macOS Sequoia: How Window Tiling and Snapping Currently Works

[chmania]

That’s like saying someone shouldn’t complain because it got done eventually.

Complaints are legitimate, it’s not whining.

Of course, but through Feedback Assistant. That's the only way, Apple developers would hear your complaint.

 

[joris538]

It depends on what you’re doing and your workflow. When working with multiple spreadsheets and Word Docs, expose is nowhere near as useful as cascading windows IMO. I can quickly navigate full size windows and know exactly where each one is at all times whereas with Expose, the location of windows changes each time I make add/close windows.

It doesn't do that for me, everything is kept in the same order and place. I'm not sure if the following is your problem, but with mission control you have the option to group by application and use expose to show all open windows of a particular application. One is a four-finger swipe up, and the other a four-finger swipe down. This configuration is why I'm 100 times more productive on a Mac than on Windows.

But on window snapping: at work I have to use Windows, and the window snapping is actually my biggest annoyance. With a Mac you're used to distribute the windows all over the place (which I believe is its core philosophy), whereas if you do that with Windows, boom, SNAP. It even has this one snapping area where it just minimizes all the other windows.
While it's always good to add features that other people might benefit from (and I must admit, I sometimes use tiling through BTT), I just hope it doesn't fundamentally change Mac.

 

[MrCubes]

I think the app switcher (cmd-tab) is the most efficient way to navigate around overall in that it only list open apps and not every window. This make it super quick to navigate where one want as it's easier to think in apps and find the icon in the bar than finding the right window.

While I think Mission Control/Exposé is a nice feature I don't use it that often. Have the app switcher mapped to the scroll wheel button of my mouse with the software SteerMouse. Been like that for years and I'm very used to it.

Just my opinion...

This is something I've never understood. It's literally always a specific window I need (ok, maybe 1% of the time switching the whole app is useful - but so rarely I wouldn't miss it) - often in the same app I'm in. Even when it does happen to bring the correct window to the front it also brings all the other windows for that app to the front - often hiding the other windows from other apps that you wanted to interact with. Now you have to do multiple steps with Exposé to get back to where you wanted to be. It's infuriating and gets me many times every day - or at least did until I broke down a few years ago and installed AltTab, which lets me Option-Tab through windows. I would much much rather have this built into the OS than tiling.

I'm ranting about this here, now, because whenever I've mentioned this before I've just been told, "that's just the Mac way - you'll get used to it". I've been using Macs almost exclusively for 20 years now. I'm not used to it because the practicality of it hasn't changed.

Am I really the only one?

 

[star-affinity]

This is something I've never understood. It's literally always a specific window I need (ok, maybe 1% of the time switching the whole app is useful - but so rarely I wouldn't miss it) - often in the same app I'm in. Even when it does happen to bring the correct window to the front it also brings all the other windows for that app to the front - often hiding the other windows from other apps that you wanted to interact with. Now you have to do multiple steps with Exposé to get back to where you wanted to be. It's infuriating and gets me many times every day - or at least did until I broke down a few years ago and installed AltTab, which lets me Option-Tab through windows. I would much much rather have this built into the OS than tiling.

I'm ranting about this here, now, because whenever I've mentioned this before I've just been told, "that's just the Mac way - you'll get used to it". I've been using Macs almost exclusively for 20 years now. I'm not used to it because the practicality of it hasn't changed.

Am I really the only one?

I just feel that most of the time the window one wants is the one that comes up when switching to the app it belongs to with cmd-tab. If not there's always a keyboard shortcut to switch between windows of the frontmost app or one can use Mission Control/Exposé for all the windows of the frontmost app.

I'm just arguing that when there's a lot of apps and windows open it can be quite messy to navigate and find the window one wants among these when using Mission Control. I think the app switcher generally gets me where I want faster. But one can of course use a combo of the two.

You can also invoke that app switcher and move focus to the app which window you want to get to and then (while still holding cmd) press the number ”1” on the keyboard which will then show all the windows from that app. That particular window you choose there will come to the front, but the rest of the windows for the app will not.

But I'm sure AltTab is a nice solution too.

 

[Isengardtom]

Personally I think this kind of “multitasking“ creates more distraction than that it helps, especially on smaller screens.
I’ve made the same argument on the iPad and stage manager.

True multitasking is working with multiple monitors in full screen. Working on 4 tiles on a Macbook screen is just not it.

 

[NEPOBABY]

Very useful feature. Should be polished by the time it is released in September/October.

It's nearly there. The tile preview should have the same color as the system accent choice. Some jerkiness in the corners will be fixed. Personally not a fan of corner tiles anyway.

 

[Fuzzball84]

Of course, but through Feedback Assistant. That's the only way, Apple developers would hear your complaint.

There are also developers looking on websites like this.

They are everywhere. There are multiple routes, some better than others admittedly.

 

[MilaM]

I'm ranting about this here, now, because whenever I've mentioned this before I've just been told, "that's just the Mac way - you'll get used to it". I've been using Macs almost exclusively for 20 years now. I'm not used to it because the practicality of it hasn't changed.

Am I really the only one?

You're not the only one. Most of us keyboard warriors have just tried to live with it the best way we can.

BTW, once you have the focus on the right app, there is a keyboard shortcut to switch between individual windows of the same app.

Command–Grave accent (`): Switch between the windows of the app you're using. (The character on the second key varies by keyboard. It's generally the key above the Tab key and to the left of the number 1.)

You can also reassign it in settings, which is what I did.

 

[MrCubes]

You're not the only one. Most of us keyboard warriors have just tried to live with it the best way we can.

BTW, once you have the focus on the right app, there is a keyboard shortcut to switch between individual windows of the same app.



You can also reassign it in settings, which is what I did.

Yeah that's what I lose, but if you need to see windows from two apps at once (as I very often do) the previous app windows are now typically obscured by the topmost app's additional windows. Infuriating.

 

[MrCubes]

I just feel that most of the time the window one wants is the one that comes up when switching to the app it belongs to with cmd-tab. If not there's always a keyboard shortcut to switch between windows of the frontmost app or one can use Mission Control/Exposé for all the windows of the frontmost app.

I'm just arguing that when there's a lot of apps and windows open it can be quite messy to navigate and find the window one wants among these when using Mission Control. I think the app switcher generally gets me where I want faster. But one can of course use a combo of the two.

You can also invoke that app switcher and move focus to the app which window you want to get to and then (while still holding cmd) press the number ”1” on the keyboard which will then show all the windows from that app. That particular window you choose there will come to the front, but the rest of the windows for the app will not.

But I'm sure AltTab is a nice solution too.

I actually didn't know about the "press 1" feature. That does help a lot - thanks (although AltTab just directly does what I want with no additional keys, so I'll probably still stick to that).

 

[kc9hzn]

This is such an interesting observation, and reminds me a little of how people who weren't born for the "classic" seasons of The Simpsons sometimes say that the more recent shows are better.

I've been using Macs since 2003, and even that is just a brief wink of time compared to others around here. But there are also hundreds of thousands, of not millions of Mac users, who started using them last year, or a few years ago.

These people care not about how things used to work.

While that may be true, they’re categorically and demonstrably wrong, just like those new Simpsons fans!

Joking aside, I’ve ever only really used the window snap feature in Windows on a regular basis on ultra wide screen monitors. Occasionally it’s helpful in other contexts, though, in those contexts, two side by side is enough, so, on macOS, I’d just take a window full screen and then drag in another window (think that was introduced in Yosemite). As someone who cut their teeth on Mac OS Classic (even if OS X was out by the time I was learning), the feature I miss more than any other is WindowShade. For the uninitiated, WindowShade would let you collapse a window into its title bar by double clicking the title bar. This was especially useful with the Finder, since, back then, each directory had its own window. (When you used Spring Loaded Folders*, back in the day and drag an icon over a folder, an entirely separate window would open, which would remember the location and display settings of that folder’s Finder window. These windows would close when the drag operation was finished, but it meant that, in general, you’d probably be using more windows than you do today.) Another neat option was the option to have Finder windows turn into drawers. They’d collapse into their title bar (which would be shaped like a tab on a Manila folder), which, in turn would be located at the bottom of the screen. When you dragged an icon over one of the tabs, the window would open up from the bottom of the screen like a drawer.

* Spring loaded folders are my absolute favorite macOS feature of all time (and the single biggest disappointment I face when using Windows), though they’re still available in macOS to this day. They’re even available in the iOS Files app! Spring loaded folders is that feature where you can drag a file icon over a folder, and the folder’s window opens up (allowing you to move it into another subfolder in a single operation). It’s less impressive of a feature in iOS or macOS because of the OS X Finder’s and Files’s browser based interface, but it STILL makes file organization dramatically better than it is on Windows. (I usually end up cutting and pasting single files on Windows, rather than drag and drop a file into a folder, and repeat that for each directory deeper into the directory tree.)

 

[kc9hzn]

You're not the only one. Most of us keyboard warriors have just tried to live with it the best way we can.

BTW, once you have the focus on the right app, there is a keyboard shortcut to switch between individual windows of the same app.



You can also reassign it in settings, which is what I did.

And, of course, you can always cycle backwards in command-tab using Shift and through windows using command+shift+grave. So don’t forget to change that shortcut if you change the other.

 

[wbeasley]

That’s like saying someone shouldn’t complain because it got done eventually. Like a train is late by 16 hours but as long as it got you there… why complain.

Complaints are legitimate, it’s not whining.

Would you say the same thing if it was a life saving medicine. That was only available just as you were passing away? 😂

Complaints and suggestions are good to get things changed.

Complaining AFTER they are changed is just harping needlessly

 

[kc9hzn]

That’s like saying someone shouldn’t complain because it got done eventually. Like a train is late by 16 hours but as long as it got you there… why complain.

Complaints are legitimate, it’s not whining.

Would you say the same thing if it was a life saving medicine. That was only available just as you were passing away? 😂

Well, there are productive complaints and counterproductive (or merely performative) complaints, and wisdom is knowing the difference. (There are also productive ways to complain and counterproductive ways to complain.) Incidentally, one of the biggest problems with social media is that it gives a large heckler’s veto to random nobody professional complainers (see, just about any thread on here about iPadOS*).

* While there are legitimate shortcomings in iPadOS that limit its utility in some workflows, you’ve also got the people who won’t be happy without anything less than macOS on the iPad (which is something Apple will never do, but that doesn’t stop the “macOS on iPad” crowd from trying to overshadow legitimate aspects of iPadOS that Apple could improve and still keep it recognizably iPadOS).

 

[MilaM]

And, of course, you can always cycle backwards in command-tab using Shift and through windows using command+shift+grave. So don’t forget to change that shortcut if you change the other.

Thanks for your suggestion. But I only ever use the forward switching for app windows. Usually I don't have that many windows open at once for the backward motion to be useful. In fact, I'm an obsessive window closer, on Mac and on the iPhone 😬.

 

[kc9hzn]

Personally I think this kind of “multitasking“ creates more distraction than that it helps, especially on smaller screens.
I’ve made the same argument on the iPad and stage manager.

True multitasking is working with multiple monitors in full screen. Working on 4 tiles on a Macbook screen is just not it.

Well, cognitive processing research suggests that humans actually suck at multitasking in general. This is part of the reason why even hands-free conversations can still cause distracted driving (let alone any scenario where you take your eyes off the road). Trying to keep two tasks in working memory is harder than juggling four balls, it seems.

Now, sometimes there isn’t a one-to-one correlation between windows on screen and your current task (task in the human goal-oriented behavior sense, not in the computer process sense). It IS useful to be able to open two windows side by side at once (say, comparing two documents, or referring to a reference document and your current task). Useful workflows requiring three or more windows are probably considerably rarer* (and maybe ought to be optimized to only require two windows, too many procedural steps and too many opportunities to do “now wait, what was I doing?”). Then there’s the whole matter of context switching and flow, takes about 15 minutes or so of working at it to become engrossed in a task after you’ve switched contexts.

I’m reminded of the video I’ve seen of a kid online bouncing rapidly back and forth between a tablet and smartphone. Truthfully, the kid isn’t doing anything useful (and is just chasing dopamine rush after dopamine rush). The ability to do more at once doesn’t always result in the ability to do meaningful things and often subtracts from that ability.

* I’m guessing things like photo or video editing are where you’d most see this, software developers typically try to combine everything into one program or even one view (see emacs, which takes that philosophy to its logical conclusion).

 

[wbeasley]

Well, cognitive processing research suggests that humans actually suck at multitasking in general. This is part of the reason why even hands-free conversations can still cause distracted driving (let alone any scenario where you take your eyes off the road). Trying to keep two tasks in working memory is harder than juggling four balls, it seems.

Now, sometimes there isn’t a one-to-one correlation between windows on screen and your current task (task in the human goal-oriented behavior sense, not in the computer process sense). It IS useful to be able to open two windows side by side at once (say, comparing two documents, or referring to a reference document and your current task). Useful workflows requiring three or more windows are probably considerably rarer* (and maybe ought to be optimized to only require two windows, too many procedural steps and too many opportunities to do “now wait, what was I doing?”). Then there’s the whole matter of context switching and flow, takes about 15 minutes or so of working at it to become engrossed in a task after you’ve switched contexts.

I’m reminded of the video I’ve seen of a kid online bouncing rapidly back and forth between a tablet and smartphone. Truthfully, the kid isn’t doing anything useful (and is just chasing dopamine rush after dopamine rush). The ability to do more at once doesn’t always result in the ability to do meaningful things and often subtracts from that ability.

* I’m guessing things like photo or video editing are where you’d most see this, software developers typically try to combine everything into one program or even one view (see emacs, which takes that philosophy to its logical conclusion).

Having worked help desk support for a few years, there are great gains from having multiple screens (I had three) for usefully monitoring, working and investigating issues. But it was always more time slicing than multitasking. Focus on one window/screen, use info to check something elsewhere. And while you are chatting with someone, you cant really give 100% attention to something else. Especially when translating what users are trying to (badly at times) explain to you. No wonder remote screen jacking is a popular tool (until the user decides to use their mouse as well...)

 

[NEPOBABY]

Well, there are productive complaints and counterproductive (or merely performative) complaints, and wisdom is knowing the difference. (There are also productive ways to complain and counterproductive ways to complain.) Incidentally, one of the biggest problems with social media is that it gives a large heckler’s veto to random nobody professional complainers (see, just about any thread on here about iPadOS*).

* While there are legitimate shortcomings in iPadOS that limit its utility in some workflows, you’ve also got the people who won’t be happy without anything less than macOS on the iPad (which is something Apple will never do, but that doesn’t stop the “macOS on iPad” crowd from trying to overshadow legitimate aspects of iPadOS that Apple could improve and still keep it recognizably iPadOS).

iPadOS is macOS optimised for the tablet format.

These minority of people who have gone nuts and making strange demands have fallen for a campaign created by a competitor who wanted to sabotage the iPad M4's release. It failed as a campaign because most iPad customers don't use this forum or Reddit or read any tech discussion. They buy what looks and feels great and they got on with their work or study.

One thing we notice VERY CLEARLY with the small number of folks demanding macOS on iPad is they are very toxic, they belittle the majority of iPad users who are very productive, their knowledge of computing history is weak (I just replied to someone who said Mac OS 7's Finder was more powerful), and they don't do anything themselves. It's like they are just paid cents to spread nonsense.

They can't even type 'iPadOS' or 'macOS' properly which means they're not using an Apple device which would auto correct them.

 

[Fuzzball84]

Well, there are productive complaints and counterproductive (or merely performative) complaints, and wisdom is knowing the difference. (There are also productive ways to complain and counterproductive ways to complain.) Incidentally, one of the biggest problems with social media is that it gives a large heckler’s veto to random nobody professional complainers (see, just about any thread on here about iPadOS*).

* While there are legitimate shortcomings in iPadOS that limit its utility in some workflows, you’ve also got the people who won’t be happy without anything less than macOS on the iPad (which is something Apple will never do, but that doesn’t stop the “macOS on iPad” crowd from trying to overshadow legitimate aspects of iPadOS that Apple could improve and still keep it recognizably iPadOS).

So your complaint is about counterproductive complaints 😀

 

[Fuzzball84]

Complaints and suggestions are good to get things changed.

Complaining AFTER they are changed is just harping needlessly

But it does keep the discussions on macrumors going. Generating clicks and add revenue 😀

 

[wbeasley]

But it does keep the discussions on macrumors going. Generating clicks and add revenue 😀

well at least that's an honest answer...

 

[urtho]

I use Rectangle right now, and it is a pale comparison to the functionality of PowerToys Fancy Zones on Windows. I want to be able to define zone sizes, and drag into a zone, not to a screen edge to snap windows in place. As it stands now, I can use Rectangle well enough, but I like to have three uneven zones per 27" monitor and one to two zones on the built in screen. At least you can turn off those wasteful empty spaces that are in all the promo screenshots.

 

[kc9hzn]

But it does keep the discussions on macrumors going. Generating clicks and add revenue 😀

Sometimes I have my suspicions about the forum threads (especially the low effort trolls) that make their way to that bar at the top of the home page…

 

[chmania]

A whole workday using Sequoia Developer Beta, but without the Sequoia wallpaper, as advised by Apple developers, went quite smoothly. Window tiling was used with good results on 15" MBP screen. The always-on-top Calculator helped a lot. No heat, no fan noise, no external monitor connected. It is the 3rd full day with Sequoia Developer Beta. Of course, after a few hours sleep, the MBP will be put to use again. I installed Sonoma Beta, when the public beta was announced, but this time, it is the Developer Beta, that is, one month ahead. Sonoma behaved very well, and I'm sure Sequoia would too. 😊 👌

 

[snipper]

The Finder really could use some love. How about a Split View in the same window so I don’t have to drag stuff between different windows?

It doesn’t get any better than the tabbed Finder windows imho.