Improving my focus by giving up my big monitor

Re:Improving my focus by giving up my big monitor by pliesfan97 on Saturday April 04, 2026 @11:50AM (#47640097)

My window management hack that I’m surprised I’ve not seen mentioned is that in macOS you can map each numpad key to a separate desktop. You essentially get a desktop control pad free with your keyboard, since I don’t know any SWE who uses needs their numpad.

My wish is that macOS would let you group desktops together in a way that solved both of these problems:

- Switching desktops across multiple monitors at once

- Merging and splitting desktops when going from multiple monitors to one monitor

Multiple desktops are critical to my workflow and how I mentally organize my digital workspace. I wish there was more customization or more powerful features around it.

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Re:Improving my focus by giving up my big monitor by rubslopes on Saturday April 04, 2026 @12:03PM (#47640244)

My setup is similar: I use hyperkey (caps lock) + letters to switch between apps, that are (almost) always maximized. So I'm always focusing on one app at a time.

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Re:Improving my focus by giving up my big monitor by ant6n on Saturday April 04, 2026 @01:25PM (#47641177)

I dunno. I wish as a start, MacOS would improve window management, so I don’t keep jumping around the various desktops all the time and get lost.

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Re:Improving my focus by giving up my big monitor by xbryanx on Saturday April 04, 2026 @01:45PM (#47641376)

Aerospace helps deliver some of this functionality for you. Although the keyboard shortcuts take a little while to learn.

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Re:Improving my focus by giving up my big monitor by foobarchu on Saturday April 04, 2026 @02:45PM (#47641995)

> since I don’t know any SWE who uses needs their numpad

Not while coding, but I use mine very frequently in the other 60% of my job.

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Re:Improving my focus by giving up my big monitor by ulcer on Saturday April 04, 2026 @04:20PM (#47642957)

Maybe I am just too fussy, but the sliding animation that comes from switching is so disorienting and slow to me. I use multiple desktops a lot and sometimes I need to dart back and forth pretty quick and my god does that blurry transition grate on me. It really makes it feel like I am using a dusty old computer instead of a brand new four thousand dollar top of the line machine.

I have found some hacky options to do this, but they are just too janky for my taste. I would love to have Apple implement this at the OS level so I don't need to keep experimenting with Aerospace/Rectangle/Hammerspoon... Apple please allow me to disable the destop transition animations and make your OS feel snappy for once.

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