6 ms·

It's an interesting take, but I'm not sure how this deals with multiple windows if all the demos show a primary, active window and everything else "offstage."

It's an interesting take, but I'm not sure how this deals with multiple windows if all the demos show a primary, active window and everything else "offstage." I don't need to just see those other windows and their contents, I want to interact with them as well, which SM doesn't seem to do.

anileated 3y ago
I found that cases where I need multiple windows at the same time are actually quite rare in my work. Turned out seeing only the window I work with right now is actually what I needed 90% of the time, so this default behavior is a win. For the remaining 10%, SM makes it easy to combine windows into a set (this is so far the only instance where I use the new “recent applications” widget, I set it to auto-hide so it never distracts me otherwise). Then with cmd+` you can switch between windows in the same set (even if they are of different apps). You can also tile windows in your set with something like Rectangle, etc.—just make sure not to over-craft sets, they are ephemeral after all. The ephemeral nature of window sets used to bother me initially—I wanted to persist them across restarts—but after I realized I really focus on one window 90% of the time, and creating ad-hoc window sets is very quick, I no longer find it an issue.
- rcarmo 3y ago
  But unlike on the iPad, you can’t switch between sets with a hotkey—Apple really dropped the ball on that one.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - anileated 3y ago
    I don’t use SM on iPad, I find it overkill, but maybe that’s because I don’t connect a keyboard. I’m not sure what you mean about switching between sets. On macOS, any action that focuses any window (like command-tab) switches you to its window set. Do you mean on iPad you can assign individual shortcuts or use numbers to switch between window sets?
    - rcarmo 3y ago
      On iPad you have hotkeys to switch between sets.
      - anileated 3y ago
        This does not answer my question as to how it works, can you assign a hotkey to switch to a specific set, you use numbers to switch to sets in order of recent use, etc.?
        rcarmo 3y ago
        You only get next and previous window sets using the “world” and cursor keys.
- chrisfinazzo 3y ago
  What I'm really thinking about is something approaching Snap Layouts from Windows 11. SM kinda, sorta does this, but the layout isn't as nice as what Microsoft did, hence the complaints. I would argue that the idea that windows are ephemeral doesn't work for all windows in all situations - I'm almost always going to want a window with BBEdit, another with Terminal cd'd to the current project (whatever I might be doing, and there likely will be a fair number of these, more than 1 at least), plus a web browser with email/documentation. Admittedly, some of my complaints come from having my current setup with a DisplayPort hub and 2 HP displays, yet not having the horsepower to drive them each as independent screens. It's a holdover from a previous setup when there actually was a Windows machine in the mix. Apple seems to begrudingly acknowledge that people might actually have more than one display in their setup, so features like this sometimes feel incomplete. See also - the "bug" in prior versions of Spaces which didn't account for multiple monitors correctly. A simple oversight that shows they think about this kind of use last, if at all.
  - anileated 3y ago
    > I would argue that the idea that windows are ephemeral doesn't work for all windows in all situations - I'm almost always going to want a window with BBEdit, another with Terminal cd'd to the current project (whatever I might be doing, and there likely will be a fair number of these, more than 1 at least), plus a web browser with email/documentation. I thought so, too. However, turns out I work better when I see either an editor window, a terminal window, or a web browser, but not all at the same time. Meaning even if I had them all on screen, every moment in time I really focus only on one, and I do it for minutes at a time—all others meanwhile are visual junk. So SM does just that: focus one window at a time by default, and because command-tab is so readily available switching between full focus on one window to full focus on another window is very fast. In my case, I could create a multi-window set where I have all of those windows very large and exactly same size (e.g., with Rectangle’s “almost full-screen” feature), and then I would get a bonus way of switching just between those windows (through command-`). I might try it some time. There are few cases so far where I create multi-window sets arranged so that I see windows simultaneously, for example: 1) when I need to drag things between them repeatedly, such as when organizing files (e.g., moving photography between my SD card, SSD and HDD), or 2) when I’m observing multiple long-running processes in terminal but didn’t bother to run Tmux in the beginning so now I am stuck multiple Terminal windows and I want to see progress in them all. Turns out such cases are pretty rare. That said, I don’t use multiple displays, I work on laptop and that probably informs my use case.

anileated 3y ago

I found that cases where I need multiple windows at the same time are actually quite rare in my work. Turned out seeing only the window I work with right now is actually what I needed 90% of the time, so this default behavior is a win. For the remaining 10%, SM makes it easy to combine windows into a set (this is so far the only instance where I use the new “recent applications” widget, I set it to auto-hide so it never distracts me otherwise). Then with cmd+` you can switch between windows in the same set (even if they are of different apps). You can also tile windows in your set with something like Rectangle, etc.—just make sure not to over-craft sets, they are ephemeral after all. The ephemeral nature of window sets used to bother me initially—I wanted to persist them across restarts—but after I realized I really focus on one window 90% of the time, and creating ad-hoc window sets is very quick, I no longer find it an issue.

rcarmo 3y ago
But unlike on the iPad, you can’t switch between sets with a hotkey—Apple really dropped the ball on that one.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- anileated 3y ago
  I don’t use SM on iPad, I find it overkill, but maybe that’s because I don’t connect a keyboard. I’m not sure what you mean about switching between sets. On macOS, any action that focuses any window (like command-tab) switches you to its window set. Do you mean on iPad you can assign individual shortcuts or use numbers to switch between window sets?
  - rcarmo 3y ago
    On iPad you have hotkeys to switch between sets.
    - anileated 3y ago
      This does not answer my question as to how it works, can you assign a hotkey to switch to a specific set, you use numbers to switch to sets in order of recent use, etc.?
      - rcarmo 3y ago
        You only get next and previous window sets using the “world” and cursor keys.
chrisfinazzo 3y ago
What I'm really thinking about is something approaching Snap Layouts from Windows 11. SM kinda, sorta does this, but the layout isn't as nice as what Microsoft did, hence the complaints. I would argue that the idea that windows are ephemeral doesn't work for all windows in all situations - I'm almost always going to want a window with BBEdit, another with Terminal cd'd to the current project (whatever I might be doing, and there likely will be a fair number of these, more than 1 at least), plus a web browser with email/documentation. Admittedly, some of my complaints come from having my current setup with a DisplayPort hub and 2 HP displays, yet not having the horsepower to drive them each as independent screens. It's a holdover from a previous setup when there actually was a Windows machine in the mix. Apple seems to begrudingly acknowledge that people might actually have more than one display in their setup, so features like this sometimes feel incomplete. See also - the "bug" in prior versions of Spaces which didn't account for multiple monitors correctly. A simple oversight that shows they think about this kind of use last, if at all.
- anileated 3y ago
  > I would argue that the idea that windows are ephemeral doesn't work for all windows in all situations - I'm almost always going to want a window with BBEdit, another with Terminal cd'd to the current project (whatever I might be doing, and there likely will be a fair number of these, more than 1 at least), plus a web browser with email/documentation. I thought so, too. However, turns out I work better when I see either an editor window, a terminal window, or a web browser, but not all at the same time. Meaning even if I had them all on screen, every moment in time I really focus only on one, and I do it for minutes at a time—all others meanwhile are visual junk. So SM does just that: focus one window at a time by default, and because command-tab is so readily available switching between full focus on one window to full focus on another window is very fast. In my case, I could create a multi-window set where I have all of those windows very large and exactly same size (e.g., with Rectangle’s “almost full-screen” feature), and then I would get a bonus way of switching just between those windows (through command-`). I might try it some time. There are few cases so far where I create multi-window sets arranged so that I see windows simultaneously, for example: 1) when I need to drag things between them repeatedly, such as when organizing files (e.g., moving photography between my SD card, SSD and HDD), or 2) when I’m observing multiple long-running processes in terminal but didn’t bother to run Tmux in the beginning so now I am stuck multiple Terminal windows and I want to see progress in them all. Turns out such cases are pretty rare. That said, I don’t use multiple displays, I work on laptop and that probably informs my use case.