Comment by commandersaki

[dead]

>> For some reason, Apple's ideal desktop experience is tailored around focusing on one application at a time. Which is certainly true for some workflows, but that's not me.

> This is a very weird-sounding take to someone who has used Macs for three decades and recalls that for most of that time they never even had a full-screen mode.

Sorry about that. I should've clarified better. What I meant was that Apple's opinion of an ideal desktop is closely matching a cluttered desk where only the owner knows the position of something and the focus shifts back and forth from one primary task to another task/interruption.

Edit: typos

Not one window, but one application. Which is, yeah, about the worst of both worlds.

>You can’t get rid of it and replace it with something else?

You can hide it. I rarely use it as I use a launcher.

Interesting. I used to daily drive <https://github.com/asmvik/yabai> for almost a year until a major macOS update broke it and I just didn't have it in me to diagnose the issue. I'll bookmark this for future adventures, thanks!

>> > cannot be traversed with keyboard shortcuts > Yes, it can: https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/mac-window-tiling-i...

The first link is about arranging/tiling the windows. There are zero keyboard shortcuts to move the focus from the window on left to the window on right. It looks like someone used the equivalent of monitor codenames for keyboard shortcuts. Some operations don't even have a keyboard shortcut.

Additionally, while it does show how tiling is performed on macOS, tiling is not treated as a serious feature of the desktop. When "tiling" is used in context of window managers on Linux and BSDs, it implies that the windows are tiled automatically by the WM. It is done for several purposes, but ones that are important to me are:

1. Determinism (for the lack of a better word) of window placement. When I open n^th window, I know where to move my eyes. At the moment, this is arbitrary-ish on macOS. 2. Not having to tile every window manually. I only do this when I have a specific layout in mind. Default tiling behaviour can be configured by the WM's config file(s). At the moment, on macOS, I need to be explicit in tiling every window. 3. Keyboard oriented traversal between tiled windows. This is an extremely important part of a tiling WM. I can move my window or just the focus anywhere, without ever needing to reach for my mouse. Granted, I'm not a superhuman who can take advantage of this speed but I like control over my navigation of the desktop I am interacting with.

None of these are satisfied by macOS natively. Unless some app/plugin is used, which has no guarantee of working in future if Apple wishes to break something. On Linux, this is not the case, the WM is part of the desktop, even more so on Wayland.

> You can define additional shortcuts in Keyboard settings: https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/create-keyboard-sho...

This is about setting keyboard shortcuts for custom actions for applications, not window traversal on the desktop. Something like Ctrl+Left and Ctrl+Right which moves the focus between virtual desktops, but for the current desktop, moving the focus between the windows. I am not aware of this being possible at the moment.

I've recently been given a MacBook for work for the first time and this was driving me crazy, thank you!

Now I just need to figure out how to make Word stick to these commands and not decide that right half of the screen means the right 3/4 of the screen.

I don't see moving a window to another desktop which, for a multi-desktop environment, seems far more basic than setting to the left or right.

I've always had to use 3rd party tools to achieve this.

Do you and OP even know what you are referring to?

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Display_manager

Still does. On gnome you can switch via the lock screen.