Fun fact: if you press and hold the spotlight icon in the menu bar, the spotlight window is reset to its default position.

I never understood why Apple always hides functionality beneath undiscoverable gestures.

Especially on iOS where once I had a friend complain that they cannot see the time that a message was sent or received. I had to show them to hold and swipe so they can see the hidden column of times.

I guess they don’t want to clutter up at the interface with things like labels and options.

It's forced form over function, I guess: make simple things simple and complicated things not impossible.

The problem is, it takes away from power usage, and now that's a lot of users alienated. Another example is the three button mouse. Steve didn't want any buttons at all, remember, but settled on one. So we have command-x/c/v instead of left click select and middle click paste like in X windows.

Of course, it would make it cluttered which would make finding the most used information harder.

But sometimes a quick look at the manual is all that's needed,

> Tip: To see what time a message was sent or received, drag a bubble to the left.

https://help.apple.com/iphone/11/#/iph82fb73ba3

You can't add much more indirection than making someone credentialize in a manual to do something as trivial as showing timestamps. Better hope you catch that one-liner tip and then remember it when you're back in the app at some other point in time.

I'd rather every app just have a hamburger menu with a menagerie of settings so that those settings can exist even if they're too hard to design for. Instead designers write blog posts that shame everyone for making those menus in the first place.

Hidden gestures is the worst UX of all. For the same reason Siri will never replace a CLI -- completely probabilistic, unknown interface.

But can you talk about CLI and criticize looking in manuals and one liners you have to remember?

I believe it's smarter knowing how to find things and where. That's what I'm trying to show. That it is documented and where. Maybe someone could benefit from the link.

I don't have any pull with Apple to get them to change. I can just read the manual and figure out how things work.

If you have a Force Touch trackpad, you'll feel a notch when dragging the window around, which will you you align it with the default position.

Does this feature exist for any other window alignment tasks?

Not that I'm aware of. Unfortunately this feature seems to be a little underutilized throughout macOS.

Mind. Blown. Thank you both!

Well, you learn something new every day.