New Mission Control Desktop Thumbnails?

[MBX]

Hi there

Love El Capitan. But one new adjustment bugs me. Whenever you go into Mission Control mode the desktops/ spaces are at first only text and you have to hover over them with the mouse to activate the thumbnails for previewing.

This is an unnecessary 2nd step added and takes up much time always.

I did not find any option in settings to get it the old way. Any idea?

 

[pruppert]

I agree so much. I've been looking for a way to bring back the old functionality. I hoped there might be a defaults write to change, but I can't find one for it. I really hope Apple adds a setting for this.

 

[pruppert]

Another idea. The OS has to be calling some method when it does activate on hover. I wonder if there is a way to observe what that method is and then call it as the user with a program like BetterTouchTool when you 3-finger-swipe up.

 

[jdag]

Agree...I cannot think of a reason why they would have made such a change. It saves a very small amount of screen real estate I suppose, but takes away the visual cue of what is running on each space.

 

[chabig]

Remember that Mission Control is also Exposé. Often, you might want to see the windows in your single space, and you won't care what's in the other spaces. When you need to see the other spaces, the thumbnails appear instantly.

 

[dsemf]

If you invoke Mission Control while in a full screen window, you get the thumbnail row instead of the label row.

DS

 

[roland.g]

This is my biggest gripe with El Cap. I installed in on my Air but not my iMac. On a notebook I can see this making sense for screen real estate but on my 27" iMac I would not want this default behavior. I wrote feedback through the feedback assistant in the beta and posted in a thread urging others to as well in the hope we would get a system pref checkbox to turn this off. But not yet.

It does create an extra step.

My other gripe is that while split screen is welcome, it is still not as useful as snapping in Windows or using BetterSnapTool other than getting two apps to split in full screen. And yet the invoking it is not intuitive.

I'm not sure what else El Cap really brings to the table. I suspect not much if Apple really had to fawn over Notes so much in the keynote. OMG! Notes! Really?!? I guess after last years' Continuity and Handoff this would be a minor update. But it really feels minor.

 

[stooovie]

It's an UI performance optimization. When invoking old Mission Control, system had to poll all Windows from all Spaces, creating those little stutters we've all complained about But I agree id like an option - I use screen corners (top right) for MC and right now, it's always a little hiccup as it goes from non-expanded to full every time.

 

[MBX]

Another thing I hope Apple will do is give us the option to save Split Screen states/ apps pairs in Mission Control and the size relation to each other so that we don't have to create it from scratch every time. So that you can just activate it from Mission Control desktops area and each app pair can be saved that way and re-activated again.

I can do that with multi windows/ tasking on my Galaxy Note.

 

[Autistic Behaviour]

using hot corners, in system prefs-mission control. I set right top corner to "mission control" and I get the thumbnail mission control all the time
I see Stoovie already mentionned it

 

[s-hatland]

put me in this camp as well. I miss being able to see the desktop thumbnails. let me know what was running where without having to switch desktops. the visual cue of where things were was nice

 

[pruppert]

So, I asked the developer of BetterTouchTool about this on Twitter (he is Andreas @boastr_net). He then added a new action to the app within a few hours that launches Mission Control and shows the spaces previews automatically. How cool is that! Now, you can attach that action to your usual gesture for Mission Control (3-finger swipe for me). I then had to turn this swipe gesture setting off in System Preferences so that there wasn't a conflict with BetterTouchTool. Now Mission Control works like I want again.

 

[pruppert]

Forgot to mention, the action is currently in an alpha version of the app, so be sure to check for alpha version from the app menu to get it.

 

[pickaxe]

thanks for the heads up, pruppert. nice feature.

 

[cancel]

Remember that Mission Control is also Exposé. Often, you might want to see the windows in your single space, and you won't care what's in the other spaces. When you need to see the other spaces, the thumbnails appear instantly.

Well, then it should have been called "exposé" not "mission control", cuz i don't feel like i'm in control anymore. And probably they should have made a separate app for desktops as well and call it, i don't know, "spaces". I'm being sarcastic.

 

[baryon]

First, there was Exposé, and it was good.
Then there was Spaces, and it was very very good.
Then, there was Snow Leopard and Exposé was organized in a stupid grid, but it was still okay since Snow Leopard was a good OS nonetheless.
Then, there was Lion, and Spaces was gone, never to return again. Exposé was still in a weird grid. Those were the dark days.
Then, there was Mountain Lion, and Exposé was no longer in a grid, but Spaces were still gone. It was still bad, but maybe a bit better.
Then, there was Mavericks, which didn't change anything, but at least it wasn't so ugly.
Then came Yosemite, which was still better looking, with unchanged functionality. There was hope that maybe in a few years, we'll be sort of back where we were 5 years ago. That would be sweet.
Then came El Capitan. Our hopes were crushed. No only did functionality not improve, but now the thumbnails were hidden by default, too. What's next? Will we return to the dark days of Lion? ...Or worse?