I’ve been using it since v1, it’s extremely configurable, very very snappy and doesn’t suffer from the common AI-problems, that seems to be forced into searches everywhere these days.
(EDIT: it’s a Spotlight replacement)
The extensions themselves are manually reviewed before being made available, but are - or were at least then - otherwise given free reign over the host system and even inherit the accessibility permissions (aka MacOS "godmode" for apps) that Raycast requires to function. To make this whole thing even more questionable, extensions are automatically and silently updated in the background, without a way for the user to disable this.
Makes you wonder in what other parts of this closed source app secure practices might have also taken a backseat.
Long story short: Very helpful tool, but their extensions architecture is quite insecure.
For window management, please consider using the Rectangle app or some other keyboard window manager. Otherwise, I believe its possible to long press on the maximize button to put your windows on the left or right half.
Ohh I never knew about that. Thank you!
There's also Zoom, activated by option-clicking the green button. This resizes the window to the app's preferred size, which is random, and usually not the full screen (e.g. full screen height but whatever width it had before).
Turns out operating systems named "Windows" are much better at window management. (The maximizing stuff is one issue, the application-first model is another.)
I never minded the application-specific Zoom behavior in macOS, in fact I find it much saner than Windows where you often end up with dead space inside an Application doing nothing. Safari pretty intelligently figures out the maximum horizontal width of a page before padding would be applied and resizes to that when zooming unless your window is already beyond that breakpoint, for example. Same thing with Word, for example. I don't want to see a bunch of dead space on my screen, I just want to show the maximum amount of content my application+display can show at once. (This is where I really dislike the change to the green traffic light, I don't want Window-like behavior on a Mac)
I don't understand the need to wait for something other than a search box to draw on the front when I just wanted to search and launch something.
On top of that, there is no way to customise the search result or create aliases. If I installed something portable without writing to registry, I couldn't even find it. And this is coming from a company that is adding AI to their search engine soon.
Also noticed yesterday that you can tile windows left right by long-pressing on the maximize button.
That's full-screen, not maximised[1].
It's also something I hate - I make an app full-screen and suddenly it's on a different desktop, so my awareness of what apps are on which desktop is completely gone - I can no longer to ctrl-alt-right twice to get from my golang desktop to my browser desktop, I need to move away from my keyboard, lean over to the macbook and three-finger swipe.
As far as Apple are concerned, no one ever docks their MB into an external screen, keyboard and mouse. You're supposed to do all of your work squinting.
[1] Someone will no doubt correct me if I am using the wrong terms.
However, you can switch desktops with control + right/left arrow. No need for the trackpad.
Because I'm easily distracted, I frequently have all major applications maximized. That's how I always used Windows. Fortunately, I can have the same on the Mac. Maximized with the dock showing below and all apps on the same desktop. Full screen is a rarity for me.
Note: As I was writing this, I was making sure that I was right. I notice that it will allow me to ignore the animation sometimes, but i am not sure what triggers that.
One thing I miss from Leopard is the ability to put your spaces into a grid instead of a line; made for a bit more efficient switching between them.
[1]: The only exception which is pretty much always full-screen is my terminal. I use tmux for multitasking in that "space".
The green button is just a very ill-considered piece of functionality imho. I find window management on macOS too frustrating to tolerate without moom installed.
It's pretty hard to believe that the people designing this system use it for work.
At least they got zones, coming from KDE and not having zones nor virtual windows, initially, was a big shock.
#SPACE:: Winset, Alwaysontop, , A
not sure how good it is since I haven't used it myself
edit: you have to install it yourself
I use it to manage how big my windows are across my monitors, or search for programs, or math, or always-on-top
Also the same on macos BTW. Switching external screens resets all the screen size options, including your laptop display if you’re not at the “default” resolution.
Does anything do this properly? I use i3[0], and wrote some super janky automation to preserve my layouts when I switched from dock to no dock and back. It has the concept of layouts that can be stored/loaded. So I had a script that would dump the layout, I had to manually run it before disconnecting (couldn't figure out how to detect the monitor disconnect and dump the layout before i3 re-arranged everything). And another script that would load the layout when new monitors were connected (this was easy enough to automate).
I'd be _really_ impressed if something did this correctly without any user hacking.
Are you saying macOS has this?
local hyper = {"ctrl", "alt", "cmd"}
hs.loadSpoon("MiroWindowsManager")
hs.window.animationDuration = 0.3
spoon.MiroWindowsManager:bindHotkeys({
up = {hyper, "up"},
right = {hyper, "right"},
down = {hyper, "down"},
left = {hyper, "left"},
fullscreen = {hyper, "f"}
})It also adds shortcuts for things like moving windows between virtual desktops. Why is that not a key binding by default in MacOS?
Tiling left and right does sort of exist natively, but you have to make an app only desktop and then add the second one. It's really clunky and doesn't feel like it's intended for actual use.
For what is worth, I use dozens of apps, several big ones and lots of utilities, and no crashes (though I went for all being M1 native). So could just be the choice of apps or some other factor.
Regarding typing to launch apps, you can try Alfred. It's free for basic use, and is what many long time Mac users tend to use for that role, as opposed to Spotlight.
Also, there absolutely is "tiling". There are several third party apps such as Magnet, and there is even a quite basic built-in: click and keep clicked for a second or so the green window button, and it will give you option to put the window in a left/right tile and chose another for the other side, etc.
But it won't let you just tile a single window to a side, it is mandatory to select another window for the other half of the screen. Also it moves those windows to a separate workspace for whatever reason, which causes a delay when entering/exiting this tiling mode because of the workspace switching animation.
I'm glad Rectangle exists. Now I just need something like Mission Control but with keyboard support (seriously, why can't I at least select another window with the arrow keys?)
Hold down the Option key to get it to work the way you want, here.
It sort of does, but it's not as obvious as it should be. Mouse over the green zoom button in the top-left corner of a window, hold the option key on your keyboard, and then "move window left" and "move window right" options appear.
See https://lna7n.org/2021/04/16/a-survival-guide-to-macos-from-...
I like OSX, but I will say that it has a lot of features which are basically impossible to discover except by accident.
If you search for a program, it takes just that tiny second to update results such that if you type one letter too much, your top result goes from program to web search
This sounds nearly identical to the search function I've used in the windows start menu. It's terrible
You can install it with brew too: `brew install --cask rectangle`
As for tiling, Mac does do somethings that Windows (IIRC) doesn't. One is, if you move a window or the edge of a window slowly it will snap at the border of another window. So you move fast to get it close then slow down and it will align nicely.
Also, tiling: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204948
But I agree that Windows tiling is more discoverable.
Alfred can either replace spotlite or run along side it. I’ve found it much faster and easier to use. You can customize it pretty well. (Just don’t download the Mac App Store version as it’s multiple versions behind)
There’s a ton of windows managers out there that help you setup hot keys or modify windows to work how you want. Mac overall is much better with native software not doing its own thing than windows so changes tend to be pretty consistent. I’m using MOOM because it’s on the app store and lets me hotkey all my windows into specific sizes but there’s plenty of other stuff out there depending on what you want to do.
This is not normal: you might have a hardware issue or possibly some kind of invasive corporate security software. The two M1 devices I’ve used have never had a system level crash and application crashes are rare except for the things I’m compiling myself.
For window management, I use Rectangle.app - Macs are all about keyboard shortcuts and that adds all kinds of resize patterns.
For search, I’ve used Launchbar since before Spotlight existed. It’s notably faster for app launching and customizable, and the clipboard history is invaluable.
I had an old Intel Mac start occasionally crashing after taking it in for a screen replacement. I fired up memtest86 and sure enough saw errors. I took it back and Apple replaced the entire motherboard for me for free.
Does anyone know if there’s a memtest86 equivalent for M1 macs? I’m not sure how I’d go about testing the ram on my machine now.
Recent estimates [0] shows that in 2021 Apple had revenue of $8.5B on Applecare while claims cost $2.6B. Also, the claim rate has been dropping YoY while revenue from AppleCare has been growing YoY.
Almost always, insurance schemes are profit generators (ie not sold at a loss). The reason to buy into a scheme like AppleCare is because you couldn’t recover from an immediate loss. e.g. The only non-mandated insurance I pay for is House Building insurance.
This is why I do not pay for AppleCare.
[0] https://www.warrantyweek.com/archive/ww20211104.html#:~:text....
FYI Alfred is the commonly recommended fix for Spotlight. Spotlight has become progressively worse over time. Apple recently removed the ability to remove web results, and disabled the ability to order which results come first.
Mac has a different window management paradigm. It suits some people, it frustrates others. I've switched from Linux/BSD after 15 years there, and it immediately made so much more sense to me. YMMV.
It also makes so much more sense if you have a very large screen. I've tried using dwm or Sway with my 43" screen and it's incredibly awkward. You need first-class support for floating windows, or at least smarter tiling.
But I agree, some things on macOS are not as good (workspaces), or plain dumb/useless (stage manager). For missing functionality, like keyboard-driven tiling, I fix things using Hammerspoon: https://github.com/rollcat/dotfiles/blob/master/.hammerspoon...
I've been using Spectacle (https://github.com/eczarny/spectacle/) which is technically unsupported but seems work fine on an M1 mac and provides all the neat tiling left/right/up-down windows 8 functionality via the keyboard. This is the first thing I install on a new work computer along with Amphetamine.
Phew, so I'm not alone. I used a Mac during 2014 to 2018 and window management was the most frustrating thing. I wanted to scream every time I accidentally moved a "maximized" window 1px to the right. aaaaargh.
AltTab - Windows style tabbing between windows, including thumbnails and tiles for each open window of an application[1].
brew install --cask alt-tab
brew install --cask linearmouse
brew install --cask rectangle
Sure it does - long press on the green maximise button and you get a little drop down. For me it includes "Enter full screen", "Tile Window to Left of Screen" and "Tile Window to Left of Screen". Tiling is like full screen but with two apps side-by-side rather than one.
If you want to maximise a window instead of going full screen (that is, make it as big as possible but not overlap the menu bar or dock), Option+Click on the green button or double click the title bar. macOS calls this "Zoom". Safari is atypical in that maximising it only changes the window's vertical height, but pretty much everything else maximises height and width.
All these options are on the 'Window' menu as well.
"I've used computers for x years, and if mac is so intuitive I should just get it, and mac sucks because you can't move folders only copy them in finder". A variation of this I've heard multiple times.
MacOS is intuitive for people who's never used another system in my opinion. If your muscle memory and workflows have been shaped by windows, you're going to have to look up how to do things.
Like, holding down option with certain clicks to reveal more options is not something everyone know, and it's applicable (used to be at least) in many places.
It didn't used to be this way, a lot of things about the UX has gotten worse in Mac OS. The nice thing is there is common, well written software in the community to resolve most of the quirks. BetterTouchTool is a REQUIRED install on every Mac I touch and while it is very powerful and has many capabilities, its two most important features for me are rather mundane: Dragging to grid and switching the behavior of the green button back to maximizing the window instead of going full screen (does anyone actually want /full screen/ for a normal application that is not watching a long video?)
If you have the right mix of community written software (much of which is free, but some is paid), Macs become a truly lovely experience. I can't stand Windows these days, when I used to feel very positively about it. Granted, there are great community written programs for Windows to improve its UX as well.
--And I'm a Mac.
The only winning move is not to play Win11
Set-WindowsSearchSetting -EnableWebResultsSetting $false -SearchExperienceSetting NotPersonalized
Link to the Docs: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/windowss...
To this day Alfred remains one of the first things I install on a new Mac as a result. Still have access to Spotlight (the indexing service) search, but none of the extra "intelligence" (aka Spotlight the app thinking it knows better than me what I want) unless I explicitly ask for it by explicitly invoking an extra workflow for things like unit conversion, etc.
It's funny how bad window management is with mac. I'd not be surprised if Apple's UI/UX designers just look at what Windows does well and says "Let's do the opposite of that"
The search in Windows start menu does the same thing. This is from progressive return on results intended to get something to the user fast while the searches are still not done. The downside is a shift like you see. I think subsequent results should only append to the end of the results, not change the order of existing results. As someone mentioned, you can turn off the web search results in Spotlight and it will eliminate most of this problem. I’m not sure if you can do that in the Windows Start Menu or not.
The Windows 7 start menu search worked very well for the TFA use case. You can still get the equivalent with OpenShell. Microsoft f’ed it up from Windows 8 on.
“Window management is different and even though it is a completely different OS I didn’t bother to learn it.”
You might as well have said its command.exe is garbage and back slashes don’t work.
There’s a $0.99 app in the App Store called Magnet that solves these problems.
It’s absurd that Apple doesn’t build this into their OS and wastes so much time on stuff like Stage Managed, but it is what it is. I highly recommend Magnet.
I enjoy macOS' maximize (fullscreen to new workspace behaviour) as I usually use it only when using a single screen with a trackpad. However, double clicking the titlebar will maximize more conventionally like Windows, Gnome or KDE.
BetterTouchTool is IMO a must have application on macOS. It supports window tiling.
For instance, there is no start menu but a search bar called Spotlight. You do your quick math in there (where you'd call calc.exe in Windows). However, it only accepts your query as math... sometimes. Like 50% of the times. Otherwise it searches the web.
If you search for a program, it takes just that tiny second to update results such that if you type one letter too much, your top result goes from program to web search, and pressing enter opens Safari.
Relevant results (folders + files) do appear, but usually you have to scroll.
The search bar itself comes up very quickly though.
If you do consider switching, one warning about Mac is this: Window management is utter garbage. Maximizing is actively discouraged. Tiling left / right etc? Doesn't exist. Everything must be random size and overlap weirdly. Instead, each new version brings a new quick switch or workspace functionality that I have never seen anyone use.
Oh and for some reason, it's less stable than my prior windows machine. Apps just crash a lot, but that's probably due to the Arm64. I mean, remarkably stable compared to computer back when, of course, but compared to Windows 10, I have more crashes and even had to restart a couple of times!