Show HN: I built a tool to solve window management (aboveaverageuser.com)

One way to implement this is to use window manager with one workspace per window (or multiple related windows) and use a single hotkey to switch to it. Very muscle memory efficient and takes no confirmation delay.

Personally (as someone with ADHD), this would just relentlessly grind my gears. My thoughts are unpredictable by nature and so I value the "reliability" of knowing my chrome is two alt+tabs away, etc.

If an algorithm started messing with this and changing throughout the day... Damn, I'd go crazy.

Sounds like tiling window managers like sway or i3. Those don't have any sort of predictive switching but otherwise:

  - My window management is done via keybindings
  - The status bar is completely optional (personally I use it but there is no *need* to use it)
  - I set `hide_edge_borders smart_no_gaps` so if I only have 1 window open in a workspace, it doesn't have any border at all. No titlebar, no close/minimize/maximize buttons, just the window content.

So after switching, they will need a short moment to reorient: understand where they were taken, check if it matches where they wanted to go, and then either switch again or stop the switching process to resume work. In UX design, it's better if you can complete a longer process without having to halt and reorient many times in the process (like opening a menu that was hidden and wait for a loading animation to complete, until you can actually read the menu items are).

If it's impossible to keep a mental model of where you are in the system, and how you can move to another specific window, then actually EVERY window switch requires much more effort and conscious thought.

I think windowing systems, virtual desktops, spotlights, stage managers, exposés, mission controls, are all too complicated... I don't know what the solution is, and I think it's great that people are working on novel solutions. But I do know I want to easily switch between 2-4 windows without the order randomly changing.

Alt+tab is an optimal controller.

Maybe operating on the order of items in the queue, and use your prediction to sort windows, allowing faster selection? Even that disrupts sense of place - I know what applications I have open and where they are, and if I'm using alt+tab over 5 or more, I know the order in which I've opened them, and "where" I need to go to navigate to them.

There are second and third order impacts to changing interface behaviors, so the superficial benefit you might gain will be lost by creating friction at different levels.

A single key is insufficient for granular control, and no AI widget short of human level AI is going to capture the edge cases, which will create friction, at which point I will aggressively remove the offending piece of software.

I'd go back to the drawing board and work on a more complex model of window switching and all the ways in which people use alt+tab, and see if there's a use case for your idea at a different level. As it is, for me, it would interfere with a reliable and predictable interface, and I would be very unhappy.

[1]: https://lowtechguys.com/rcmd/

Cmd-Tab on Mac and Alt-Tab on Windows does the same thing every time. Its consistency lets me use it extremely quickly, with confidence. It does what I want it to, every time. I don't wish to sound dramatic, but if I hit a shortcut with a window in mind, and this app picked the wrong window even once, I would uninstall it immediately. "Cmd-Tab, but it doesn't work sometimes" sounds frustrating and strictly worse than the system shortcut.

Maybe it should look more like GitHub Copilot. It watches what you're doing and shows a small indicator somewhere of the window it thinks you want to switch to. If the app guessed right, you hit a keyboard shortcut and switch to it. If the app guessed wrong, you just ignore the suggestion, like with Copilot.

I feel like the only predictable workflows are when I'm cycling through N windows repeatedly. Tabbing works great for N=2 already due to reorganizing the list so the first element is always the previous window. But N=3 or 4 and maybe 5 are also common for me and kind of annoying with tabbing. Of course I don't know how predictable those are either, they're annoying to tab because the patterns are almost regular but also have frequent exceptions.

I am sorta talking myself into wanting normal tabbing alongside a browser style forward/back (which would NOT reorder the alt/cmd tab list). That way once I have my N windows as most recent, it's all back/forward navigation and the path to each window is something I would remember for the session.

I would love to see your workflow in action for a real use case, unless your real use case is switching between calculator and paint…

cmd + shift + {key} takes me right there

J = Chrome K = Terminal H = 1Password ... etc

Hammerspoon setup: https://github.com/joeyagreco/dotfiles/blob/aab6c4631c4c6b09...

Global maps: https://github.com/joeyagreco/dotfiles/blob/aab6c4631c4c6b09...

(local maps are not version controlled for obvious reasons)

For those who do try the demo or trial version, or purchase the full version, if you want to take a more active role in providing feedback, you can email me at hello@aboveaverageuser.com.

I did a lot of testing so it’s a fully working version, not a beta. This would just a thank-you for helping out early. You can reach me at hello@aboveaverageuser.com

Thanks everyone!

I've used an auto hotkey script for years that has served me perfectly. I press my shortcut modifier (the right Alt key) and then the letter of the app I want to switch to. For example, Right Alt + C will switch to my code editor VS Code. Right Alt + T will switch to MS Teams.

Repeating key presses will switch through all instances of that app so Right Alt + C, C, C will switch to the third open VS Code window.

The top row can be temporarily assigned to any open window for using on windows I have open that I'm switching to frequently but only while I have work in progress.

The scripts are at https://github.com/dattiimo/ahk-scripts for anyone interested.