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>Multiple windows within one app is badly supported. Finder window closing behaves different to everything - alt-tabbing to it rarely brings anything to the for

>Multiple windows within one app is badly supported. Finder window closing behaves different to everything - alt-tabbing to it rarely brings anything to the fore. How so? Finder seems to behave the same way as other multi-window apps, if you cmd-tab to it and a window is open, it will appear, and if there isn't the app will focus and you can press cmd-t to open a new window. This is consistent and in line with how macos deals with apps vs windows/documents in every app.

lucideer 4y ago
> How so? Finder behaviour is technically consistent, all things being equal, but it's inconsistent in practice as a knock-on effect of other limitations: the root of this is the (inability) to quit Finder*. If you never quit any apps you ever use, you could probably get consistent behaviour across them, but broadly speaking if you do quit apps you're not using, opening those apps will tend to bring up a new window. Since Finder can't be quit, "opening" it afresh constitutes switching to it in its windowless state. Technically consistent (same as switching to any windowless app) but inconsistent in practice (switching to any other app you have quit will bring a window to the fore). I suspect this is one of those engineers-vs-ux things where engineers will close this as "works as intented" without considering that the "way it's supposed to be used" isn't necessarily a good model for actual user behaviour. The other potential excuse is "but Desktop icons", which is just rooted in the leaky abstraction of devs tending to DRY-ify desktop rendering by hard-linking it to the app that provides file mgmt. windows. *: You can work around this with the `com.apple.finder QuitMenuItem` setting at the cost of Desktop icons, but we're talking default settings here.
- ubercow13 4y ago
  Are you sure the inconsistency isn't because you have QuitMenuItem set? With it unset like default, Finder will launch a new window in the foreground when it's run from eg. Spotlight, even if it has no windows open, which is consistent with other apps. The only difference is that you can't actually close it. When QuitMenuItem is set to true and you actually quit Finder, that's when starting it won't open a window.
  - lucideer 4y ago
    > Are you sure the inconsistency isn't because you have QuitMenuItem set? I don't have it set - it's got drawbacks (aforementioned Desktop icons) but mostly I prefer to run with defaults so I'm less annoyed at fresh installs :)

lucideer 4y ago

> How so? Finder behaviour is technically consistent, all things being equal, but it's inconsistent in practice as a knock-on effect of other limitations: the root of this is the (inability) to quit Finder*. If you never quit any apps you ever use, you could probably get consistent behaviour across them, but broadly speaking if you do quit apps you're not using, opening those apps will tend to bring up a new window. Since Finder can't be quit, "opening" it afresh constitutes switching to it in its windowless state. Technically consistent (same as switching to any windowless app) but inconsistent in practice (switching to any other app you have quit will bring a window to the fore). I suspect this is one of those engineers-vs-ux things where engineers will close this as "works as intented" without considering that the "way it's supposed to be used" isn't necessarily a good model for actual user behaviour. The other potential excuse is "but Desktop icons", which is just rooted in the leaky abstraction of devs tending to DRY-ify desktop rendering by hard-linking it to the app that provides file mgmt. windows. *: You can work around this with the `com.apple.finder QuitMenuItem` setting at the cost of Desktop icons, but we're talking default settings here.

ubercow13 4y ago
Are you sure the inconsistency isn't because you have QuitMenuItem set? With it unset like default, Finder will launch a new window in the foreground when it's run from eg. Spotlight, even if it has no windows open, which is consistent with other apps. The only difference is that you can't actually close it. When QuitMenuItem is set to true and you actually quit Finder, that's when starting it won't open a window.
- lucideer 4y ago
  > Are you sure the inconsistency isn't because you have QuitMenuItem set? I don't have it set - it's got drawbacks (aforementioned Desktop icons) but mostly I prefer to run with defaults so I'm less annoyed at fresh installs :)