Mac OS X: Sane way to switch between windows

<i>&gt; You might come across a situation, where you want to switch to an application or open a new instance of it. You press (Command ⌘ + Tab) combination. and you don’t get your window, just the title in the menu bar!</i><p>If you&#x27;re having that problem then you&#x27;re not using the Minimize command correctly. Never use Minimize when you intend to switch between apps.<p>You only use Minimize when you explicitly do <i>not</i> want to see a window when its app is active. Typically, it&#x27;s a rarely used command, but it can occasionally useful when you&#x27;re working in an app that has a lot of windows open (like, say, Terminal) and you want to set some of the windows aside for awhile.<p>More often, you should use the Hide command. (Command+H, select &quot;Hide&quot; from the app menu, or Option+Click a dock icon.)<p>This will hide the active app and activate the next app in order. When you return to the hidden app via Command+Tab, the app and its windows will be restored just as you left it.<p>In the old NeXTSTEP days, the Hide and Quit commands were top-level menu buttons and always just a single click away. It&#x27;s unfortunate that those commands were moved to a sub-menu in Mac OS X.<p>I actually wrote a little app that puts Quit and Hide buttons in the top left and right corners of the screen. It gets a lot of use.

I don&#x27;t know what this person is talking about... maybe it&#x27;s another version of OSX. On mine, you get this effect by pushing up arrow... you don&#x27;t have to stop cmd-tab or do anything else, just hit up arrow and it shows you that window. not what you want? keep going with cmd-tab.<p>Once you&#x27;ve hit up arrow, it&#x27;s like a mode switch, now you are in app window switching mode. Use use tilde (on english keyboards) instead of tab, and it will switch apps in this mode.<p>go back to tab, and you are back to icon switch mode.<p>This is on 10.11.6 anyway.<p>Edit: Oh, and while just playing around now, it appears instead of up arrow, you can hit cmd-1. So single handed, no gyrations.<p>CMD-TAB to bring up the icon switcher. Hit 1 while holding CMD, switch to window switcher. Hit Tilde while holding cmd, to switch apps in window switcher.<p>Edit2: It has its flaws. Doesn&#x27;t show &quot;full screen&quot; apps, doesn&#x27;t seem to work if you are viewing a full screen app.<p>I always stick with cmd-tab anyway, and for windowing I use BetterSnapTool. OSX needs a lot of help for that.

This is interesting, though I&#x27;d be wary of calling it sane - you have to press cmd, then tab, release tab, then press option (without releasing cmd!).<p>What it appears to do it trigger the &quot;reopen&quot; command on an application, which tends to open a new window if one does not exist.<p>The &quot;reopen&quot; event is described here:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;developer.apple.com&#x2F;library&#x2F;mac&#x2F;documentation&#x2F;Cocoa&#x2F;Conceptual&#x2F;ScriptableCocoaApplications&#x2F;SApps_handle_AEs&#x2F;SAppsHandleAEs.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;developer.apple.com&#x2F;library&#x2F;mac&#x2F;documentation&#x2F;Cocoa&#x2F;...</a><p>and here:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;developer.apple.com&#x2F;library&#x2F;mac&#x2F;documentation&#x2F;Cocoa&#x2F;Reference&#x2F;NSApplicationDelegate_Protocol&#x2F;#&#x2F;&#x2F;apple_ref&#x2F;occ&#x2F;intfm&#x2F;NSApplicationDelegate&#x2F;applicationShouldHandleReopen:hasVisibleWindows" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;developer.apple.com&#x2F;library&#x2F;mac&#x2F;documentation&#x2F;Cocoa&#x2F;...</a>:

Some other keys that work while using Cmd+Tab:<p>- Press &quot;q&quot; to quit the selected application<p>- Press &quot;h&quot; to toggle hiding the selected application<p>- Press &quot;1&quot; to show all open windows for the selected application<p>Does anyone know if there is a built-in way to only switch to the frontmost application window (by default Cmd+Tab puts all app windows in the foreground)? Sometimes I need to switch between two windows of different applications which I both want to keep visible on the screen, but switching to the destination app with Cmd+Tab ends up covering the entire screen because that application has other windows.

As a long time user of both I don&#x27;t think there&#x27;s any doubt that OSX&#x27;s window manager is inferior to Microsoft Windows&#x27;. Windows can handle things like multiple monitors and full screen modes much more seamlessly with less confusion. If it wasn&#x27;t for the Unix layer, and the occasional need to open XCode, I personally would have ditched Macs.

[Command + `] - a very useful shortcut in OS X for switching between windows of the same application.

I am a very happy user of HyperSwitch: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;bahoom.com&#x2F;hyperswitch" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;bahoom.com&#x2F;hyperswitch</a><p>Allows tabbing through individual windows (one icon per window, not just one per app) and doesn&#x27;t have the problem of not showing anything after the selection. Downside: it does not include minimized windows.<p>Although it seems to have been in &quot;beta&quot; since forever, I&#x27;ve never really encountered any problems.

I have literally never encountered this specific UX issue. Having using OS X and macOS for just about its entire fifteen year lifespan, I don&#x27;t even know how or why it would happen, to be honest.<p>The only issue I encounter here and there is if I have windows scattered across spaces and full-screen windows, switching just to the app usually picks the wrong window, and then because of the full-screen window complications, I can&#x27;t simple Command+` around, I need to use Spaces shortcuts to navigate to the left or right.<p>Edit: I think I understand the scenario after thinking a few more minutes: you&#x27;ve closed all the windows of an application, but you have not exited the application entirely. I agree with the existing behavior. I don&#x27;t want apps spawning new windows every time I go to them. If I want the window later, I don&#x27;t close it. If I just don&#x27;t want to see it, I hide the app -- but not minimizing it in the Dock either. Hiding it is like turning the other way, minimizing is like folding it up and putting it in my pocket. If I just hid it, I can just turn back to it when I want it. If I folded it up, I have to go through the &quot;pain&quot; of unfolding.

Steve Jobs is dead. Can we finally fix this? Or can someone convince me that the behavior we have suffered through for ages has more value than frustration?

This happens a lot with Mail.app. What I do now is just use Cmd+0 to show the main Mail window, or Cmd+1 for other apps - Evernote and Skype come to mind.<p>Another thing that annoys me to no end: alt-tabbing to Finder takes you to an open window in another desktop! I want to open a new window on this desktop. I guess the linked trick may help with this behaviour.<p><i>Edit:</i> Found a solution. Alt+Cmd+Space brings up a Finder search window on your current desktop. Good enough.

All I want from OSX is to be able to alt-tab between windows, not apps. Is this possible?

All you need to know about the OSX UI is this: sometimes when you hit the maximize button, the window <i>gets smaller</i>.

The slightly confusing window manager was one of my reasons to switch back from Mac OS to Linux 6 years ago. With a tiling window manager I never looked back. Everything can be customised to match your workflow. Regular setups with floating windows feel awkward now.

I gotta say, most of these things complaining about macOS UI read like people expecting it to behave exactly like Windows, rather than any objective flaws in how it works.

I just use Expose to switch between windows.

I love all of the advanced functionality hidden just beneath OSX&#x27;s user-friendly veneer. Sadly, it&#x27;s been one of the first casualties in the post-Jobs Apple. Every new release of OSX along with Apple&#x27;s own apps, the first thing I check is holding down the alt&#x2F;option key while clicking the various menu items to see what nuggets of alternate functionality appear. Every day, every release - less and less, if any at all. So sad.

The simple fact that there are NUMEROUS third party solutions to make OS X window management more like Windows and that there are NONE that try to make Windows or Linux window management more like OS X speaks volumes.<p>Apple got it wrong.

Or you could just press Command + N.

Or you could just press Command + N, and open a new window.