On the other hand, the ability to switch virtual desktops independently between monitors as macOS has been able to for ages remains absent on Windows and is present only on some Linux desktops which feels insane to me. That single feature reduces the amount of twiddling with window arrangements and such I need to do to almost nothing.

Every year I spend a month trying out Linux distros to see if it’s in a good enough place to switch back to. Every time I do this, I’m surprised by how few desktop environments supports this. Either it’s not popular or using multiple monitors isn’t common. This isn’t the only reason I haven’t switched back, but it’s one of the more surprising ones because it feels so natural to treat monitors and workspaces like this.

My guess is that among Linux users, multimonitor is unusual. Even most Linux laptop users seem to prefer single monitor clamshell mode vs. keeping the laptop open as a secondary screen. There’s a fair number of Macbook users who do clamshell too but secondary-laptop-screen setups are much much more common in the Mac crowd.

At some point I realized I’d rather one large 4K screen to any multi monitor setup I ever had.

I’m not sure if it’s a coping mechanism for using Linux desktops or not, but it does avoid a few issues.

It also makes window management simpler in the sense I can just sprawl them out and still see everything. Kind of like moving your project from a small desk to a big kitchen table.

I tend to have two workspaces. One for what I’m doing. One for background stuff, like mail and music.

I really like having 2 4K 27" displays. I even have a third monitor in vertical orientation but don’t use it that often. Most often I have my editor on one screen and my browser with developer tools on the other screen.

I’m not sure that a single large screen would work for me. The value in both separate physical monitors and virtual desktops is the ability to distribute windows across screens and desktops according to purpose. Size factors in here too; I think my cap for usability sits at about 32” (preferably at 6k), with anything larger than that making me likely to get lost at sea in an ocean of windows.

I use a single large screen (55”) but I keep my MacBook open so I can send things like my music player there where I can glance at them.

This seems to confirm my lived experiences (ran Linux as my main OS for about a decade). I remember spending so much time hand configuring X11, installing drivers, and endlessly debugging things to get my triple monitor setup working in the past. It was fun and it led me to my distrohopping hobby, but eventually I realized that not many people ran a setup like mine. So I moved away to Apple which has much better multi-monitor & workspace ergonomics (for me).

I can't think of a single Linux user I know who doesn't use a multi-monitor setup. I have three monitors on my desktop and it works fine on Cinnamon and Plasma. Maybe the dozen I know are outliers, but I think multi-monitor setups are fairly common.

Totally agree. I even created a feature request to allow disabling animation when switching between spaces. But I don't have any faith in them. I enabled auto-hiding of the Dock. When I use FlashSpace I don't need to see the dock anymore because I know what is where. I also integrated the number of messages on my Sketchybar, so that I know if there is a new SMS or Slack message without Dock.

Not for speed (that was only allowed in past versions of macos) but even now, you can go Accessibilty -> Reduce motion blur and it at least won't do the horrible slide animation, just fade in and out. The other one made me nauseous if I was doing it so often

They make more money that way, by having terrible desktop ux that needs to be supplemented with dozen of extra apps. Not sure if that was their intention, but they do.

How on earth do “they” make more money that way? The support costs of different users on different window management solutions obliterates any small fraction of application sales they earn on the App Store.

Not sure they are doing extra money because official apps are generally opened by free, community driven, ones, but yeah, this is my main issue with Macos nowadays, official apps are so flawed the os needs to be heavily customed out of the box.

I’m noticing that every single time I wake my (recent) MacBook from sleep, it forgets it’s attached to external monitors for at least 10 seconds. So, a bunch of windows do this confusing jump around and I have to wait for them to settle before I started anything!

It depends on how long that external monitor takes to wake up and respond to the display connection to confirm that it is there. If the monitor is still active then that is almost instant.

I had this problem with a cheap monitor I had to use at the office for a while.

Not a problem with any other monitor I’ve used.

It’s the monitor taking a long time to wake up.

> What is the purpose of the dock?

It’s an app launcher. Since I only open app with Spotlight/Alfred, my dock auto hides and doesn’t waste any real estate.

The stage manager in my opinion should have been iPad only. But if you ignore the button in the control center it’s easy to forget that it even exists.

This is also what I do. The auto-hidden Dock is my way to check for Open apps (at times). Otherwise, I still do Alfred/Spotlight to go to an App.

Are you aware of the AltTab app ? Highly customisable and best way to switch between opened windows on Macos. https://alt-tab-macos.netlify.app/

Couldn't go back.

I love the idea of staying with Native Apps even if I have to learn additional commands, shortcuts, etc. Then, I stay with as few apps as I can use as possible. I used to and am sometimes tempted to wander and start using another additional app, but I try to resist if that means I make a little extra effort—typing out the app’s name in Alfred/Spotlight.

Anyways, thanks for the suggestion.

Thank you for your comment. I can totally understand. I’m always tempted to stop worrying and go « default mode » for everything as I have a tendency to trap myself in rabbit holes configuring and fine tuning but sometimed it's too hard to resist !

Just tell the dock to auto hide. I don’t use stage manager. I don’t know why it exists to be fair.

Window management is “meh” but I don’t care. I use virtual desktops and the desktop Apple magic touchpad. Good enough.

This stuff is so divisive. You can find seemingly a roughly equal number of people who passionately think the opposite on many of these very-different-from-windows UX choices. I’m one. The dock tells me what apps are running and available. There are other ways to find the windows, and running apps don’t need windows.

Every single running UI app needs a window. The ones that run in the background and do not need a full fledged window go in the menubar next to the clock.

> Every single running UI app needs a window.

I’m sorry, but this is false. The default/conventional behaviour is for apps to keep running even if all their windows are closed.

There’s actually a toggle for this behaviour on the app delegate.[0]

You may be thinking about LSUIElement, which is loosely related, but doesn’t mandate that windowless apps must quit. [1]

0: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/appkit/nsapplicati...

1: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/bundleresources/in...

Apologies, I was not clear. Obviously in MacOS an app can be open without a window. My question is why?

What is the point of having for example Word or Safari running without a window? If they want to run a background task that requires some user interaction (eg outlook checking email and calendar), the menubar is the perfect place for it.

In the past the argument was that people want their apps warm started so that they open faster. But this is a moot point in 2025 with SSDs of pulling 5gb/s and tons of ram that allow for ample intelligent caching.

One reason is to be able to close the last window of an app without quitting it. Always bugged me how on windows, if I closed, say, the only word doc I had open, I had to relaunch word again (with all the loading time that that entailed) just to open a new doc. On a Mac you can close windows without worrying that you're also going to quit the app (except for apps that only support one window, although I do think it’s silly that every app doesn't just support multiple windows).

Why the app has to be scrubbed from memory when you close the last window? We are not in the times with 512kb of RAM memory. This is not something that the user should have to worry about today.

This is the simplest caching scenario I can think of.

The menu bar? God no. Cluttered enough.

It’s not like it’s hard to quit an app. You push Apple-Q for the app, Apple-W for a window.

What’s the point in having a window if it doesn’t need it. Do I need to check if this is the last window so I don’t lose my download, stop my render, etc. These things bite me on Windows. There is not the one way.

Precisely. It’s not really about system performance anymore, which just leaves the workflow benefits once you get used to it. As you point out, when using keyboard shortcuts thoroughly, the WM behaviours just make sense.

Command-Tab, Tab to select the app for foreground, Command-N for a new window. Combined with Command-Space for Spotlight (or Alfred/Raycast) it’s all very quick and seamless.

That's how Windows does it, but macOS just does it differently. Is it better? Depends who you ask.

> What is the purpose of the dock? It does not tell you what apps have windows visible, preview these windows or inform you where these windows are. Absolute waste of screen real estate.

Auto-hide. First thing I turn on when I do a fresh install.

Some keep it as an app launcher and quick switcher. I prefer to only open it when necessary.