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Comment by piskov

6 hours ago

You don’t get it

Spaces are not for fullscreen but for basically virtual desktops i3 linux style

Here is superior user experience:

1. Install moom. Its keyboard windows arrangement is second to none. Its two-step tiling is a killer. Ie caps-a to show a popup with all the shortcuts, then “a” letter for vertical 1/3 of the screen. Or s for middle 2/3. Or q for top left third — you can assign any letter for any portion of the screen.

2. Use option1-6 to switch between desktops

3. For example alt-4 is a desktop where you have all on one screen (suppose you have 6k xdr like i do): safari, mail, messages, telegram, hey email, reeder

alt-3 is your productivity desktop where you have things, calendar, basecamp, notes, ia writer

alt-1 and 2 is for your main work like rider ide or what have you

Alt-5 for your remote stuff like remote desktop, servers, what have you

So with this you have a mental model of where everything is always and instant switching to it. Want to see your todos and notes? Alt-3. Want to see your browser and messaging? Alt-4. You get it.

Moom is better than tiling manager for screens like 6k 32” xdr.

Otherwise tiling managers are perfectly fine. For instance on windows I use komorebi

This is similar to how I use Spaces. I haven't hotkeyed desktops, but each one is designated for a particular task or theme. The concept extends further with a secondary display, with the primary monitors' spaces being assigned "main task" duty while the secondary displays' spaces get "aux task" duty — so e.g. IDEs and browser windows immediately relevant to the task at hand go on a main monitor desktop while secondary display desktops are used for things like chat, music, and documentation.

This is a core part of my workflow and is one of the reasons why I would have a difficult time using Windows as my primary OS: its virtual desktop support is far too weak in comparison. It can't even switch desktops independently per-display.

This is exactly what I do -- but I have space split up by persona (Personal, work 1, work 2, Play), and then each space is managed with Moom. Love it.

  • You will still run into shit when one application instance is used in two spaces

    Finder, chromes, etc. it will cause automatic switching.

    Also, cmd-tab doesn’t have a filtered mode for the active space

    Cmd-~ actually works better when using stage manager, because it goed through all active windows across all apps

I tried to live like this for a while but found I could not separate applications into spaces

I would try setting up a space for, eg, all my communication stuff. But suddenly I’d need to drag-and-drop an image from my image editor into Slack. Or I’d want to drag a graphic from Safari into Final Cut Pro. Or any number of cross-workspace operations

How do you handle this with spaces? Do you initiate the drag, tap the space hot key, then drop?

I'm really confused - I downloaded Moom because of this comment, but can't find a feature to switch Spaces. Am I missing something?