totally problem-free, now that almost everything I need are wayland-native. As for sound... pipewire might deliver that some day but not quite yet. Especially my DAC and usb headset make some troubles there.

kukabynd 5y ago

You might want to try Ionica (https://ionica.app https://ionica.app). UX will be better than Foobar’s, that’s for sure.

freedom2099 5y ago

I don’t get all this hate for animations… they really are barely noticeable! Relax a bit! And also windows manager… I hardly need to have more that 2 windows at the same time together in the same screen!

globular-toast 5y ago

> macOS is working better than expected for me so far, and definitely better than Windows would. Which begs the question, why did he switch to MacOS in the first place?

alexruf 5y ago

Since a few people already have mentioned Rectangle for Window management, I wanted to point out that there is also a payed version of it called Hookshot (https://hookshot.app/ https://hookshot.app/). The same developer also offers a great app called Hyperkey (https://hyperkey.app/ https://hyperkey.app/) which defines CAPS as your hyper-key.

rcarmo 5y ago

Folk interested in exploring the macOS window manager landscape are welcome to check out my annotated list at https://taoofmac.com/space/apps/window_managers https://taoofmac.com/space/apps/window_managers I have been bouncing between Moom and Phoenix of late, and still looking for a good auto-tiling option that isn’t Amethyst (which is OK, but doesn’t do all I want).

asdff 5y ago

What works best for me is to not really fiddle with the setup too much beyond the defaults or to install redundant stuff, like using brew to get a fresher version of ssh or installing iterm2 when terminal does the job, or otherwise spending time on window dressing. I try and lean into the philosophy of the mac, which is that its a desktop which behaves like a real desk. Right now I have 15 windows from various applications open on this one desktop, and its in a giant pile just as if I had a bunch of papers and files in a messy pile on my desk. This works great because you can press a button or swipe along the trackpad and spread out this pile, exposing everything that's in it along with all your other desktops, as if you are spreading out the stacks of papers on your desk. IMO this method is how you focus on stuff anyway. Your eyes aren't looking at the 12 different things in your tiling window manager at once, so you might as well just have a few things pulled up on top of your pile of windows that are of focus and take advantage of your screen real estate rather than have a bunch of tiny panes artfully spaced. The mouse makes it easy to do fast and sloppy window adjustments which are good enough.

alkonaut 5y ago
Same. Even if I don't like the defaults, I try as hard as humanly possible not to start fiddling with them. I learn to live with them, until the defaults become my preference. Now any clean VM or freshly installed machine or borrowed computer at work is set up to my preference. Do I maximize my productivity or have everything exactly perfect? No. But I'd rather have my nails pulled out than tweaking things. If I have to edit a configuration textfile, the computer goes out the window. My OS isn't an important part of my workday. It should just start my IDE and get out of the way.
Torwald 5y ago
<cmd-F3> shows Desktop and <Swipe up with three fingers> shows Exposé

kgarten 5y ago

I mostly switched to librem 14, arch linux (i3wm, gnome from time to time), still using a mac for work (mostly presentations, video conferencing). Development tends to get more and more difficult on the mac for me (the security check for running shell programs is sometimes annoying. Currently hunting down a node compile error ... works perfectly under arch). For my mac: I tried Amethyst, as others mentioned Yabai seems better. Yet, I switched to just to hammerspoon scripts, for tiling/desktop management etc.: http://www.hammerspoon.org/ http://www.hammerspoon.org/ It fits my needs and is adjustable. For shell: iterm2 is ok, yet I'm currently in love with kitty. https://github.com/kovidgoyal/kitty https://github.com/kovidgoyal/kitty Brew alternatives: macports, nix (https://nixos.org https://nixos.org) I love the idea, yet still haven't gotten around to use it much. shell: fish editor: nvim / neovide

jarym 5y ago

I see way more people advocating. Homebrew now than a few years ago. I chose MacPorts back then since it seemed a bit better designed as a package manager but these days I see few people suggesting it. What’s the current consensus - is homebrew now good enough to consider switching?

hughrr 5y ago
I don’t use either. I mostly use my mac as an AWS and linode terminal. I think the only things I install locally are VScode and Go and both of those arrive as dmg/pkg format.
akvadrako 5y ago
Homebrew has been good enough since the beginning, hence why it took over from Macports. But it hasn't changed any of it's major design decisions, so if you didn't like it then you wouldn't like it now.
- disgruntledphd2 5y ago
  It puts everything in /opt/homebrew/ now, which I believe was an issue for some people before.
  - pxc 5y ago
    That's good to hear! When did this change happen?
    - disgruntledphd2 5y ago
      Dunno, relatively recently as I set up a new Mac a few weeks ago, and it was like that then.
      - Toutouxc 5y ago
        AFAIK the new prefix is only used on M1 Macs, x86 Homebrew uses the old one.

anticodon 5y ago

For me Linux is about freedom. Other systems might be better in UI/UX or performance (e.g. give more FPS in games for NVidia cards), but I remember the times when Microsoft dominated the IT world and it looked scary. All corporations strive to fragment the market using non-compatible technologies and then to monopolize the market by consuming other fragments. This strategy failed in the 90s with the arrival of Linux. Although many times I felt like the whole world will become Microsoft/Wintel, I think we barely missed. Now, corporations are trying to do it e.g. via forcing everybody into the cloud and killing open protocols. E.g. I have several email accounts and I can't gather mail from all of my mailboxes in one application. Situation is even worse with Calendars. I have two jobs and also my own personal calendar server and I can't collect all my calendars in one app also. I have to routinely check Google Calendar, because even though I can add it to my Thunderbird Calendar, moved or canceled events changes are not propagating to Thunderbird. And I can't integrate Microsoft Outlook calendar into my Thunderbird at all. I really don't want to rely on whims of one corporation. Also, regarding MacBooks: I remember when the touchbar had no alternatives and it is really awful. This is what monopoly means: you have to live with bad decisions. You have to pay absurd money for a piece of cloth or a roller for the desktop case.

def- 5y ago
Since this is for work my choice was between a MacBook or Windows-based laptop. Personally I wouldn't even have considered using anything else than Linux.

seumars 5y ago

Regarding shortcuts: one that often gets overlooked is Move focus to next window under Shortcuts > Keyboard which lets you cycle between windows of the active application. I have it mapped to ⌘`.

def- 5y ago
Thanks, that's good to know, one less thing to need the mouse for!

thiht 5y ago

> So I decided to use the native macOS window management instead and try to get used to it instead of actively fighting against it. That’s something I wouldn’t have expected to read here, as I myself find it quite hard to change paradigms. I learned that the hard way when I had to use a Mac for the first time after using Windows and Linux my whole life, and tried to use it as I wanted instead of how it’s intended to be used. Once you know how the paradigm works, you can try to adapt it to your workflow, but not before or you’ll be frustrated quickly.

peakaboo 5y ago

I read all this and after seeing all the workarounds and special fixes to get back to a good workflow he had on the mac... I just have one question: Why use a Mac? So he likes the extra performance (which he won't use 99.99% of the time), and he likes the screen (why not use an external screen like most sane people?). I still don't understand. Why give up the amazing arch Linux for shitty Mac OS? Makes no sense whatsoever.

ossusermivami 5y ago
I agree, if you are savy enough working and maintaining your linux desktop I don't think I have any attraction to go back to OSX..... maybe Alfred was the only nice things about OSX i miss on Linux (even with a bunch of wofi/rofi scripts).... ah yeah the hardware gestures, I use libinpute-gestures which is nice but come nowhere the builtin osx gestures. aside of that linux (nixos/sway for me) is IMHO a 100 time more efficient,
how_gauche 5y ago
In my case: your employer only gives out MacBooks and expects you to use them.
- timbit42 5y ago
  They are a nice thin wedge shape. Use them as a doorstop.

ossusermivami 5y ago

I switched back to linux because I enjoyed it more than OSX, maybe I am strange but I find Gnome more "focus". I was using ubuntu for the last year and hardly customized it, just using Gnome and my tools. (altho i mostly just need a terminal/web browser/vscode and compilers) last three months I have been ill and had to stay at the hospital with plenty of time in my hand in between chemo so I decided to dig more into linux internals and went with nixos.... I learned so much during that time about my system and how it works. I think I actually enjoy more computing since then...

traceroute66 5y ago

Reasonably well written blog post all things considered, although I'm not clear as to why the author felt the need to install vim, ssh and rsync using brew when all three are provided by default on MacOS ?

def- 5y ago
You are right, vim is not required. SSH I misremembered, didn't install that. The rsync version on macOS is quite old (2006!) and didn't support all the options I wanted to use.

somewhereoutth 5y ago

A well curated Debian based Linux distribution on a 2015 Mac Book Pro with hash key added would be the best laptop experience ever.

lighthammer 5y ago

Thinkpad x220 with Xubuntu and a Mac Mini. My two daily drivers with a Windows VM sitting on a NAS. Nice to have options.

flippinburgers 5y ago

No xmonad no possible.

0xriyu 5y ago

I have the same MX Master 3 Mouse and had lots of troubles getting the acceleration and scroll feel "normal" on macOS. SmoothScroll[1] was the best for correcting the inconsistent rate of scrolling down pages -- however it was not free, so I stopped using it. I ended up using the free version of USB Overdrive[2] as it allows you to disable acceleration among other things. 1 - https://www.smoothscroll.net/win/ https://www.smoothscroll.net/win/ 2 - https://www.usboverdrive.com/ https://www.usboverdrive.com/