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FYI -- on my MBP I use a program called Spectacle to snap windows around, and I now have no complaints relative to what you can do on Windows. Development on S

FYI -- on my MBP I use a program called Spectacle to snap windows around, and I now have no complaints relative to what you can do on Windows. Development on Spectacle ceased[1] and it looks like the community may have rallied around an open-source program called Rectangle, which is open source. At least, judging from this single Reddit thread lol: https://www.reddit.com/r/osx/comments/kazpcn/spectacle_alternative_for_m1/ https://www.reddit.com/r/osx/comments/kazpcn/spectacle_alter... [1] Although when I search for it now, I see an update from 2023 on softonic? Although the original dev's github repo for it hasn't been updated in years. https://github.com/eczarny/spectacle https://github.com/eczarny/spectacle

Rewrap3643 3y ago
I use Rectangle for this purpose.
- Geezus_42 3y ago
  I use Amethyst, but it's keyboard, not mouse driven, so a bit different.
- pirates 3y ago
  If you have it already, another alternative is to use BetterTouchTool and set it to override the behavior of the green corner button. For me it works just like Windows where there’s “minimize” on the yellow button and “maximize” on the green. I still use gestures like exposé but never have to worry about switching desktops or getting stuck in full screen.
  - DreaminDani 3y ago
    +1 to BTT. I also love how they have a (fully disable-able) drag to split, similar to Windows' hot edges
user_7832 3y ago
On the opposite side, would you (or anybody) know of a program to show windows in a cascade/overview style, on windows? So for example have one or 2 “main” windows, and have some/all the other windows in a cascaded view in the background. I would think it would help productivity a lot. (PowerToys doesn’t do this by itself, you have to select every window in place if I’m not mistaken.)
lolinder 3y ago
I use Rectangle and still have complaints about Mac window management. Rectangle itself is great, but it's discernably a patch over a bad window management paradigm, and the awkwardness underneath pretty regularly shows through. As just one example—the dock is atrocious for a browser-centric workflow. I only ever have 2 "apps" open at a time, but I have 6 Firefox windows and 2 IDE windows, and remembering where I put a specific window (or even that I already have it open!) is a chronic problem. I know about right-click to show all, but the text that pops up is small (it's a context menu, not a first-class navigation element) and that doesn't help with the discoverability problem. I'm sure that there are other apps to patch the other aspects of the system that irritate me, but if you have to install 4 third party tools to get something close to how good Windows is out of the box then I'd say OP has a good point.
- frizlab 3y ago
  *bad window management for you Believe it or not, some people actually do like to have free moving windows and such. Also you seem to be ignorant of a lot of features of macOS, like cmd-tab, focus an app, cmd-up arrow to show the windows of the app, and so forth. Or swipe down from the trackpad on a Dock icon to show the windows of the app. Anyway, YMMV as always. Personally I find the window management atrocious not because of the way it was designed, which definitely works for me (and I hate the Windows’ one), but because of the bugs which they insist on never ever fixing…
  - lolinder 3y ago
    > like cmd-tab, focus an app, cmd-up arrow to show the windows of the app, and so forth It's not that I'm ignorant of these, it's that they're clunky for a browser centric workflow. The abstraction of an "app" is just plain wrong for the way that I and many others use computers these days, because one app (the browser) is home to most of the tasks I'm working on and already has its own second-level navigation in the form of tabs. The "app" layer means on Mac there are three levels of navigation to get to what I'm trying to do, which is too many. What makes Windows (and most Linux DEs) better for the browser-centric world is that windows themselves are first class citizens—I don't have to pass through Firefox to get to GitHub.
kuchenbecker 3y ago
I use BetterSnapTool.

Rewrap3643 3y ago

I use Rectangle for this purpose.

Geezus_42 3y ago
I use Amethyst, but it's keyboard, not mouse driven, so a bit different.
pirates 3y ago
If you have it already, another alternative is to use BetterTouchTool and set it to override the behavior of the green corner button. For me it works just like Windows where there’s “minimize” on the yellow button and “maximize” on the green. I still use gestures like exposé but never have to worry about switching desktops or getting stuck in full screen.
- DreaminDani 3y ago
  +1 to BTT. I also love how they have a (fully disable-able) drag to split, similar to Windows' hot edges

user_7832 3y ago

On the opposite side, would you (or anybody) know of a program to show windows in a cascade/overview style, on windows? So for example have one or 2 “main” windows, and have some/all the other windows in a cascaded view in the background. I would think it would help productivity a lot. (PowerToys doesn’t do this by itself, you have to select every window in place if I’m not mistaken.)

lolinder 3y ago

I use Rectangle and still have complaints about Mac window management. Rectangle itself is great, but it's discernably a patch over a bad window management paradigm, and the awkwardness underneath pretty regularly shows through. As just one example—the dock is atrocious for a browser-centric workflow. I only ever have 2 "apps" open at a time, but I have 6 Firefox windows and 2 IDE windows, and remembering where I put a specific window (or even that I already have it open!) is a chronic problem. I know about right-click to show all, but the text that pops up is small (it's a context menu, not a first-class navigation element) and that doesn't help with the discoverability problem. I'm sure that there are other apps to patch the other aspects of the system that irritate me, but if you have to install 4 third party tools to get something close to how good Windows is out of the box then I'd say OP has a good point.

frizlab 3y ago
*bad window management for you Believe it or not, some people actually do like to have free moving windows and such. Also you seem to be ignorant of a lot of features of macOS, like cmd-tab, focus an app, cmd-up arrow to show the windows of the app, and so forth. Or swipe down from the trackpad on a Dock icon to show the windows of the app. Anyway, YMMV as always. Personally I find the window management atrocious not because of the way it was designed, which definitely works for me (and I hate the Windows’ one), but because of the bugs which they insist on never ever fixing…
- lolinder 3y ago
  > like cmd-tab, focus an app, cmd-up arrow to show the windows of the app, and so forth It's not that I'm ignorant of these, it's that they're clunky for a browser centric workflow. The abstraction of an "app" is just plain wrong for the way that I and many others use computers these days, because one app (the browser) is home to most of the tasks I'm working on and already has its own second-level navigation in the form of tabs. The "app" layer means on Mac there are three levels of navigation to get to what I'm trying to do, which is too many. What makes Windows (and most Linux DEs) better for the browser-centric world is that windows themselves are first class citizens—I don't have to pass through Firefox to get to GitHub.

kuchenbecker 3y ago

I use BetterSnapTool.