I use a Mac as my main system and what frustrates me is there is no way to truly disable all animations in the system. Sure you can reduce them which gets you about 80% of the way there but there is no supported way to totally disable them all.
It actually surprises me given Apple is very pro accessibility. The reduce motion option is after all an accessibility feature. It is always why I never understood why Apple don't embrace more keyboard shortcuts for simpler app window management (snapping) rather than the decade old, half assed implementation we have currently.
For me macOS would be perfect with just a few very small features for better window management built in along with the ability to customise it a bit.
I'm not talking full on tiling window manager level features with gaps, master-stack, fib spiral, etc. Basically just something like Magnet/Rectangle built into the OS out of the box, plus two-window resizing (like we already have with the current full screen snapping feature).
One aspect that I find particularly vexing is the apparent lag when toggling between MacOS Spaces, even when the 'reduce motion' setting is enabled.
I utilize Spaces as an alternative to multiple monitors, often alternating between a full-screen terminal and a browser window in different Spaces. Anticipating the need to open a new browser tab, I transition to the browser Space and instinctively press 'Cmd+T', only to discover that a new tab has instead been created in the terminal window.
AFAIK, there doesn't seem to be a way to achieve instantaneous Space-switching devoid of any animation or delay.
> Basically just something like Magnet/Rectangle built into the OS out of the box, plus two-window resizing (like we already have with the current full screen snapping feature).
On newer versions of macOS, if you hold down Option while hovering your cursor over the Zoom button on newer versions you'll be given the option to split left/right without fullscreen. Not a full replacement for an Aero Snap sort of thing but covers its most common use case.
Yup this has been an option for a while but it isn't a nice quick keyboard shortcut :)
Apple managed to make it one of the most awkward features to use in macOS IMHO. You have to position the mouse over a small UI target, wait a second and also use the keyboard. I wish it were just a keyboard shortcut.
It's true that these don't come with a keyboard shortcut, but you can add your own!
Open System Settings > Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts > App Shortcuts and then add a new shortcut to All Applications, with the menu title being "Move Window to (Left|Right) Side of Screen". After doing this, in any app that's left the system-standard Window menu in tact (in my experience, the vast majority), your specified key shortcuts will split the frontmost window left or right.
You're right I should have acknowledged you can make it a keyboard shortcut.
That is what is frustrating about macOS window management, they could add everything I want as it is sort of already present. It is just missing customisation and a few additional options.
It seems that since Apple started trying to create consistency between macOS and iPadOS features they have (purposely) forgotten that people work with macOS quite differently to iPadOS :(
You are right, I was wrong. I didn't read the menu items closely. Holding the button down while pressing and releasing Option makes the toggle obvious. Thanks.
> It actually surprises me given Apple is very pro accessibility.
I have a hard time accepting that seeing as there is no way to configure system-wide fonts. CMD+scroll-wheel in Chrome doesn't even work properly (you can zoom the entire desktop, but it doesn't scale just the fonts on the website + remember your setting like it does on Linux and Windows machines).
I had to use a Mac for work and found it very difficult on the eyes when using an external monitor. To me this was not just an accessibility issue but THE accessibility issue. The fact that Linux gets this right of all operating systems, but Mac doesn't, speaks volumes to how much Apple actually cares about accessibility IMO.
On a Mac you just scale the whole display, not fonts.
I've never understood why someone would want to scale just fonts rather than all UX elements. What good is it to be able to read text but not see checkboxes or click the window's close button?
There's also a magnify feature if you need to scale so much that things don't fit on the screen anymore.
Yes, Apple is not only pro-accessibility but basically sets the standard for it. Nobody else even comes close.
because I need to be able to read text. I only need to see a square box and click on it. it does not need to be the size of the line of text.
because I don't need the windows close button at all and it takes up useless space. I close windows using the keyboard.
because icons don't need to be big. i don't need to read them. i can tell a stop sign is a stop sign even if it's too small to read the text on it.
that is why scaling the whole display, is a ridiculous idea functionally. now if you want your display to look more pretty while fitting less things, you should buy a painting to look at, or something from google with lots of that sweet pretty empty space and some light gray on white text. me, I have work to get done.
I have experienced this on both nix and MacOS. Increasing the font size gives the benefits of the high resolution display desktop space without making the text uncomfortably small. Scaling the display makes the desktop space feel like you're downgrading the resolution of the whole display.
> Yes, Apple is not only pro-accessibility but basically sets the standard for it. Nobody else even comes close.
That attitude summarizes the problem, thanks. Those who have actual accessibility issues and explain them are dismissed by Apple and their zealous fans as if their opinions, as actual end users struggling to use the product and asking for particular accessibility features, just don't matter.
I came across this "accessibility" setting up a Mac mini using just voice over. Selecting a WiFi network was almost but not quite impossible because it was doing something strange going through the list of SSIDs. I have no idea how it compares to a Windows PC during setup, but it seemed obvious that it was untested in a real environment. We're talking Catalina, I think, so plenty of opportunity to have gotten it right before that.
Thankfully I'm not blind, just a victim of Apple's notoriously bad HDMI port on the mini.
> plus two-window resizing (like we already have with the current full screen snapping feature)
Rectangle Pro[0] (the paid version that's more akin to FancyZones on Windows) has this now (though it doesn't animate it, it just resizes the other windows after you resize one). It seems to just detect what windows are adjacent and resize them to match.
You can disable all the animations in Gnome with the following:
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface enable-animations false
This is exactly what I do on my Fedora system and as far as I can tell every animation is disabled. Do you have an example of something not disabled with the above setting change?
Not picking on you, as it seems this is common: treating open source software as if it's someone's else's product, and treating ourselves as helpless consumers.
Instead of being sarcasting and unhelpful, you all could have a look at a settings window and realize that the option already exist and there is no PR to do.
I'm not being sarcastic. They've had 3 "waves" where they either threw away a whole bunch of stuff or outright started from scratch. Not to mention the ever changing libraries (there is no stability). I'm obviously not talking about this one feature, but with a history like that, why expend the effort, there's basically no guarantee how long your contribution is going to last.
I'm not saying it's easy or that everyone is capable. Only that it CAN be changed, but the conversations around OSS often don't reflect that reality. (We've all seen Github issues being abused as a support channel, often with a strong odor of entitlement)
If someone has strong feelings about how a UI is lacking, why suppress it in order to be more polite and avoid appearing entitled? That's a very useful signal. Imagine if nobody expressed their strongly-held opinions about UIs; nobody would know what's missing or bad. Why must everyone who complains about something also attempt to fix it themselves?
Sure. KDE is great and all, but if they shipped a default config that included a Taskbar and a root menu that opened a terminal, there would probably be fewer people scratching their heads after starting it.
<joke>Besides, everyone knows twm is the window manager of the TRUE Unix Haxxor.</joke>
It actually surprises me given Apple is very pro accessibility. The reduce motion option is after all an accessibility feature. It is always why I never understood why Apple don't embrace more keyboard shortcuts for simpler app window management (snapping) rather than the decade old, half assed implementation we have currently.
For me macOS would be perfect with just a few very small features for better window management built in along with the ability to customise it a bit.
I'm not talking full on tiling window manager level features with gaps, master-stack, fib spiral, etc. Basically just something like Magnet/Rectangle built into the OS out of the box, plus two-window resizing (like we already have with the current full screen snapping feature).