These apps will allow you to do this when clicking on windows (instead of Command + Tabbing to the app):
SuperTab - $10, 30-day demo available - simple to use
Keyboard Maestro - $36, 30-day demo available - more complicated to set up, but is extremely powerful
Solved! I had tried SuperTab before. I must be missing something because I can't find the option to bring all windows to front when switching, however
Keyboard Maestro works! I tested a macro to "Bring application windows to Front" triggered on "Any application activates" and it functions exactly as I'd hoped.
Before I read this reply, though, I had begun to try to dig through the
NSWorkspace API to solve my problem and I made something that functions. In the interest of documentation, this is what the functional code looks like, however I am decidedly not a Mac developer and this code is based on a few examples I found and only loosely understand:
Code:
class MyObserver: NSObject {
override init() {
super.init()
NSWorkspace.shared.notificationCenter.addObserver(self,
selector: #selector(bringToFront(_:)),
name: NSWorkspace.didActivateApplicationNotification,
object:nil)
}
@objc dynamic private func bringToFront(_ notification: NSNotification) {
let app = notification.userInfo!["NSWorkspaceApplicationKey"] as! NSRunningApplication
app.unhide()
}
}
It took a while to land on
app.unhide as I initially thought
app.activate(options: .activateAllWindows) would be the ticket, but this works, and it seems more responsive than Keyboard Maestro, bringing windows to the front with no perceptible delay versus a hundred milliseconds or so. Even so I am keeping Keyboard Maestro around as I was thrilled to see it takes care of another thing I used to use DragThing for and hadn't even started to try to replace yet. In the Mac OS 8 days I started to "tear off" the application switcher menu and put it on the left side of my screen, collapsed so that only the icons showed. I used the process dock in DragThing to approximate this in OS X as I preferred it to the Mac OS Dock (apps are always in alphabetical order and only running apps are displayed). Keyboard Maestro has an Applications Palette that out-of-the-box was almost indistinguishable from my DragThing configuration. What a score! In all my digging this program never hit my radar so thanks again for the recommendation.
Hm. I may be able to code you a small program to do this for you. I will return, probably on Monday
I appreciate that you would take the time to do this very much. The code I cobbled together above seems to work well, though!
Thanks to everyone who offered a recommendation. I just about have all my ducks in a row to be able to move my primary machine to a new Mac after Catalina is released from my current 2011 iMac with High Sierra.