Almost. Compared to the existing third-party tiling managers, this seems to cover the bare-bone basics and nothing more. But that probably also satisfies a large portion of the userbase.
Rectangle does much more, but it actually lacks the one feature I need with window snapping: the ability to resize both snapped windows at the same time. The native Sequoia snapping does it.
I only ever use snapping for left/right snapping (I never used 1/3 snapping or corner snapping or other Rectangle features) so I’m glad I finally need one less third party app.
Cars are a great example of this. The majority of them have an underline design flaw but people keep buying them with said flaw. The door entry is not designed for parking lots / car parks.
macOS has plenty of power user affordances, they're just Apple/NeXT-flavored rather than Windows/Linux-flavored and might not be as immediately obvious to users coming from other platforms.
I used and still use macOS, Windows and Linux.
For decade(s). Because of consulting.
macOS breaks a bunch of my stuff in every update. Window management still atrocious.
Many functionalities present in other OS by default require third party tools and subscriptions. Apple hashes every executable I run and sends to their servers.
I prefer working with Linux/x86 platforms. I get to enjoy faster hardware and predictable, customizable software.
That preference is totally legitimate. There are however many types of power users, including those who extensively customize and augment their desktops and sync their dotfiles, as well as those who know all the key shortcuts, tips and tricks, etc but run mostly-stock configs.
I’m in the latter camp and it’s exceptionally rare that major OS updates break anything for me.
Try putting one window on the left half and one on the right half. There will be a pixel gap between them in the center and one on the top between the window and the top bar. 1 does not equal 0
I have 0 pixels in between. There is 1 pixel on top, yes - but it's not exclusive to the snapping feature. I can't move or resize a window in a way that covers that pixel, no matter what I do.
I use it too. I immediately switched off the new snapping feature. Snapping it to half the screen is just not right. I like my browser, email program and code editor considerably wider.
I don't run MacOS anymore but based off the comments it sounds like the window snapping is not that great yet. Makes me wonder, why not just buy Magnet or one of the many other apps that do this and integrate the source into MacOS.
Current approach sounds best to me, Apple gets to implement a (relatively simple) feature exactly how they want, power users and existing users can rely on third party apps.
I imagine this situation is kind of unique. Once a company finds out the features they sell will be integrated into the 1st party platform, and they have a chance to get out of the business, and they know they’ve got competitors that Apple could turn to next, I imagine Apple would be getting a steep discount. Especially if it’s an aqui-hire — peace of mind the employees will be taken care of.
> Note: unfortunately, there aren’t any specific keyboard shortcuts for moving windows into the quarter sections of the screen.
I'm surprised The Verge apparently doesn't know that you can create keyboard shortcuts for any Mac menu item, either specific to an app or across apps. You can even override existing shortcuts:
Except when Apple implements their apps poorly, like Find in Apple Music, whose hot key does not activate the menubar item and thus Cmd-F cannot be rebound. This also makes a lot of Electron apps’ hot keys unable to be rebound as well; VS Code faces this issue.
I don't know what's going on with Apple Music. I can rebind Cmd-F to any of its menu items if I do it for all applications, but not if I target Music specifically.
Music on macOS is really weird architecturally. Parts are native, parts are WebViews, and I wouldn't be surprised if there's even still some bits of code leftover from the days Music/iTunes was still known as SoundJam MP.
They're likely doing something funky to implement its shortcuts because the standard way wouldn't work everywhere in the app.
Ironically, at this point the cleanest implementation of Apple Music might actually be the Windows version, which as far as I can tell is a fresh codebase written exclusively in WinUI/WinAppSDK. Many hoped that the transition from iTunes → Music.app would turn out to be a blank-slate AppKit rewrite on macOS but that's not what we got.
Rectangle (OSS), Moom, and Magnet are all good options if you want to go beyond what Sequoia supports. I've used Moom for years and particularly like its behavior when external monitors are added/removed.
Raycast ftw - I can set margins and add entirely custom window positions and it all hooks into the same keyboard shortcuts mechanism.
I kinda like the ratpoison or i3 approaches to window management (which I’d characterise as “don’t worry about it, I’ll just do the right thing until you tell me to resize or rotate or whatever”) better though.
Another vote for Moom here. By default it doesn't have any Aero Snap style drag zones and only presents itself as a hover-popover attached to the green button, which is perfect for my use of snapping which is only occasional. Its ability to divide your screen into a grid of your choosing is nice too.
Yes it's not free, but it's a cheap one-time purchase and I've been using the same license for a decade now, so it's close enough to free that the difference is moot.
Window management is a perfect application for pie menus, since many of the directional items can be arranged in obvious layouts, and you use them frequently, so you learn them well and can use them in "expert" mouse-ahead style quickly and efficiently, saving a lot of time overall.
For example, the NeWS tabbed window frame pie menus placed the common "front" and "back" commands up and down, had a "grab" submenu with eight directions to drag the four corners and four edges, and a "move" submenu with vertically and horizontally and unconstrained mode, etc. They worked really well with mouse-ahead gestures (with PacMan feedback @ 8:35)!
The HyperTIES hypermedia browser had multiple windows in left and right panes, and right-clicking on a link would bring up a pie menu to open it in the left or right pane.
Sorry in advance about the terrible video quality! Someday I hope to track down the equipment to read the original dv tapes, and upload better versions.
Don Hopkins and pie menus in ~ Spring 1989 on a Sun Workstation, running the NEWS operating system:
User Interface Strategies (UIS) 90 - Ben Shneiderman - Applications sections and demos: NeWS HyperTIES Space Telescope Demo, showing left/right pane link pie menus:
The tab pie menus in the PSIBER Space Deck visual PostScript programming environment had directional submenus that would let you customize the layout, pull out to configure the scale, move the tabs to different edges, etc:
Kando is open source and cross platform, and it now lets you make your own window management and many other kinds of pie menus, with custom themes defined in CSS:
I'm a bit weird on this front but years of working in coffee shops, co-working spaces, etc. have trained me out of relying on more than just the screen that comes with my laptop. I don't have a fixed office that I go to every day and I actually prefer it that way. The big advantage is that I can just sit down anywhere with my laptop and have everything that I need to be productive.
It's gotten to the point where it's just confusing to me to have multiple screens on the rare occasion I plug one in. I'm constantly look at the wrong screen and usually I just end up unplugging the external screen because it's just easier for me. Another factor is that most screens are kind of underwhelming in terms of contrast, resolution and colors relative to what comes with a mac book. They aren't very pleasing to look at and most offices seem to settle for cheap Dell 2K screens or something similarly dreary. Ergonomically, I like laptops and not having to get a neck cramp looking up at some screen. I use my laptop on my lap quit often. Couches are great for that.
Mostly I use applications maximized and just alt+tab between them as needed. Because of the notch, using applications full screen is kind of pointless. Effectively the space around the notch is only usable for the menu. So, the choice is really whether you want a menu or not. In my case, the answer is yes I want the menu there. Full screen is one of those features that became an anti-feature. Apple should just get rid of that.
So these new features are wasted on me. I don't see why I would want to split the screen between two apps. I only use one at the time mostly.
This list stinks of a Windows user's unbudging perception of a system they don't like. You don't have to like it but anyone can create a list of dozens and dozens of these nitpicks against Windows or any Linux DE if they tried.
Also, Windows Fancy Zones is very good in this area, fwiw (obvs not available on Mac, just saying, it's extremely good).
Bento for Mac tries to be like Fancy Zones, but it falls short for some reason I don't recall, some key feature they don't support (I think maybe it was ability to have different splits for different monitors, will have to try it again)
Does Microsoft still own a patent for window snapping? Could this be why windows on Sequoia don't snap exactly at the screen border but leave a gap of a few pixels?
As noted in another comment thread, there's a setting to disable margins when tiling so that's probably not an issue. IIRC Microsoft and Apple have a patent-sharing agreement (which is why MS Surface products have MagSafe-cousin power plugs).
It probably has more to do with how tiling with no margins with rounded window corners looks kinda awkward and entirely obscures the desktop, which is a bit more of a pillar UI element on macOS than it is on Windows and Windows-analogue DEs.
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[ 946 ms ] story [ 3755 ms ] threadI only ever use snapping for left/right snapping (I never used 1/3 snapping or corner snapping or other Rectangle features) so I’m glad I finally need one less third party app.
Cars are a great example of this. The majority of them have an underline design flaw but people keep buying them with said flaw. The door entry is not designed for parking lots / car parks.
macOS breaks a bunch of my stuff in every update. Window management still atrocious. Many functionalities present in other OS by default require third party tools and subscriptions. Apple hashes every executable I run and sends to their servers.
I prefer working with Linux/x86 platforms. I get to enjoy faster hardware and predictable, customizable software.
I’m in the latter camp and it’s exceptionally rare that major OS updates break anything for me.
https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/change-window-tilin...
> It’s packed with every feature you could possibly want, though I think Magnet is a little more intuitive to use.
Just give me iTerm-like split windows, I'm dying.
The only snapping features I use are snap left, snap right, and resize both snapped windows at the same time (which Rectangle doesn’t do).
Sometimes less is more, I’m more happy with Sequoia native snapping than with Rectangle/Magnet
Current approach sounds best to me, Apple gets to implement a (relatively simple) feature exactly how they want, power users and existing users can rely on third party apps.
Probably because it costs like 10k per line of code for apple to implement anything decent. (not claiming that magnet is decent)
I'm surprised The Verge apparently doesn't know that you can create keyboard shortcuts for any Mac menu item, either specific to an app or across apps. You can even override existing shortcuts:
https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/create-keyboard-sho...
Really? Personally, at this point, I'm generally more surprised when they do.
They're likely doing something funky to implement its shortcuts because the standard way wouldn't work everywhere in the app.
Ironically, at this point the cleanest implementation of Apple Music might actually be the Windows version, which as far as I can tell is a fresh codebase written exclusively in WinUI/WinAppSDK. Many hoped that the transition from iTunes → Music.app would turn out to be a blank-slate AppKit rewrite on macOS but that's not what we got.
I kinda like the ratpoison or i3 approaches to window management (which I’d characterise as “don’t worry about it, I’ll just do the right thing until you tell me to resize or rotate or whatever”) better though.
Yes it's not free, but it's a cheap one-time purchase and I've been using the same license for a decade now, so it's close enough to free that the difference is moot.
For example, the NeWS tabbed window frame pie menus placed the common "front" and "back" commands up and down, had a "grab" submenu with eight directions to drag the four corners and four edges, and a "move" submenu with vertically and horizontally and unconstrained mode, etc. They worked really well with mouse-ahead gestures (with PacMan feedback @ 8:35)!
The HyperTIES hypermedia browser had multiple windows in left and right panes, and right-clicking on a link would bring up a pie menu to open it in the left or right pane.
Sorry in advance about the terrible video quality! Someday I hope to track down the equipment to read the original dv tapes, and upload better versions.
Don Hopkins and pie menus in ~ Spring 1989 on a Sun Workstation, running the NEWS operating system:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Fne3j7cWzg
User Interface Strategies (UIS) 90 - Ben Shneiderman - Applications sections and demos: NeWS HyperTIES Space Telescope Demo, showing left/right pane link pie menus:
https://youtu.be/1uyO-xUTt6Y?t=761
The tab pie menus in the PSIBER Space Deck visual PostScript programming environment had directional submenus that would let you customize the layout, pull out to configure the scale, move the tabs to different edges, etc:
https://youtu.be/1uyO-xUTt6Y?t=1484
https://donhopkins.medium.com/the-shape-of-psiber-space-octo...
X10 Pie Menu Window Manager:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJhvB6kwmog
NeWS Tab Window Demo:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMcmQk-q0k4
PSIBER Space Deck Demo:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuC_DDgQmsM
HCIL Demo - HyperTIES Browsing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZi4gUjaGAM
Kando is open source and cross platform, and it now lets you make your own window management and many other kinds of pie menus, with custom themes defined in CSS:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVbnLsMnTYQ
It's gotten to the point where it's just confusing to me to have multiple screens on the rare occasion I plug one in. I'm constantly look at the wrong screen and usually I just end up unplugging the external screen because it's just easier for me. Another factor is that most screens are kind of underwhelming in terms of contrast, resolution and colors relative to what comes with a mac book. They aren't very pleasing to look at and most offices seem to settle for cheap Dell 2K screens or something similarly dreary. Ergonomically, I like laptops and not having to get a neck cramp looking up at some screen. I use my laptop on my lap quit often. Couches are great for that.
Mostly I use applications maximized and just alt+tab between them as needed. Because of the notch, using applications full screen is kind of pointless. Effectively the space around the notch is only usable for the menu. So, the choice is really whether you want a menu or not. In my case, the answer is yes I want the menu there. Full screen is one of those features that became an anti-feature. Apple should just get rid of that.
So these new features are wasted on me. I don't see why I would want to split the screen between two apps. I only use one at the time mostly.
Three things come to mind regarding bad Apple UX:
1. USB ports on the back of a screen
2. No separate Copy/Paste keys, or Undo/Redo keys.
3. Magic mouse with a USB port on the bottom (so you can't use it while charging).
4. Sideways traffic light on top of windows
5. Maximizing windows to full screen is hard to do.
What?
http://hallofshame.gp.co.at/qtime.htm
Also, Windows Fancy Zones is very good in this area, fwiw (obvs not available on Mac, just saying, it's extremely good).
Bento for Mac tries to be like Fancy Zones, but it falls short for some reason I don't recall, some key feature they don't support (I think maybe it was ability to have different splits for different monitors, will have to try it again)
It probably has more to do with how tiling with no margins with rounded window corners looks kinda awkward and entirely obscures the desktop, which is a bit more of a pillar UI element on macOS than it is on Windows and Windows-analogue DEs.