2

OS X has this ridiculous idea of switching between Applications not windows that is killing usability. I never ever want to "switch to Terminal.app", it's always "switch to certain Terminal.app window".

Are there any good solutions?

I've installed Witch to provide some semi-sensible window switching, but it still has problems. If I have only two windows it's fine - with there it's already rather bad.

And there doesn't even seem to be any way to get a window out of a way - let's say I have long-running Terminal.app window that I want to keep in background until I explicitly recall it. No such luck - I'm pretty much guaranteed to accidentally switch to it sooner or later. And there's no hint which window contains what during switching - it's something useless like Terminal - bash.

Is this fixable at all?

EDIT: No, this isn't a duplicate question, and none of answers to that suggested "duplicate" have anything to do with it.

Improve this question
7
  • 4
    Exact duplicate of superuser.com/questions/45310/… ?
    – Chealion
    Oct 7, 2010 at 5:49
  • No it's not, not even close! Notice the "but it still has problems" part. I already found some way to switch windows, now I want windows switching to behave sensibly.
    – taw
    Oct 7, 2010 at 12:14
  • 2
    Well, for starters you can use the Info pane of each Terminal window (Cmd-i) to set the title to be whatever you want it to be. You can also configure Terminal's preferences to customize what the title of each window contains.
    – peelman
    Oct 7, 2010 at 14:09
  • 3
    @taw: If you want answers, I suggest not trolling for hate by the people most knowledgable. Also, you fail to explain what exactly is wrong with Witch, and what other system does it right in your opinion. And that the Terminal windows are indistiguishable is fixable by its preferences, see peelmans comment. Pretty much all other applications have usable window titles by default.
    – Daniel Beck ♦
    Oct 7, 2010 at 16:04
  • 2
    I see no reason to re-open this. This is a rant and not a question. Just because you don't like how it works doesn't mean it's broken, and also doesn't mean we have to try and help you. There are more then enough people using Mac's that are happy with the way it works.
    – BinaryMisfit
    Oct 7, 2010 at 20:10

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
2

Have you tried Exposé? By default, F9 shows all windows and F10 shows all windows for the active application. If you have the side buttons on your mouse, you can just squeeze those to activate it as well (not sure if that's the default).

Improve this answer
3
  • That requires taking hands off keyboard and clicking on correct window with mouse, right? That's too slow for such a common action.
    – taw
    Oct 7, 2010 at 12:15
  • @taw: You can use the tab key to switch between them with the keyboard. See this for more information. But honestly, is it that hard to take your hands off the keyboard? I find it faster to click on the window that I want than having to cycle through the windows manually with the keyboard.
    – Sasha Chedygov
    Oct 7, 2010 at 21:38
  • 1
    Well for constantly switching between 3-4 windows (usually TextMate / Firefox / Terminal / possibly another Terminal) it is rather horrible. Thanks for expose tab hint, but this seems to be application switching, not windows switching, right? Fortunately I found Witch setting to ignore minimized windows when alt-tabbing - it doesn't quite fix the problem, but it's a big improvement already.
    – taw
    Oct 8, 2010 at 7:48

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .