![]() ![]() In less than a day, rcmd became so ingrained in our app switching that we got incredibly annoyed when we had to quit the app for recompiling and debugging. We created the first prototype in about a week (icons and graphics take so much time…) and started using it in our day to day work to see if it made sense. I pitched this idea to Ovidiu Rusu, a very good friend of mine, who surprisingly seemed to have the same need as me. So simple that people were offended by it… My idea sounded a bit simpler: Right Command + the first letter of the app name But that needed a bit more key presses than I wanted (that is 1) and more attention than I wanted to give (which is none). I remembered using Contexts for a while, which provides a Spotlight like search bar for fuzzy searching your running apps. Using the app name felt the most natural. When I used Windows for reverse engineering malware, I liked switching apps using Win + Number where the number meant the position of the app icon in the taskbar. What if I use it exclusively for switching apps? We have two Command keys on a Mac keyboard, and the right hand side one is almost never used. So what does my brain do when I feel burnt out? Gives me ideas for even more apps… # rcmd Maybe pressing Tab 4-5 times while visually assessing if the selected app icon is the one I want to focus, isn’t the best solution for this kind of workflow. I start to feel my fingers again, press Command Tab once more, and while looking at the list of app icons I realise something. Those features should have probably been their own independent app. Why am I adding all the features the users are asking for, then deal with the flood of frustrated emails saying “what an overcomplicated stupid app, I just want to make my screen brighter!!”, then try to hide advanced features to make it simpler, then get assaulted with the confused “I can’t change volume anymore fix this ASAP!!!” because UI changes can very easily introduce bugs by simply forgetting to bind a slider to a value, then get back to scotch taping broken parts slower than the users can report them? It’s probably only funny for a small group of workaholics, but the reality of those words struck me in the middle of the hysterical laughter I was trying to stop. Wasn’t that what I ran away from when I quit my job to make apps for a living? ![]() I stop switching apps and just stare at the Xcode window, containing what I knew was Swift code but looked like gibberish right now. I feel my brain pulsing and my ring finger going numb on the Tab key. So, it’s Tuesday night and I’m Command Tab-ing my way through 10 different apps, some with 3-4 windows, while trying to patch bugs in Lunar faster than the users can submit the reports. The other modifier key will continue to work as it does by default.Home Blog Notes Stuff Contact Résumé RSS Why aren't the most useful Mac apps on the App Store? A case study into developing an app for the Mac App Store, and all the limitations I ran into while doing that So you can set Fast Search to use, for example, only the left Option key or only the right Option key. Contexts recognizes left & right modifier keys separately. Just release Fn and the selected item will come to the front.Ĭombine this with search shortcuts and you can switch to Safari with Fn-s, Notes with Fn-n, Messages with Fn-me and so on. The Search window will appear with the results. If you want to go even faster, enable Fast Search, hold down the Fn key (or whichever modifier key you prefer 1) and type a one or two character query (or a longer one if you want to). type “s”, select Safari window from results and from then on that window will always be the first result for “s”. Once you type a search query and select a window (with up or down keys if necessary), typing the same query later will cause that window to be the first result. Most of the time typing the acronym of an item’s title is sufficient to make it the first result. Character matches at start of the app name and start of any words in the window title get a higher score. If an app has multiple windows open, type a couple of characters from the app name and a couple from the window title. You can type characters which are anywhere in the app name or window title. You should need as few keystrokes as possible - ideally just two for your frequently used windows Īnd it should be as deterministic as possible - so you can switch without even looking at the results most of the time. Press Return to switch to the selected item.Īnd in Contexts 3 we have taken search to a new level. Type a few characters from an app name or window title to filter the list. Press Control-Space (or whichever keyboard shortcut you prefer) to open the Search window. Contexts lets you switch to windows with search. ![]()
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