Making Macos Bearable
Key topics
The eternal quest to tame the macOS beast has sparked a lively debate, with some users swearing by custom window managers and keyboard shortcuts to boost productivity, while others dismiss these tweaks as "yakshaving" - a waste of time. As one commenter quipped, "I'm not a zealot," yet still uses a mouse, highlighting the diverse approaches to making macOS bearable. Proponents of tiling window managers like i3 and Sway rave about their snappiness and simplicity, while others prefer to stick with macOS defaults or augment them with tools like Alfred.app and Phoenix. The discussion reveals a deep divide between those who've grown fond of macOS's quirks and those who crave a more streamlined, keyboard-centric workflow.
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Dec 9, 2025 at 9:37 PM EST
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I'd prefer to adopt a few of these programs than having to configure i3 and use ctrl for everything
An easy example is how the workspaces rearrange themselves be mort recent use, and worse on iOS there's some seemingly random time interval at which they move themselves after use.
Also, no need to become aggressive :)
It's also why I have a difficult time with Linux. Even the environments that are closest relatives to macOS are still quite distant, and so I end up getting sucked down a black hole trying to tweak my way closer to parity, which of course never works out.
Most of the time, I only have Spotify, chat clients, my browser, and the terminal open. And I do prefer every one of them just having a fixed place behind a shortcut, which at this point is just muscle memory.
Do you use iTerm2 or Terminal.app, and tmux?
So far I’ve been pretty happy with it. But I was never a heavy user of the Alfred power features (despite owning a lifetime license for Powerpack).
Especially since you can now create Shortcuts that get input directly from Spotlight or the active window.
For example, I deal with a huge number of different projects at work. I have a workflow that imports the master excel spreadsheet and builds an instantly searchable database of every project. I can just start typing a project name and instantly jump to the project’s Sharepoint page, my local files directory, emails about that project, the publicly-accessible portal for it, etc etc. I use it constantly every day.
I use it to search industry-specific search engines, to draft repetitive emails for me, and to file things away. I have a workflow that configures various laptop settings based on location (printers, audio devices, volume level, etc).
Honestly if I had to choose between “Mac OS with no Alfred” and “Windows with Alfred,” I’d stick with Alfred. It’s such a helpful app.
I don’t use spaces or Mission Control or tiling. But I’ve been using macs since the late 80s and most of that stuff just seems superfluous. The fast global extensible subject-verb-object command shortcut is the only UI innovation that really changed my workflow since system 7 multitasking and osx having a cli.
I personally use a tiling window manager when I feel like it but also get how it's personal preference :)
But myself I just use quicksilver with a lot of features turned off.
I have browsers on desktop 1, music on 5, etc. without that so what am I missing?
Apple space and command tab / shift tab are huge favs for me.
Vimium looks cool gonna try that out.
Long animations between spaces, fullscreen creating a new window at the end of the list (??), slow processes to tile windows and efficiently use space, a lot of shortcomings with multi monitor setups, lots of dragging via touchpad to move and size windows across spaces.
By this point, I realized that the OP uses normal mouse. The MacBook trackpad is so good that I feel weird using a mouse these days. Also, the travel between the keyboard and trackpad is much smaller.
I wonder if the author is like me in that respect? Not sure I would spend time like this, but I also spent months building my Linux environment from a tty in 2009-2010 (landed on XMonad, finally on River this year after t months in GNOME purgatory to force myself to move to Wayland). Last macOS machine I set up, I turned off a bunch of stuff in Settings and was instantly bored because I just didn't want to deal with the window manager at all. It is now my video chat machine because of Dell's "wise" decision to use IPU7 hardware…but I really don't like using it for much else (Asahi reboots are tedious).
Old trick is to enable three finger drag. Does linux have that?
However, honestly, 99% of my multitasking pain on MacOS comes from the un-removable ~300ms animation delay when switching spaces. "Reduced Motion" changes the animation to a fade and doesn't solve the problem.
If I could instantaneously switch between virtual desktops I'd be so happy. I've wanted this for years.
That's basically why I stopped using them altogether. I'm using COSMIC DE now on my Linux systems, and while it also has animations, it doesn't look nearly as bad as MacOS.
On MacOS I resorted to tiling and alt-tabbing my way through because of the delays. I don't want to wait for the window system to draw pointless animations, but I can't disable them.
And then in Sequoia they implemented primitive tiling too and of course decided they HAD to add a non-configurable, impossible to disable resizing delay on tiling which nearly brought me to install a VM and use the MacBook as a glorified VM host (before Sequoia it used to be instant).
https://manytricks.com/witch/
Among other features that might solve your problem, it lets you use your keyboard to filter by window title.
1) (can be visual) you can setup cmd-tab to move between apps and alt-tab to move between one windows within an app (for example with alt-tab app)
2) (non-visual) with your window management prefix key setup two left/right cursor pairs like "JK" and "M," and use one to switch apps and the other to switch windows within an app (or maybe JL and IK in the inverted T cursor unless you're using up/down for something else)
Wow, didn't know of this - like a kid on christmas right now.
Anyone know if there's a way to get vim keybindings inside text boxes on websites? (I looked at 'wasavi' chrome extension which hasn't been updated in 8 years [0] and the website's down [1])
[0] https://github.com/akahuku/wasavi
[1] http://appsweets.net/wasavi/
What happens when some app (like, say, the browser) binds Cmd+<number>? If I hit Cmd+2 right now it'd switch me to the second tab in firefox. Seems like a pain to have to rebind everything.
I'm not familiar with Wooshy, so I'll have to check that out. Shortcat doesn't receive updates and for years there has been an indication that it would move from beta to licensed software (which I would happily pay for!), so I live in constant fear that it's on the road to abandonware.
Amazing post. I share the same motion sickness and also don’t have the Linux option in the work. I preferred the virtual desktop/spaces in a 2x2 layout, which was more natural to use.
What's your solution to finding one of 10 widows within an app?
For me, grouping by app is terrible. Yes, they may all be "Terminal" or "Firefox" windows, but they are for very different things. I'd rather see things grouped by project regardless of "app". But that is what tagging window managers are for :) .
Given that macOS forces that (IMO) braindead tunnel vision paradigm, I think the response should be "Wù".
For example, because the app restores its state and you have a few "projects" within the app.
> I'd rather see things grouped by project
Ok, and what if that project is encapsulated in an app window? Why introduce an extra level of indirection for no reason and spend time configuring it? If you frequently need a set of "5 firefox tabs, 2 terminal tabs, 4 text editor tabs, each in a separate app window", sure, spend time tagging it, set it as a WM project and launch/activate it with a key, but not everything is like that.
I'm saying that given what details are there, I think the author is closer to "my" end of the spectrum than one where the question makes sense at all.
Ok, how does that address my initial question (which was not about you) then? Not everyone's setup is so primitive as to only be centered around two apps
Though in this case I don't get what is so terrible about app groups if you don't group anything else anyway since it's ephemereal, so wouldn't any grouping work (except for 2 apps)?
Joking aside, I actually solve this problem with my Tmux setup by using fuzzy search. I usually have 2-3 Tmux sessions where each one is a different project. The way I switch between them is by fuzzy finding.
I press a key, a pop-up appears, and after typing in three letters related to the project title, I'm already where I want to be.
I can imagine a similar solution where an application launcher can help you fuzzy find your way to a specific window based on the window's title. If the window doesn't include a project-specific title, then I'm out of ideas :)
Just wanted to add a fun anecdote. I had a coworker who seemed allergic to the keyboard. Bound almost every job function to a mouse macro. I joked that I'd come to work one day and all they'd have is a monitor and mouse on their desk, nothing else. They laughed but I got the feeling they'd do it if they could.
I tried vimium and homerow too, and I liked them, but lately I've been using mouseless more (https://mouseless.click) and overall would recommend it.
You Cmd-Tab, release Tab but keep holding Cmd, and type the name or shortcut of the window. No preconfiguration necessary, it becomes automatic to just tell it what you want.
Side plug, I have a utility that lets you associate names with each Space: https://github.com/hyperjeff/NameSpace (Apple should’ve made naming Spaces standard, but no.)