Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
What's your preferred way of quickly switching between apps and why?
- Thread starter rjalex
- Start date
-
- Tags
- desktop macos user experience
- Sort by reaction score
“On the Mac, there are so many different ways to work. Some people use spaces, some people are in and out of Mission Control. Some people are command tab people, some people like to create a mess, some people clean up their messes and some people use minimization. I mean, there's no wrong answer here, there are a lot of valid ways to work on the Mac.” -Craig Federighi
Me too; it works so easy for me; always shows my open apps and easy for me use.
I like cmd-tab, but I mostly use it mapped to the scroll wheel button of my mouse via the software SteerMouse. I think it's really nicely implemented there in the sense that a press of the button brings up the app switcher immediately (if you use cmd-tab on the keyboard you'll notice that there is a slight delay so one can switch between the two recently used apps without bringing up the app switcher).
What I also like is that I can either press and hold the button down and move to the app I want in front and then release to switch to it, or press the button and then release – which will keep the app switcher active – and then left click on the app I want to jump to.
I've got used to switching between apps this way and I thin it is the most efficient way I've found. I then use a separate keyboard command to switch between the windows of the frontmost app (used to have also this mapped to the buttons of my mouse when I had a mouse with more buttons).
The way of having full screen apps and swiping between them feels way to slow for me. Maybe if Apple sped up the animations or something.
What I also like is that I can either press and hold the button down and move to the app I want in front and then release to switch to it, or press the button and then release – which will keep the app switcher active – and then left click on the app I want to jump to.
I've got used to switching between apps this way and I thin it is the most efficient way I've found. I then use a separate keyboard command to switch between the windows of the frontmost app (used to have also this mapped to the buttons of my mouse when I had a mouse with more buttons).
The way of having full screen apps and swiping between them feels way to slow for me. Maybe if Apple sped up the animations or something.
The nice thing is there are several ways. The one thing I almost never use is Dock, which I have set to auto hide.
Spotlight is good when I'm not sure if an app is launched or not: hands stay on keyboard. Command tab a little bit.
I've recently converted to using Stage Manager so a lot of it is just a click now, where before I had things in different spaces and 4 finger swiped to get there. I love it.
Spotlight is good when I'm not sure if an app is launched or not: hands stay on keyboard. Command tab a little bit.
I've recently converted to using Stage Manager so a lot of it is just a click now, where before I had things in different spaces and 4 finger swiped to get there. I love it.
You're not bothered by the overdramatic animations of Stage Manger?
I'm happy with animations as it improves the user experience, but I want them to be faster! In iOS I think they work well, but in macOS some are too drawn-out in my opinion such as going in and out of full screen, switching between spaces and… switching between apps using Stage Manager.
Many thanks! It's going to take me a while to adjust to the new preferences pane...
Overall, the sidebar is probably better though. I can never find icons in the current Pref pane.
The right-hand panel looks extremely complicated though, with a lot of sections.
As an aside...it's weird to me that Default Web Browser is in "Desktop&Dock"!
