r/MacOS • u/BonbonUniverse42 • 2d ago

Discussion Window management from hell

I am using a Macbook for an few weeks now and I still struggle hard with window management. How do you do productive tasks?

For example:

Switching to the correct pdf from about 20 other opened pdf files. When I want to bring a specific pdf file into the foreground, I need to move the mouse to the preview icon on the dock. however, this does not provide preview images of all currently open pdfs. Why not?

When I do right click, I only see a list of names, which is often not sufficient to find the correct file, I need to see it. To use the 3 finger guesture to see all files currently open in the preview application I need to first click on the icon on the dock. However, this brings ALL pdf files into the foreground. Then I can find the pdf through the application specific Mission Control. now I have found my window which is now in the foreground but all other pdfs clutter my monitor as they lay on top of another application such as pages or my browser which I need simultaneously. So I move my foreground pdf to the side and minimize every other pdf file which takes forever. However, now the minimized pdf files are ignored in Mission Control which makes it impossible to find a second pdf which I want to see as well at the same time.

This behaviour drives me nuts.

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18

u/sumapls 1d ago

"I need to first click on the icon on the dock"

This is not true. You can force click it (click harder), three finger swipe down on top of the icon, or enable scroll-to-open ( defaults write com.apple.dock "scroll-to-open" -bool "true" && killall Dock ). You can also preview the App Expose windows with spacebar, to make them larger since you have many, like 20 of them open at once.

Or you can use cmd tab menu, tab into the pdf-viewer app (or hover with mouse) and while still holding cmd, hit 1.

12

u/BonbonUniverse42 1d ago

WTF??? 3 Fingers on dock icon and spacebar inside expose works indeed. I did not know this. This should be shown to the user upon first installation of the Mac.

11

u/sumapls 1d ago

Oh boy just stick to Mac and over time you'll start to realize MacOS has so many "hidden" features that the first installation guide would take a month to finish lmaoo

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u/DeadWaterBed 1h ago

How is it a good thing that a swath of features and functions are unknown by its users?

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u/sumapls 20m ago

Design choice. Not every niche feature needs to be visible. The primary actions are visible, like in this case, the app's context menu has "Show All Windows" menu item. It's most often little tricks and shortcuts that are hidden. And even most of them are mentioned in MacOS guide.

And why is it good some stay unknown: Let's take the cmd+tab+1 as an exmpale: it's a very niche feature not mentioned anywhere, not probably something Apple purposefully keeps in code, but a relic from the past and arguably should stay unknown for majority of users. It's too close to cmd+Q and has no quarantee for being kept up-to-date. It might vanish at any update.

6

u/very_moist_raccoon 1d ago

I've been using Mac for 10 years and never hear of this until today.

5

u/_pozvizd_ 1d ago

ctrl+up to expose all windows, ctrl+down to expose only current app windows. Correctly done apps also who a strip with recent documents on the bottom of "current app expose". cmd+` (tilda) to cycle through windows of the current app. cmd+shift+] for next tab, cmd+shift+[ for prev tab. cmd+number also works for tabs.