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I’ve been using macOS in a multimonitor setup for years without much issue. A good bit of it boils down to macOS expecting monitors to be well-behaved, e.g. eac

I’ve been using macOS in a multimonitor setup for years without much issue. A good bit of it boils down to macOS expecting monitors to be well-behaved, e.g. each having unique EDIDs (many don’t, instead sharing one across all units of a particular model) and initializing in a timely fashion. > Why can't I move a window to a monitor/workspace that has a maximized window? Because it’s fullscreened, not maximized. macOS doesn’t really have window maximization in the traditional sense out of the box, you need a utility like Magnet or Moom for that. That fullscreen mode was introduced in 10.7 Lion and a lot of long time mac users have found it silly from day one. Personally I never use it. > Text cursor/caret randomly disappears when editing text, so you can't see where the cursor is, and you can't fix this unless you restart the app (happens to pretty much all apps). I’ve seen this, but only in Chromium browsers and Electron apps. Seems like it might be a Blink bug. Regarding other OSes, multimonitor on Linux is mostly fine (so long as you’re using Wayland; X11 is another matter especially if you’re doing something slightly uncommon like using two GPUs, in which case xorg.conf mucking will likely be necessary). By far the most frustration I’ve had with multimonitor is in Windows, which is generally weak there. IIRC it only recently gained the ability to set per-display wallpaper; before you had to glue wallpapers together into a single image that spanned across them, which is silly.

Terretta 3y ago
> That fullscreen mode was introduced in 10.7 Lion and a lot of long time mac users have found it silly from day one. Personally I never use it. Agreed, however it's arguably for a different mental model. If people think of it as "focus mode" or "workspace mode" it makes more sense. Four finger swipe to slide between the workspaces or focuses. More importantly, you don't need MOOM. - - - To maximize a window to the dimension of the screen without entering full screen mode, either: 1) hold shift option ⌥ and click the green maximize button on the top left of the window - or - 2) hold the Option key and double click a corner of a window to maximize without full screen focus, and doing that again will size it back to where it was
- jwells89 3y ago
  > To maximize a window to the dimension of the screen without entering full screen mode, either: This is a handy trick to know, but has caveats. Option-green-functionality is actually defined by apps, not the OS, and so in some cases it will for example act as a “fit window to content” button. Option-double-clicking a corner appears to be consistent across windows however.
  - mhio 3y ago
    Double click anywhere on the title bar works for me.
claytongulick 3y ago
Interesting - it's one of the killer features of macos for me. I use it to compartmentalize stuff I'm working on, and 4 finger swipe between them. I have a couple instances of VSCode, some app/debugging browser windows, some chrome profile windows etc... all running full screen and I spend my day brush swiping between them. It may be different for me because I work on a 14" macbook pro, mostly at coffee shops or unusual work locations, so I don't have a large monitor setup. I don't think I'd use it much if I had more of a traditional desk/multimonitor config.
- jwells89 3y ago
  I could definitely see it being more useful on a small screen, especially something like the 12” Macbook. Generally I’m working at my desk with at least 2x 27” displays. If I’m out somewhere it’s instead 16” MBP + 12.9” iPad with Sidecar.
- wubrr 3y ago
  But you can have workspaces/maximized windows without having the restriction of preventing moving windows to another monitor/workspace that has a maximized window. I use workspaces on my linux laptops all the time - this 'feature' has existed for ~20 years, and is not hard to implement. The difference being that macos seems to force the restriction of having only 1 window per workspace and not being able to drag a window from one workspace to another. If that's the behaviour you want (one window per workspace), you can easily operate in this way without having the forced restriction.
  - wtallis 3y ago
    You can have multiple monitors and multiple workspaces with multiple windows that can be freely moved between monitors and spaces. The only restriction is that when you make a window full screen (not the same as maximizing), it becomes its own new single-occupancy space. You seem to think that making a window fullscreen is the only way to make a new space, but it's just a special case of a larger system that already has the functionality you're asking for.
- peebeebee 3y ago
wubrr 3y ago
> A good bit of boils down to macOS expecting monitors to be well-behaved, e.g. each having unique EDIDs (many don’t, instead sharing one across all units of a particular model) and initializing in a timely fashion. I don't really buy this explanation. I'm talking about using a single external monitor here, a monitor which I regularly also use with linux (intel/amd) laptops without a single issue. > Because it’s fullscreened, not maximized. macOS doesn’t really have window maximization in the traditional sense out of the box, you need a utility like Magnet or Moom for that. That's not really a good reason though. It still doesn't explain why the restriction exists. Why can't a non-maximized/fullscreen window be displayed on top of a fullscreen/maximized window? What problem does that solve? > That fullscreen mode was introduced in 10.7 Lion and a lot of long time mac users have found it silly from day one. Personally I never use it. It's default though.
- jwells89 3y ago
  > I don't really buy this explanation. I'm talking about using a single external monitor here, a monitor which I regularly also use with linux (intel/amd) laptops without a single issue. Might be model-specific then. It’s not something I’ve seen with displays from Asus, Alienware, and Apple. I briefly owned a Dell monitor that would periodically flicker but it got returned. > That's not really a good reason though. It still doesn't explain why the restriction exists. Why can't a non-maximized/fullscreen window be displayed on top of a fullscreen/maximized window? What problem does that solve? Probably because it’d be easy for windows to get “lost” if the fullscreen window were focused and non-fullscreened windows fell behind it, with there being no obvious indicator that those windows exist.
  - silverwind 3y ago
    In my experience, MacOS monitor support is very hit or miss. For an Asus Gaming monitor, I had to write a custom plist file to get it to even show a picture and getting it to run at native resolution took a lot of experimenting. I would not buy any new monitor for MacOS that does not explicitely advertize MacOS support.
    - 3y ago

Terretta 3y ago

> That fullscreen mode was introduced in 10.7 Lion and a lot of long time mac users have found it silly from day one. Personally I never use it. Agreed, however it's arguably for a different mental model. If people think of it as "focus mode" or "workspace mode" it makes more sense. Four finger swipe to slide between the workspaces or focuses. More importantly, you don't need MOOM. - - - To maximize a window to the dimension of the screen without entering full screen mode, either: 1) hold shift option ⌥ and click the green maximize button on the top left of the window - or - 2) hold the Option key and double click a corner of a window to maximize without full screen focus, and doing that again will size it back to where it was

jwells89 3y ago
> To maximize a window to the dimension of the screen without entering full screen mode, either: This is a handy trick to know, but has caveats. Option-green-functionality is actually defined by apps, not the OS, and so in some cases it will for example act as a “fit window to content” button. Option-double-clicking a corner appears to be consistent across windows however.
- mhio 3y ago
  Double click anywhere on the title bar works for me.

claytongulick 3y ago

Interesting - it's one of the killer features of macos for me. I use it to compartmentalize stuff I'm working on, and 4 finger swipe between them. I have a couple instances of VSCode, some app/debugging browser windows, some chrome profile windows etc... all running full screen and I spend my day brush swiping between them. It may be different for me because I work on a 14" macbook pro, mostly at coffee shops or unusual work locations, so I don't have a large monitor setup. I don't think I'd use it much if I had more of a traditional desk/multimonitor config.

jwells89 3y ago
I could definitely see it being more useful on a small screen, especially something like the 12” Macbook. Generally I’m working at my desk with at least 2x 27” displays. If I’m out somewhere it’s instead 16” MBP + 12.9” iPad with Sidecar.
wubrr 3y ago
But you can have workspaces/maximized windows without having the restriction of preventing moving windows to another monitor/workspace that has a maximized window. I use workspaces on my linux laptops all the time - this 'feature' has existed for ~20 years, and is not hard to implement. The difference being that macos seems to force the restriction of having only 1 window per workspace and not being able to drag a window from one workspace to another. If that's the behaviour you want (one window per workspace), you can easily operate in this way without having the forced restriction.
- wtallis 3y ago
  You can have multiple monitors and multiple workspaces with multiple windows that can be freely moved between monitors and spaces. The only restriction is that when you make a window full screen (not the same as maximizing), it becomes its own new single-occupancy space. You seem to think that making a window fullscreen is the only way to make a new space, but it's just a special case of a larger system that already has the functionality you're asking for.
peebeebee 3y ago

wubrr 3y ago

> A good bit of boils down to macOS expecting monitors to be well-behaved, e.g. each having unique EDIDs (many don’t, instead sharing one across all units of a particular model) and initializing in a timely fashion. I don't really buy this explanation. I'm talking about using a single external monitor here, a monitor which I regularly also use with linux (intel/amd) laptops without a single issue. > Because it’s fullscreened, not maximized. macOS doesn’t really have window maximization in the traditional sense out of the box, you need a utility like Magnet or Moom for that. That's not really a good reason though. It still doesn't explain why the restriction exists. Why can't a non-maximized/fullscreen window be displayed on top of a fullscreen/maximized window? What problem does that solve? > That fullscreen mode was introduced in 10.7 Lion and a lot of long time mac users have found it silly from day one. Personally I never use it. It's default though.

jwells89 3y ago
> I don't really buy this explanation. I'm talking about using a single external monitor here, a monitor which I regularly also use with linux (intel/amd) laptops without a single issue. Might be model-specific then. It’s not something I’ve seen with displays from Asus, Alienware, and Apple. I briefly owned a Dell monitor that would periodically flicker but it got returned. > That's not really a good reason though. It still doesn't explain why the restriction exists. Why can't a non-maximized/fullscreen window be displayed on top of a fullscreen/maximized window? What problem does that solve? Probably because it’d be easy for windows to get “lost” if the fullscreen window were focused and non-fullscreened windows fell behind it, with there being no obvious indicator that those windows exist.
- silverwind 3y ago
  In my experience, MacOS monitor support is very hit or miss. For an Asus Gaming monitor, I had to write a custom plist file to get it to even show a picture and getting it to run at native resolution took a lot of experimenting. I would not buy any new monitor for MacOS that does not explicitely advertize MacOS support.
  - 3y ago